Pam Mazzola keeps focus on the food
If I say her name, the odds are that most of you will not recognize it. Yet, Pam Mazzola is one of the longest- and hardestworking chefs in San Francisco.
Pam helped to run the show behind the scenes for many years. She was co-chef with Nancy Oakes for 28 years, starting at L’Avenue in 1988, then at Boulevard in 1993. Now she’s the chef at the almost 3-year-old Prospect, although her name rarely, if ever, appears in columns and blogs.
Like many women chefs, Pam finds work and family sustaining, satisfying and totally time-consuming. She has been on her feet for more than 70 hours a week for years, at the same time raising three children — one a recent college grad, one a high school grad and one still at home, with the support of an understanding husband of 26 years who knows how much her work means to her.
With the dual responsibilities at work and home, she does not have time for hanging out with other chefs and making the social scene. And, she’s way too busy to tweet or post on Facebook her every activity or culinary thought.
Some of this is the generational divide. Many young chefs and cooks tweet and post all the time, while the more mature chefs, both male and female, who have been in the business for a long while, focus mainly on their work and consequently get little or no real coverage unless they are opening a new place or hiring a publicist to promote events. The squeaky wheel still gets the grease.
But gender remains an issue and is not unique to the restaurant kitchen. In the new movie “Somm,” women sommeliers get barely two minutes of screen time even though there are innumerable women sommeliers and 19 Masters. The film focuses only on aspiring male sommeliers and past Master Sommeliers.
Most women chefs are not adept at swagger, nor are they attracted to aggressive dog-eat-dog TV game show competitions. They will participate if it means getting coverage for their restaurants, but generally are reluctant self-promoters.
While they are not adept at “leaning in” for press attention, most who are active in restaurant kitchens willingly “lean in” when it comes to taking on work and extra responsibility.
Drawn to California
Pam was enticed into cooking school in Colorado during her senior year of college, and then worked in a few restaurants there. But she heard about the exciting changes happening in California in the early 1980s and moved here to be part of the food revolution.
Her first job was in garde manger at the Fairmont Hotel. She recalls enduring the kind of crude harassment that lone women in commercial kitchens were subjected to at that time. She then moved to the tiny Cafe Mozart, where she cooked nouvelle-inspired French cuisine and eventually became chef de cuisine.
After three years, she left Cafe Mozart and took 14 months off to have her first daughter. During that time, she kept in touch with Gaines Dobbins, a cook she had met while running Cafe Mozart who subsequently went to work with Nancy Oakes.
One night Pam and her husband went to L’Avenue for dinner. After visiting Gaines in the kitchen, she met Nancy, who called her a few days later. Pam was itching to get back into a restaurant kitchen, and went in for her interview with the baby in the stroller. Nancy didn’t bat an eye and offered her the opportunity to work three days a week. Pam has been working with Nancy ever since.
Gaines also went on to work with Nancy for many years. Staff longevity in the Boulevard kitchen is impressive.
Dedication to craft
Pam loves tracking down new ingredients from the best purveyors. She enjoys the challenge of creating new recipes and writing a balanced menu. Tasting food with the staff, reading, and dining in other restaurants are all part of her education.
She describes Prospect as a modern California restaurant, with a seasonal, market-driven menu. She’s working on streamlining the number of ingredients on the plate to avoid what she calls “the forest” — the overabundance of greenery and flashy garnishes that have sprouted up over the years. After spending all that time sourcing great ingredients, she wants to highlight them rather than bury them in excessive complexity.
Now that her children are grown, she says she feels as if she is starting over as a new chef. Her greatest pleasure at work comes in training her young staff, teaching them the craft of cooking and guiding them along their career paths to becoming chefs.
Pam is still not in it for fame and glory but for the true joy of cooking, still vibrant after all these years.
Prospect, 300 Spear St. (at Folsom Street), San Francisco; (415) 247-7770. www.prospectsf.com. Dinner nightly; brunch Sunday.