Pizza Diavola

The Astor Center recently held a panel discussion on the topic of “Gender Confusion: Unraveling the Myths of Gender in the Restaurant Kitchen.” The premise was this: two men and two women from the foodie world did a blind tasting of menus prepared by female and male chefs and mixologists and had to decide if the dishes were prepared by a woman or a man, with the goal of identifying whether or not men and women cook differently. In other words, is cooking style rooted in one’s gender? Y’all can probably guess what my answer is.

I wonder, does anyone ask if cooking style is biologically rooted in one’s ethnicity? On the one hand, insofar as ethnicity correlates to exposure to a specific culture and its culinary profile, the ethnicity that you’re born into is likely influence how you cook. It’s likely to affect what spices, flavors, and techniques you’re exposed to. The level of influence depends on many factors, though: where are you living? Are you an immigrant? What generation? Are you adopted by parents of a different ethnicity? Etc. That influence, however, is also affected by where and with whom you do your training. Take Marco Pierre White for example. Half-English, half-Italian, he was born, raised, and trained in England, and became one of the best French chefs of the ’90s. Julia Child was born and raised in the U.S., grew up eating “traditional New England food” (Wikipedia), took classes at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, and along with Simone Beck and Louise Bertholle, did much to popularize French cuisine in the U.S. I think that most people would conclude that if there is a connection between cooking style and ethnicity, it’s one of influence rather than biological determinism, and it’s a potential connection rather than one set in stone.

Now, leaving aside the larger issues of sexism in the glorification and elevation of TV/restaurant/celebrity cooking; in restaurant kitchens; in society at large and how that shapes notions of what is considered feminine or masculine, I found the idea of gender determining cooking style amusing and interesting on a personal level. Personally, my cooking style is a mishmash, all over the map in terms of ethnic influences and stereotypically masculine or feminine techniques, colors, and flavors. I know very little of the Korean food I grew up with; don’t care much for American cuisine; and found my home in Roman and Cal-French cooking. My particular style stretches across the spectrum from lackadaisical and simple to complicated and perfectionist. I’ve been vegetarian and omnivorous, can cook both ways, and like the challenge of cooking to accommodate dietary restrictions. Some of my cooking preferences line up according to gender stereotypes and some don’t, but those are due to my idiosyncrasies rather than my gender. E.g., I don’t like cooking with beef. Dislike of red meat: stereotypically feminine. However, my taste probably stems from eating too much overcooked beef as a child, and were it not for that experience, perhaps I would love cooking beef. After all, my current favorite dish to cook and eat is boeuf bordelaise, with mushroom duxelles and pommes Anna. Complicated, showy, technique-driven, and perfectionist: stereotypically masculine. The reason for liking The French Laundry Cookbook’s boeuf bordelaise preparation, however, is because the complexity of it suits my neurotic nature.

Ed Levine was one of the tasters in the panel and wrote up his thoughts on it here. He shares some of the panel’s preconceptions about gender:

• Women chefs use spices more subtly than men
• Male chefs love to make use of lots of toys in their cooking (look out, Grant Achatz)
• Female chefs cook to nurture and feed people’s souls, while male chefs cook to compete and impress
• Women chefs are more likely to cook soulful “grandmere-style” food than their male counterparts, who are much more likely to be into dazzling, technique-driven cooking
• Male chefs like to cook red meat; women chefs are much more likely to cook pink food and use edible flowers
• Women chefs are more precise. They follow instructions more carefully than men do
• Women chefs’ food is more subtle and sophisticated, while their male counterparts cook gutsier, deep-flavored, testosterone-driven food
• Women chefs cook with their hearts and souls, while male chefs cook with their head and their private parts

As I was reading the list of preconceptions, my thoughts were mostly incoherent sputtering and “But what about Celebrity Chef X? Or Celebrity Chef Y? There are so many bloody counterexamples!” So, here are my thoughts on those preconceptions:

