The Future Is Bright
Today, the #MeToo movement is shining a light on restaurant culture with an onslaught of sexual harassment charges. Their details paint a vivid picture of the inequity of the past, but what is our vision for the future?
While recent allegations against Batali and Friedman dominate the headlines, I feel it’s equally important to shine a light on what conversations should be dominating our kitchens as we move forward.
As the Director of San Francisco Cooking School, I engage with students every day, so I’m on the front line of new cooks entering the profession. There’s never been a better time to enter the food world, though it’s important to understand the complexities of the industry and how to navigate them.
I recently assembled a roundtable of the culinary world’s biggest female luminaries and asked them to offer up their best advice for the next generation of cooks. In the past, we’ve leaned so heavily on male professionals as figureheads in the world of food, I felt it critical to put females in a position to take the lead here.
This roundtable included Kim Alter, Dana Cowin, Kirsten Goldberg, Elise Kornack, Emily Luchetti, Angie Mar, Nicole Plue and Liz Prueitt.
The conversation was enlightening, inspiring, and motivating. It’s clear to me that kitchen culture has come a long way, but it has a long way to go. With mentors like these, everyone entering the business can continue to push the profession forward.
Below is some actionable advice for cooks to help ensure that their futures truly are brighter than ever.
Find the culture that works for you.
Emily Luchetti, Chief pastry officer of Big Night Restaurant Group: There isn’t one [culture] that’s right or wrong. People have to realize that there are so many different kinds of places they could work, not only the [the type of] food, but the way the kitchen is run. It’s really important that they’re able to figure out what’s best for them.
Kirsten Goldberg, Director, Culinary Arts San Francisco Cooking School: I think that it’s a really great thing to see young people coming into the industry with an open mind. They get to figure out what success can mean for them and all these different avenues that they can go down.
Elise Kornack, chef, recipe developer, and restaurateur: Find a place to work where the energy of the restaurant is in sync with your own. This is very important to me! If you are someone who likes to work long hours in a loud, male dominated kitchen where you do 300 covers — find that. If you are someone who may work better among women, or closer to nature — do that. There is a specific home for all kinds of personalities, you will be your best working self if you are surrounded with people that both challenge you and support you and your way of living.
Expect challenges, and use them to push ahead.
Kim Alter, chef/owner of Nightbird: Every phase in my career there have been moments that were beyond challenging, but made me the cook I am today. At one of my first kitchens, my sous chef was abusive and would sabotage me (until I earned his respect). I would have walked out on that job and on that career if I wasn’t thinking of my mom and how hard it was for both of us to get through school.
Liz Prueitt, co-owner of Tartine Bakery: There is nothing that makes you persevere more than the image of failure. Financial failure is a very strong motivator, but so is failure of reaching goals that you’ve set for yourself.
We have moved forward (it’s not all bad news).
Dana Cowin, founder of Speaking Broadly: I find that sous chefs and owners are trying to open up these conversations in order to empower their team, make them happy and make them want to stay. I was talking to someone about how she ends up being a counselor to her sous chef, and she said, “It’s great for them but it’s also great for me because I don’t want their negative energy entering into the food. I want them to be happy when they’re working.”
Prueitt: One of the biggest shifts I’ve seen is the level of collaboration between chefs. You never used to see this; from ‘secret’ recipes, to professional jealousy, chefs have notoriously been guarded in the past.
Nicole Plue, Director, Pastry & Baking Arts at San Francisco Cooking School: The male European model of shame based learning or competence through fear and humiliation seems to have lost its hold on day-to-day kitchen life.
Angie Mar, executive chef/owner of The Beatrice Inn: I love this industry, and everything about it. I find it heartbreaking that the retention rate has gone down within our industry as a whole, but I do also think that we can change it. We can change it by mentoring the next generation of restaurant professionals, and in that process it also makes us better leaders.
Find a mentor then pay it forward.
Prueitt: I always wished I’d had someone whom I could call a personal mentor. In San Francisco I worked in a restaurant called Zola’s, and the kitchen was run almost entirely by women; headed up by Catherine Pantsios. I was a server at the time, but knew I wanted to do what Catherine did, and watched her closely. I’d worked for many, many men in the restaurant business, but never did I think, “I want to be just like him, and run my business like him.” The importance of role models who are like you cannot be emphasized enough. Girls and young women need to see other women in business.
Alter: Suzette Gresham [of Acquarello Restaurant in San Francisco] has been a part of my life and career since the first time I stepped in her kitchen. She has given me endless advice on my personal and professional life. She taught me to put my head down and work. It is about cooking and if you are good at it you will make it.
