By Megan Harwood-Baynescost of living specialist

During a busy lunch, when chef Sally Abe was asked to fill in for her male colleague preparing aged beef tenderloin, he responded by pouring a pan of boiling oil on her hand.

The man claimed it was an accident, something “we all knew was a lie”, Sally wrote in her memoir: A woman’s place is in the kitchen.

The book lifts the figurative lid on what it means to be a woman in male-dominated professional kitchens. With 16-hour days, rare bathroom and meal breaks, and a culture of not making yourself sick unless you’re on your deathbed, the story she tells is a brutal insight into hotel industry.

The book partly explains why only 17% of professional chefs in the UK are women and only 8% of Michelin-starred restaurants are run by women. Despite the playground insult that tells women and girls to “go back to the kitchen,” when they attempt to do just that as a career, they are met with almost non-existent maternity leave, white chefs who are not made for a woman’s body and to a culture of hypermasculinity. .

First at the Savoy Grill, before joining Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant at Claridge’s, Sally was often the only woman working behind the kitchen pass-through. She was also the only woman (to her knowledge) to have worked in the latter’s meat department.

It was often a “toxic work environment.”

“I think it’s quite shocking to people who have no idea what hospitality is,” Sally told Money. “If you told someone to fuck off in a regular office, you’d be fired.

“But that’s just everyday life in the kitchen.”

“They named me Tit-rat”

The attack on his colleague was a rare moment when mental insults turned into physical insults.

“I think this particular person was a really horrible human being – and luckily you don’t meet many of them along the way,” Sally says.

But what is all too common are the obstacles women face when working in professional kitchens.

Sally was christened “Tit Rat” by her male counterparts.

“There wasn’t really an explanation as to why. I was the only woman working in one of the best restaurants in the whole of the UK and I was surrounded by men: it was hypermasculine, very fast and I held myself well, “she writes in her book.

“My colleague told me to stay in the kitchen”

TV chef Judy Joo, co-owner of the popular Seoul Bird in London, was drawn away from the industry: she attended engineering school and then worked in finance before turning to cooking. But working in these male-dominated industries prepared her for what was to come.

“During my internship at Bell Labs, on my first day, I asked where the ladies’ restroom was, and no one knew. I had to walk to another building with the auditorium just to find the only one – it was crazy.” she said to Money.

Then, working on the trading floor, she was the only professional woman in her office.

“While I never doubted my ability to do this job, it would have been great to have more female role models,” she says. “Seeing women in leadership positions makes it easier to imagine yourself there.”

Sexism in the culinary world is “almost expected,” she says, and as a result, “it’s incredibly frustrating and demeaning.”

“Sometimes it doesn’t hit you until later, and you find yourself angry, wishing you had reacted differently in the moment. As women, people tend to question our abilities, while men – especially a white man – they would not be subject to the same scrutiny for their experience or skills.”

Recently, a colleague told him to “stay in the kitchen.”

“He told me I ‘don’t have to make business decisions for my company.’ I’m the CEO!

“I have an engineering degree from Columbia University and worked for five years at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley before becoming a chef. My business and financial training is probably more rigorous than his! The nerve… .so insulting! He no longer works with me, to say the least.

“Where are all the women?”

Dipna Anand was born and raised in the kitchen: her grandfather opened the first Brilliant restaurant in the Kenyan capital Nairobi in the 1950s. Southall’s Brilliant was established in 1975 and is now run by Dipna and her father. The restaurant was once declared the king’s favorite curry restaurant (by the man himself).

“I grew up behind the counter, trying to see beyond and be helpful while my parents ran the restaurant,” she says. “My brother and I were stacking cans under the counter, and we were waiting for the customers to leave to set the tables.”

She knew from a young age that she wanted to be a chef.

“My family would ask me what I was going to do, and I would say I wanted to be a chef, but they would say, ‘Don’t you want to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or an accountant?’ In my culture, that wasn’t considered a good thing,” she says.

When she entered the industry, she says, she was “shocked” by the number of men: “Where are the women?

For the most part, she held up well enough, but cooking is physical work.

“I would need help carrying the crate of onions or the masala, and the male chefs would be more than happy to help me. But that’s the only difference between me and a male chef.”

She says traditional gender roles still influence professional kitchens, particularly in the Asian community, with long hours, weekend work and late nights a barrier (she makes a point of asking female colleagues how they will get home if their shift ends late at 3 p.m.). night).

“Even today, when it comes to balancing family and professional life, women have more responsibilities and it is difficult for them to choose between their career and their family,” she says.

Women “away from the heat”

Having started as a commis chef in the banquet kitchens of the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, Neuza Leal rose to the role of executive chef at two restaurants in London.

She explains that female chefs are often pushed to work in the pastry and salad sections, “to get away from the heat”.

“They think you’re not strong enough and then you want to prove them wrong,” she says.

Early in her career, a senior colleague told her, “Just because of who you are, you’ll have to work harder than most people in the kitchen, because you’re a woman, because you’re black, and because you’re black. that you are young. »

Even now that she’s a senior, “people don’t think I’m a chef – they always go to the male colleague next to me.”

“They ask to speak to my husband, not me”

For Anya Delport, the challenges of the sector go beyond the kitchen doors. The 34-year-old South African created Interlude, a Michelin-starred restaurant in West Sussex, with her husband, who is executive chef.

“One of the biggest things I’ve faced is customers reacting differently to me because I’m a woman,” she told Money.

“There were times when I had to send certain staff members to a table because I felt like the guests would have a better experience.”

Sometimes clients asked to speak to her husband instead of her.

She recently lost a pastry chef who moved to be closer to her husband: “I think society sometimes thinks that a woman’s career in a relationship is the one that needs to be sacrificed.”

But she remains hopeful that things will change and more women will emerge in the industry: “You don’t have to conform to what society thinks you should be.

How Gordon Ramsay Helped Sally Overcome Burnout

During Sally’s time at Claridge’s, she reached the brink of burnout, with Gordon Ramsay stepping in to attend her therapy – something she describes as “life-changing”.

She repaid that sum by creating her own employee assistance program when she was head chef at the Harwood Arms.

Sally is now executive chef at Pem, a women-run kitchen where only one chef is a man.

“There are no egos, no one is competing and everyone just wants to do a good job,” she says.

“If you want it, it’s really not that hard and I start at the top. If you’re a respectful boss and you lead with love and guidance and accountability, then it trickles down. It’s probably easier to do that than to stand around and yell at people all day.

“I tried that and it’s exhausting. I went home at the end of the day and felt like a horrible person.”

Judy, like Sally, is also optimistic about the future: “We all need to help each other, support each other and stand up for each other. We will rise together. This is very important. I am very attached to mentoring; It’s so important.”