• Women chefs use spices more subtly than men
  Really? I seem to recall my mom making a stir fry that was so heavy on garlic and chili pepper that my dad started coughing when he stuck his head in the kitchen and got a whiff of the air.
• Male chefs love to make use of lots of toys in their cooking (look out, Grant Achatz)
  Well, I’ll cop to disliking toys in my kitchen, but that’s due to disliking kitchen clutter. As far as molecular gastronomy, which is what the ‘toys’ and ‘Grant Achatz’ comments are referring to, goes, it seems likely to me that there are fewer female than male molecular gastronomists because molecular gastronomy is esoteric to begin with, and so female chefs have even fewer opportunities to be exposed to molecular gastronomy than to non-molecular gastronomy cooking. Furthermore, it also goes back to the restaurant industry being largely male-dominated and sexist. Achatz was exposed to molecular gastronomy when Keller, chef-proprietor of The French Laundry, arranged a trip to El Bulli, famed center for molecular gastronomy, for his then-sous chef. How many female sous chefs were there in TFL’s kitchen at the time (or now) to have a chance at that kind of opportunity?
• Female chefs cook to nurture and feed people’s souls, while male chefs cook to compete and impress
  After hearing Zuni Cafe’s Judy Rodgers give a talk, I’m fairly certain that most female chefs, like most male chefs, cook to meet the bottom line and keep the doors open at their restaurants. And what of celebrity TV chefs such as Cat Cora, who go into flashy, competition-style TV cooking where the cooking is to compete with other chefs and to impress judges, rather than to nurture restaurant goers? It’s worth noting that unlike the other, male American Iron Chefs, Cora did not have a restaurant prior to being on the show. I.e., the lone woman on the American Iron Chef went straight from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) to a competitive TV cooking show where only a panel of judges tastes her food, and tastes it for critique, without stopping by a restaurant to “nurture and feed people’s souls” on the way.
• Women chefs are more likely to cook soulful “grandmere-style” food than their male counterparts, who are much more likely to be into dazzling, technique-driven cooking
  You know, it’s hard to evaluate this claim and think of professional counterexamples, because there are comparatively female restaurant chefs, and of the ones in the Bay Area, most of them operate restaurants that are beyond my budget. I’d suggest that the disparity in numbers between male and female restaurant chefs is the result of pervasive sexism and with so few samples, it’s hard to weigh these claims.

  Oh, wait, thought of one! Elizabeth Falkner at Citizen Cake makes desserts that definitely fall into the “dazzling, technique-driven” category. Her plated desserts look like modern art (and although delicious, are about as filling), and in Demolition Desserts, she lays out the step by step process of thinking, deconstructing, and experimenting that takes her from a chocolate chip cookie to this chocolate dessert (from the Kara’s Cupcakes post), which, given the Citizen Cake style, is likely some kind of meta dessert that playfully deconstructs the essence of chocolate and childhood nostalgia.

• Male chefs like to cook red meat; women chefs are much more likely to cook pink food and use edible flowers
  Uh, yeah, tell that to Masa, who rarely serves red meat (does Masa serve any land animals?), and to Cindy Pawlcyn of Mustards Grill. Cafe Gratitude, which serves raw food (no meat there!), is run by a male and female couple. As far as edible flowers go, the only times I’ve had them have been at Oishii, a sushi restaurant in Boston, where the male sushi chefs put flowers on the nigiri.
• Women chefs are more precise. They follow instructions more carefully than men do
  Tell that to molecular gastronomists, who are mostly male and whose craft depends on subtlety, precision and carefully following instructions. See, also, Thomas Keller and The French Laundry Cookbook, which is all about the pursuit of perfection and carefully following the exacting instructions laid out in the book. See, also, CIA Certified Master Chef exam (described in detail in Michael Ruhlman’s Soul of a Chef), which has been passed almost entirely by men and which is judged by the participants’ ability to meet exacting criteria in their menu composition, cooking technique, plating, and presentation. Brian Polcyn of Five Lakes Grill was marked down by the male examiners during his CMC exam because when he sliced his duck terrine for plating, the slices were ever so slightly uneven.
• Women chefs’ food is more subtle and sophisticated, while their male counterparts cook gutsier, deep-flavored, testosterone-driven food
  See immediately above.
• Women chefs cook with their hearts and souls, while male chefs cook with their head and their private parts
  Is this question different from the “soulful grandmere vs. dazzling technique” question? Not substantially.

Gwen Hyman, who was also on the tasting panel at the Astor Center event, writes (emphases mine)

3. I do not think that women are inherently more “precise” cooks, or “better” cooks, or more “careful” cooks–as some folks said the other night. I think, in fact, that women who are more “precise” etc in the kitchen are probably just–you know–doing that thing women do? where they work three times harder than men? just to hold onto their place on the line? because of all those people who think women aren’t naturally suited to the kitchen?

4. I think that kitchens are still, by and large (though not always), tradition-bound, chest-pounding places that, like high school football teams, are veeeeeeery slow to accept women–and the reasons that there are so few prominent female chefs have very little to do with estrogen and arm muscles, and a whole lot to do with tradition, mentorship, access to funding, differences in education and attitude towards girls–in other words, culture.

… Women still face pretty serious barriers to making it in the kitchen, for lots of reasons–the lingering perception that women are somehow too weak for the kitchen; the paucity of female mentors and role models (this is changing, slowly); inequities and differences in how girls and boys are educated about their choices and interests; differences in access to funding for restaurants; that thing (perhaps you’ve heard of this?) where women are expected not only to do all the work of bearing children but also to do most of the work of raising them, (otherwise they are “bad mothers”)…I could go on. …

As I said the other night, even if you *do* believe in essential differences between men’s cooking and women’s cooking, you can’t actually measure it yet. Until half the important restaurants in the country are run by women–until half the chefs who mentor others, half the culinary instructors, half the professionals are women–until the term “woman chef” seems, in other words, as unnecessary and self-evident and silly as “man chef”–how can anyone judge?