SPONSORED EDITORIAL
Stirring the Pot
Women chefs speak up and speak out about life in the culinary arts
SPONSORED EDITORIAL
Stirring the Pot
Women chefs speak up and speak out about life in the culinary arts
By Flavor & The Menu
February 6, 2024
By Flavor & The Menu
February 6, 2024
“Tell her she does the job as well as a man.”
Despite the legions of women chefs who have brought positive attention and glory to the culinary arts in the last half-century or so, today’s female chefs still have stories to tell about misogyny, snobbery and stereotypes in foodservice kitchens. But comments like this one, shared through a translator to Chef Janet Bourbon from a former supervisor, only serve to make them more determined to carve out paths to success—however they choose to define it.
A trio of women chefs associated with Sterling Silver® Premium Meats graciously agreed to reflect on their culinary journeys, sharing gratitude for mentors and influencers, while offering thoughtful advice to the next generation climbing the ladder.
Chef Janet Bourbon realized in college that she wanted to elevate her cooking hobby into a culinary career.
Janet Bourbon
Dissatisfied with her mother’s take on homemade desserts, Bourbon began making her own chocolate chip cookies at age 10. But it wasn’t until college that she realized she had a genuine passion for cooking and wanted to make it her career. “My friends, who had been the beneficiaries of my cooking hobby, were a bit perplexed that I could or would do it for a living,” she recounts. “When I first started cooking, more than one person asked me, ‘But is this a real job? Or is this just a temporary thing until you find permanent work?’”
That was the early ‘80s, before the advent of the Food Network and other pop culture evolutions gave rise to celebrity chefs with widespread consumer recognition. “Today, the response to, ‘I’m a chef’ is quite different.”
Bourbon also faced stereotypes about the roles women were expected to pursue in the culinary arts. “When I first started, women were generally consigned to making salads—as the ‘pantry girl’—or to work in pastry,” she reflects. “It was unusual to have women working on the hot line.” As the lowest person on the kitchen totem pole, she did whatever she was told, which eventually turned out to be some of everything.
“Today, the industry has changed. There’s still stereotyping and harassment, but generally, I think things have become more equitable. It’s not perfect, but getting closer,” says Bourbon, affirming that she has not experienced any gender discrimination in her current job as Strategic Accounts Chef at Cargill.
If Bourbon could go back in time, she’d encourage her younger self not to be scared to fail and to take even more risks—advice she says is appropriate for anyone starting to pursue a career in the culinary profession. For women, in particular, she urges some early trial by fire: “Before you make the leap—investing in culinary school—work in a restaurant, any kind of restaurant, to get a sense of what it’s like. If you decide it’s for you, then work to cultivate a thick skin and a sense of humor. Beyond that, pay attention and soak up all of the experience you can.”
Chef Sera Cuni finds pride and joy in her success at blazing new trails as a woman chef.
Sera Cuni
While influenced by Julia Child’s PBS cooking shows, Sera Cuni credits her culinary vocation to the childhood memory of an extensive gingerbread village display at Disney World’s Epcot that had been created by a group of chefs, impressive in their gleaming white coats and tall toques. “Even now, I can close my eyes and see those guys. It was really, really cool.”
Fast forward to culinary school. While the other young women in Cuni’s class focused on baking and pastry, it was a track she quickly rejected, her eyes fixed on becoming a restaurant chef. Like other women, she encountered various incidents of discrimination. At one early restaurant interview, the owner made it plain that front-of-house was her only employment option. “He said, ‘You’re a woman. You’ll never work in a kitchen,’” she recounts.
But it was actually a trio of young men at a local five-star restaurant who gave Cuni a chance. “I went in the back door, introduced myself as a culinary student, told them I was looking for a job and didn’t care if they could pay me,” she remembers. “They said, ‘Okay. Come back tomorrow.’ And I did. They taught me everything. I’d tell them what I learned in class that day and they’d tell me how to do it better—and it would make my professors so mad. They were my big brothers, and they gave me the confidence to hang with the guys in this business.”
While she values those early experiences, Cuni credits her current success to the transformative mentorship of Chef Sara Foster, a passionate advocate of menuing locally grown foods. “Coming out of culinary school, I thought fine dining had to look like what was in the magazines. You needed to wear the white chef coat. It meant serving truffles and requiring reservations,” Cuni reminisces. “I did that for a while, but then started working for Sara, and she was, ‘Hey, let’s go to the market. Let’s go to the farm.’ It changed everything.” Eventually, Foster sold one of her restaurants to Cuni, who now owns and operates two sites of The Root Cellar Café and Catering in North Carolina.
Cuni enjoys blazing new culinary trails for women. She’s a founding member of the North Carolina chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier, the international organization for women in food, beverage and hospitality. And at a recent Restaurant Association of North Carolina Chef of the Year culinary competition, she was the first woman to make it into the final round. She is also the only woman in the Sterling Silver Signature Chefs cohort. But her proudest achievement is the recent launch of the Feed-Well Fridges program, an initiative she began last summer to address food insecurity—and reduction of restaurant waste—in North Carolina’s Chatham County.
Heather Kurosz
“French toast was the first thing I ever made myself,” recounts Heather Kurosz, Executive Chef, Pennings Farm Market Harvest Grill in New York’s Hudson Valley. “My earliest memories are of being in the kitchen with my grandmother, who was not the best cook. But my mother was and still is a great cook and was the driving force behind my education choices.”