Mar: The best advice that has been given to me, by my friend, Nathan Wooden, is to be myself — to cook what I believe in, to never apologize for it, and to embrace who I am and what I have to say through the dishes that I create. He quite often tells me that I am at my best when I am telling everyone off through my food — I tend to agree. I think that as a creative, we often get lost in our own ideas or thoughts, and for me, it has been invaluable to have someone in my life that pulls me out of my own head now and again, or at the very least helps me to navigate through it.
Take strategic risks , no matter how big or small.
Plue: Moving to New York was the biggest leap I took. I did it to get better. Paraphrasing Bruce Springsteen: my ambition was greater than my fear.
Prueitt: I always tell young entrepreneurs to take small steps and risk just a little at first. Gain small wins. It’ll knock you off course and be too discouraging if you start out huge and fail. As a small example, my first risk was to ask to do my culinary externship in a restaurant that notoriously took few to no externs. I didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer; this is an old trope, but I see cooks and bakers taking ‘no’ for an answer all the time and I wonder to myself why? If you really want something, as I wanted to work in this one restaurant, you go back and back and back. Offer to work for free. Offer to do anything they need. Offer to start in a position that might not be your ideal, but work as if you are aiming at the next level — or many levels — up from the one you start in.
Alter: Everything is scary when doing something unknown. Opening a restaurant is the biggest risk I have ever taken in my life and career. It felt like the next step, but I am not going to lie: if I knew then what I know now I don’t know if I would have made THAT big of a leap. Cooking is the easy part, running the restaurant is the easy part, it is everything else that makes it very hard everyday.
Mar: We must always take risks. I have never been the girl to take the safe bet, and I have always supported the under dog. I love projects that everyone deems to be not worthwhile because I find the beauty in those things. People often ask me why I am willing to take so many risks, but for me, I don’t see it as that — for me, its just how I do business.
Master the basics.
Goldberg: Some of our students are really eager and excited about detail work, and for others, it’s really hard. Just physical dexterity — it’s all muscle memory. It took a long time for my knife skills to get good when I was starting, so I empathize with that. But you’ve got to put the hours in. It’s just about doing it again and again and having the space and time to be able to actually work on those things.
Alter: Today cooks don’t want to learn their craft. They think if they see it on Instagram they can replicate it. You used to have to work your way up the kitchen brigade to learn everything in the kitchen, give at least a year of your life.
Prueitt: One of the things that I see a lot lately that’s really frustrating from resume to first day at work is a declining level of knife skills. It’s so disappointing because it’s such a foundation, or it certainly was back when I was going through kitchens. It just seems, across the board, people are not coming in with the basic skills really well honed, and the understanding of how food cooks and works.
Continue to learn, observe, & seize opportunities.
Alter: Talk less, listen more. Take notes. Learn from the cook next to you as well as your chef. Every kitchen is different — don’t assume you know how that Chef wants a task done. Ask and learn.
Goldberg: I like to tell the students that they are in a unique position. Over time they should take every opportunity that comes their way. For people starting out today there are so many encounters with chefs who are doing great restaurants, and pop ups, and events, and gigs here and there, food styling, writing, and recipe development. When you meet somebody who’s doing something that speaks to you, keep in touch with them. Say yes you have no idea how wonderful or rare those opportunities are until they pass.
Prueitt: Know what is expected of you, and aim higher than the expectations
Mar: I often see young cooks and front of house staff coming into our industry thinking that they will be a sous chef or a manager in a year, and then have their own place in double the time. That’s not how the world works. There is something to be said about actually spending a year of time on one’s station, then moving up and spending another year on another station. It’s not about your ego or even your ability — it’s about you learning my palate, and getting to know how my brain works. I am a true believer in that mentality. In order to really succeed in this world, or any other industry for that matter, it’s about learning — and we are ALL still learning, and learning from each other in the process.
One of the biggest lessons taught at San Francisco Cooking School is the importance of making mistakes in cooking — you learn most when you mess up, figure out what happened, understand how to fix it, and move forward. These days, this notion takes on a broader meaning.
In this industry, mistakes have been made over the past few decades, and imbalances have been created — as Plue points out, there still needs to be “parity in pay and quality of life between front and back of house, including owners and staff.” And, as Cowin says, “We need to show that action pays off in a positive way, not in a negative way. We need to have a culture where speaking up is valued and then action is taken at every single level.” It’s time to learn from the past and progress. Never stop questioning. Don’t make the same error twice. Always be learning.
These culinary leaders have served as mentors to countless individuals in the restaurant industry, but they are by no means the only ones with great advice to offer. What do you want to contribute to this industry? How do you think it needs to change? What tips would you share with cooks entering the profession? This is just the start of the conversation — help us continue it.
