It’s no secret that worldwide, women carry far more of the culinary responsibilities at home than men. In 2023, women over doubled men in the number of meals cooked within the average household. Despite this outsized role in food preparation at home, women have consistently struggled to break through in the restaurant industry. In the US, women only hold 23% of head chef positions. When looking at the elites of the culinary profession, women are represented even less. Only 6% of Michelin starred restaurants are run by women.
While some of the factors in this gendered disparity can be seen across many professions, others are much more specific to culinary work. Consider the “brigade de cuisine” system deployed in most upscale restaurants. A hallmark trait of this method originated from French restaurants is it’s steadfast adherence to hierarchy. The top ranked “Chef de cuisine” and the various specialists who work directly under them have absolute authority over the kitchen and empowered to bark out orders to their “cuisiniers” or cooks at ill.
This system of rigid hierarchy only reinforces the gendered bias aspiring female chefs are bound to face. Typical misogyny continue to shape the workplace, all while a disproportionately male leadership group is empowered to act with even greater authority by way of the “brigade de cuisine” system.
Original Author: Sinikka Halme
CC: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michelin_ 2-star_restaurant_sign.jpg
This sort of self perpetuating patriarchy is evident in the words of Marco Pierre White, a former master chef host and Michelin Star chef who claimed that women are “too emotional” to be chefs. While White might be a “dinosaur”, as the BCC put it, his attitude is sadly anything but extinct. This continued misogyny within the culinary field compelled 70 female Chefs from across the world to write an open letter to their profession in February of 2025.
This piece, published in The Telegraph calls out many personal stories of inappropriate workplace conduct and demands that chefs everywhere go further in their pursuit of a fair workplace.
The great irony of these systemic barriers is that the female chefs who have ascended to the heights of this field are among the most well respected and transformative culinary professionals in the world.
Take Samin Nosrat, an Iranian-American chef whose pursuits have challenged preconceived notions of success within the culinary profession. Rather than chasing Michelin stars or opening up restaurants of her own, Nosrat has made a career off of appealing to the home cook. Her James Beard Award winning cookbook Salt Fat Acid Heat shattered industry norms, teaching cooks about general techniques and methods of balancing flavors rather than offering rigid recipes.
Original Author: Drew Dirschell
CC: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bentwright/463 94546 34/
In fact, Nosrat despised the notion of “perfect” food so much that she even went so far as to hire a water color illustrator to paint images of dishes rather than include photographs of her dishes. Through this unconventional approach, Nosrat hoped to dissuade readers from believing there was a right or wrong way to cook a given dish.
Now I could never dream of cooking food as delicious as Samin Nosrat’s. However, thanks to her open handed approach to cooking, many of Nosrat’s recipes are available online for free. As a starting point, I’ve embedded a video recipe of Nosrat’s world famous buttermilk marinated roast chicken below.
Delicious foods aside, its clear that Nosrat’s success has come off the back of rejecting the usual metrics of success in cooking, rather than chasing them. So, the next time you fire up the eye of a stove, remember that whether you want to be a culinary professional, or just a good home cook, it is not perfection we’re chasing. The goal should always be a tasty nourishing dish. If that is the true metric of culinary success, then there is not a Michelin Starred restaurant in the world that can out cook Samin Nosrat.
Featured Image Credit
Original Author: Blondinrikard Fröberg
CC: https://www.flickr.com/photos/blondinrikard/
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