For the Female Chefs
World-renowned chefs converge on O'ahu to empower women in the restaurant business.
I remember being a chef de cuisine in San Francisco shadowed under the male chef and owner of the restaurant. It didn’t matter that I was working 80 hours a week, making food people lined up for, arriving each day before dawn to manage my team through lunch and dinner service squeezing out catering orders before most people got out of bed in the morning, when it came time for Michael Bauer to review us for the San Francisco Chronicle the name on our 3-star review was his, not mine. It wasn’t about becoming famous for me, I’ve always preferred leading quietly, I just wanted credit for the hard work I had put in to get those three stars.
That was 14 years ago. Today, only 12% of executive chefs are women. Why in 2024 is this glass ceiling still so hard to break?
I had the opportunity to attend the Culinary EmpoHERment event last weekend at Outrigger Reef Waikīkī Resort. This event, part of the Hawai’i Food and Wine Festival, included a panel discussion, led by chef Maneet Chauhan, with chefs Reem Assil, Elizabeth Faulkner, Jackie Lau, Anita Lo and mixologist Julie Reiner. The women all agreed that in order to get ahead in their careers they had to work way harder and be more skilled than all of the men they worked with (essentially they had to be perfect) in order to move up.
“I think one of the most important things that we need to do is we need to first lead by example, which is this incredible panel,” Chauhan said. “We need to have conversations, but we also need to make a conducive environment because we want the next generation to be creating delicious food, but in a safe environment.”
“I think we need to reduce the barriers for women to get in,” Assil said. “Culinary school’s expensive, it’s not everybody’s path. I was very lucky. I don’t think I would have opened my restaurant if I had not had an entrepreneurship program [ La Cocina ] that really focused on women to help me build my business. We need to have more nonprofits and community players actually leveling the playing field for women to get into these professions.”
Faulkner shouted out the James Beard Foundation Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership (WEL) program (all proceeds from the event benefitted WEL). This was the first time I’d heard of the program. I looked it up online and it does indeed have a wealth of programs for women. Learn more here.
Anita Lo also had some advice I think is important for anyone getting into the restaurant business. She said, “I would also suggest getting a real education before you go and just become a chef, because it’s hard on the body and there’s gonna come a time when you can’t really be on the line anymore and a lot of times, you know, not everyone has it to get to the top.”
For any women out there who are in it now, fighting the good fight, putting their heads down and putting the hours in every day to improve their craft and earn their title, the moral of the story is: If you really want it, don’t give up, AND use the resources out there to set yourself up for success.
The restaurant biz is an interesting place. While not on the line, we saw so much disconnection between heart of the kitchen and front of the house while handling pr and marketing for these types of establishments. I hope to see more women lead with a knife in the kitchen vs being regulated to the hostess position.
I watched you work your fanny off to learn your craft and ur seemed few were there to give you a step up. So glad women of the future will have some wind at their back. The glass ceiling is still unbroken but it’s starting to show some cracks.