Female chefs, restaurant owners stepping into leadership roles
Kathleen Blake often tells new cooking applicants for her downtown restaurant Rusty Spoon that her kitchen isn’t like others. There are more women, she doesn’t tolerate “locker room talk” with vulgarity and sexual innuendo, and the average employee works about 32 hours a week to balance work and family life.
That work culture, along with the cuisine, has made Blake a role model for Central Florida’s female chefs and restaurateurs, and garnered some national attention as well.
Chefs and restaurants owners say the #MeToo movement and gender debates across the nation have begun to transform the restaurant industry. Now women in Central Florida’s restaurant scene are banding together to fight for recognition and a path forward
in an industry where just less than 20 percent of head chefs are female, compared with 59 percent of all professional cooks, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Central Florida’s female chefs are also creating events to boost recognition and support. Food delivery service GrubHub started a “Restaurant-Her” campaign to map restaurants or kitchens headed by women. More than 100 of Orlando’s restaurants have signed up to be listed on the map.
“Sometimes people still come back in the kitchen and ask me if they can speak to the chef,” said Blake, a twotime James Beard nominee for Best Chef in the Southeast.
Recent sexual harassment scandals inside and outside the restaurant industry have helped embolden women to step up and look for more leadership opportunities, said Emily Ellyn, an Orlandobased TV food personality and former Food Network reality competitor. Food Network star chef Mario Batali and New Orleans restaurant mogul John Besh have been wrapped up in sexual harassment allegations, showing the problem extends beyond Hollywood. Both men issued public apologies; Besh resigned and Batali took a leave of absence.
“We are getting more attention now because the Me Too movement has weeded out a lot of the male machismo culture,” Ellyn said.
Before Wendy Lopez became a head chef, all her bosses were men, said the 29-year-old head chef at Spanish cuisine restaurant Tapa Toro in Orlando. Lopez was trained in a French culinary program and said it was common for leaders to hurl plates on the floor. Now heading her own kitchen, she’s trying to balance high standards with a more inviting culture.
“It was tough for me at times, but I knew I wanted to continue cooking,” said Lopez, who grew up in Michoacan, Mexico, and learned to cook in her parents’ restaurant. “Sometimes I feel like [women] are intimidated and that’s not what we are here for. We’re here to cook.”
Chefs say a thick-skinned, testosterone-driven culture has also driven women away from restaurants, while the grind of an industry with low starting pay and long, latenight hours have pushed others into safer fields working in catering, in culinary education or for health-care facilities.
“The dream is to work your way up and have your own restaurant,” said Gloriann Rivera, pastry chef at Norman Van Aken’s Mount Dora restaurant, 1921. “And it’s a challenge because I would love to have kids, but I know I wouldn’t be able to work as much as I do now.”
Rivera is one of a handful of female chefs taking part in a Women in the Kitchen in Central Florida event on Sunday at Lake Meadow Naturals in Ocoee. Rusty Spoon’s Blake is organizing it after taking part in a similar event last year by the James Beard Foundation. Blake said her big break in the restaurant industry came at a similar women’s networking event two decades ago when she met chef Melissa Kelly, who was opening Primo restaurant in Orlando.
Networking and mentoring is one way to grow the ranks of women running restaurants and moving up to executive chef positions, said Kelly, the owner of Primo at the JW Marriott hotel.
“When I went to culinary school I was the only woman in my graduating class,” Kelly said. “There are a lot more women running kitchens now and it’s important to share that, to show that women have a place to turn for advice.”