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Women chefs are very busy. We are mothers, caregivers, social media experts, advisors and everything in between, all before we put on our butcher’s apron and turn on the stove. And our workplace is a kitchen, which does a better job than most of isolating a person from daylight, time, and sometimes reality. So how do we stay sane? There is a WhatsApp group for that.
Women are more cautious than men when it comes to asking each other for help. We don’t network as well as we should. I have worked in predominantly male kitchens my entire career. Now I’m in management, I’ve tried to address that and work with an almost exclusively female team. But sometimes you want to talk to other women who are at the top and running their own businesses. So I set up a WhatsApp group. When I see “Chefs👩🍳” appear, I know it’s going to be something good.
I’ve recounted the five recurring themes of our group and they perfectly sum up what it means to be a female chef.
Finding a date to meet up (eight attempts)
The odds are against us. Bringing together 50 busy women from across the country is a logistical nightmare. We finally managed to have a few drinks in a pub in North London (on a Monday) and we promised to do it monthly. That was a while ago.
“I would love to be there but…” (19 mentions)
These cannot be considered excuses, as they are actually reminders that there is life outside the kitchen.
“Does anyone have staff?” (10 mentions)
The hospitality industry has a reputation for being constantly understaffed. That’s why we beg, borrow, and steal, even if it’s just to get a pair of arms and legs to work in the garnish section. Last summer I covered a grill shift at a friend’s house so she could go to Wimbledon. She wouldn’t have let her miss it for the world.
Discussions by misogynistic chefs (a very long and continuous conversation that cannot be quantified)
Cataloging the tone-deaf insensitivity of our more testosterone-fueled colleagues weaves its way through real-world meetings and group chat. Last year he was sitting at a hospitality conference and rolling his eyes at the nonsense coming out of the keynote speaker’s mouth, including the fact that kitchens only function properly when they are driven by the fear of failure. It was like we had just gone back 50 years. I certainly would have used this network when I was first head chef and a contractor walked into the nearly empty kitchen and asked to speak to the person in charge (me), or when I was routinely asked if I was the pastry chef. I’ll never know why women are always supposed to be in charge of sugar.
Congratulations! (87 mentions)
The reasons we are all here: love, support and championship. Conversation went crazy when Adejoké Bakare’s restaurant became the first restaurant run by a black British woman to win a Michelin star. There are also restaurant awards, book launches, rave reviews, interviews and much more. A chef posted the other day saying that she was feeling grumpy and sad and wondering why she bothers, and I hope our responses remind her of that.
Sally Abé is a kitchen consultant at The Pem and author of “A woman’s place is in the kitchen” (Fleet)
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