Analiese Gregory

At celebrated Australian-Vietnamese restaurant Anchovy (anchovy.net.au), in Richmond, Melbourne, chef and co-owner Thi Le runs an all-female team. It was by accident rather than design, she says, but “most boys don’t like being told what to do by a woman.” Le received a formative lesson in kitchen gender politics as a young chef working under Christine Manfield at Sydney restaurant Universal. “I’d just started working for Christine and I said something one day about female chefs. She almost slapped me and told me I was a bloody idiot… a chef was a chef and that was it.”

Chez Panisse alumnus Danielle Alvarez also prefers to be known simply as “a chef”. She was a great score for the Merivale empire when it opened Fred’s (merivale.com) in Sydney’s Paddington in 2016. “I don’t think of myself as a female chef,” says the Cuban American, who first visited Australia in 2015 and liked it so much she stayed. “I’ve worked in kitchens where I never felt there was gender bias or that I had to work harder than the men to be noticed.” Her experience of men working for women differs from Le’s: “I do hear from men, in particular, that they prefer to work for female chefs. They say it’s a nicer environment... there’s less ego, more of an attitude of just getting on with the job and being creative. Maybe that’s where men and women are different in the kitchen.”