Kurosz admits that initially, she viewed cooking as a job, rather than a vocation. “It was a means to an end,” she says. “But the more I learned and the better I got at it, the more attention I received. I began to really enjoy it.” She began to nurture career aspirations, applying success and failure toward her improvement. Kurosz recalls a job interview that required her to make a particular recipe: “It was a simple vegetable soup, but each vegetable had its own preparation requirements. I was unfamiliar with how to treat fava beans and dragon tongue beans. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job and I was very embarrassed. But I was then very motivated to learn and prove myself. That failure taught me a lot.”
Kurosz says she found gender to be a non-issue in culinary school. “Chefs were judgier if you were a vegetarian or vegan. They didn’t seem to care whether you were a man or a woman,” she remembers. But her real-world experiences in different kitchens outside of school opened her eyes. “I began to recognize that not everyone was indifferent. Women seemed welcome in bakery and pastry kitchens, but not so much in other areas.” It didn’t help, she notes, when other women accepted or even joined in on biased rhetoric and jokes in an attempt to fit in. Kurosz observes that cultural differences also play a role in perceptions of women in the culinary workplace.
Changing those perceptions relies on hard work, regular communication and demonstrable respect for colleagues, she says of the elements for creating a comfortable and productive workspace. It also means speaking up. “In the beginning of my career, I wasn’t given a chance to prove myself because I was ‘too quiet’ or ‘not strong enough to lift heavy pots,’ but as I progressed and got my foot in one door after another, things became easier.” Part of that, Kurosz notes, is due to the growing realization that the job is as much about people as it is about food. “I love learning from other cooks, hearing their stories and telling them mine.”
If she could go back in time to advise her younger self—or go forward to influence the next generation—Kurosz says she would emphasize the importance of integrity. “Work hard. Be honest. Speak up for yourself. Eat everything!”
Your Premium Partner
Sterling Silver® Premium Meats is proud to support top chefs—women and men—with high quality beef products, along with an array of online resources designed to both educate and inspire. Among these is the In The Kitchen With Sterling Silver podcast hosted by Chef Pete Geoghegan. The latest edition features extended interviews with Chefs Cuni, Bourbon and Kurosz.
To listen to the roundtable discussion on Women in Culinary, access the podcast here
“Tell her she does the job as well as a man.”
Despite the legions of women chefs who have brought positive attention and glory to the culinary arts in the last half-century or so, today’s female chefs still have stories to tell about misogyny, snobbery and stereotypes in foodservice kitchens. But comments like this one, shared through a translator to Chef Janet Bourbon from a former supervisor, only serve to make them more determined to carve out paths to success—however they choose to define it.
A trio of women chefs associated with Sterling Silver® Premium Meats graciously agreed to reflect on their culinary journeys, sharing gratitude for mentors and influencers, while offering thoughtful advice to the next generation climbing the ladder.
Chef Janet Bourbon realized in college that she wanted to elevate her cooking hobby into a culinary career.
Janet Bourbon
Dissatisfied with her mother’s take on homemade desserts, Bourbon began making her own chocolate chip cookies at age 10. But it wasn’t until college that she realized she had a genuine passion for cooking and wanted to make it her career. “My friends, who had been the beneficiaries of my cooking hobby, were a bit perplexed that I could or would do it for a living,” she recounts. “When I first started cooking, more than one person asked me, ‘But is this a real job? Or is this just a temporary thing until you find permanent work?’”
That was the early ‘80s, before the advent of the Food Network and other pop culture evolutions gave rise to celebrity chefs with widespread consumer recognition. “Today, the response to, ‘I’m a chef’ is quite different.”
Bourbon also faced stereotypes about the roles women were expected to pursue in the culinary arts. “When I first started, women were generally consigned to making salads—as the ‘pantry girl’—or to work in pastry,” she reflects. “It was unusual to have women working on the hot line.” As the lowest person on the kitchen totem pole, she did whatever she was told, which eventually turned out to be some of everything.
“Today, the industry has changed. There’s still stereotyping and harassment, but generally, I think things have become more equitable. It’s not perfect, but getting closer,” says Bourbon, affirming that she has not experienced any gender discrimination in her current job as Strategic Accounts Chef at Cargill.
If Bourbon could go back in time, she’d encourage her younger self not to be scared to fail and to take even more risks—advice she says is appropriate for anyone starting to pursue a career in the culinary profession. For women, in particular, she urges some early trial by fire: “Before you make the leap—investing in culinary school—work in a restaurant, any kind of restaurant, to get a sense of what it’s like. If you decide it’s for you, then work to cultivate a thick skin and a sense of humor. Beyond that, pay attention and soak up all of the experience you can.”
Chef Sera Cuni finds pride and joy in her success at blazing new trails as a woman chef.
Sera Cuni
While influenced by Julia Child’s PBS cooking shows, Sera Cuni credits her culinary vocation to the childhood memory of an extensive gingerbread village display at Disney World’s Epcot that had been created by a group of chefs, impressive in their gleaming white coats and tall toques. “Even now, I can close my eyes and see those guys. It was really, really cool.”
Fast forward to culinary school. While the other young women in Cuni’s class focused on baking and pastry, it was a track she quickly rejected, her eyes fixed on becoming a restaurant chef. Like other women, she encountered various incidents of discrimination. At one early restaurant interview, the owner made it plain that front-of-house was her only employment option. “He said, ‘You’re a woman. You’ll never work in a kitchen,’” she recounts.
But it was actually a trio of young men at a local five-star restaurant who gave Cuni a chance. “I went in the back door, introduced myself as a culinary student, told them I was looking for a job and didn’t care if they could pay me,” she remembers. “They said, ‘Okay. Come back tomorrow.’ And I did. They taught me everything. I’d tell them what I learned in class that day and they’d tell me how to do it better—and it would make my professors so mad. They were my big brothers, and they gave me the confidence to hang with the guys in this business.”
While she values those early experiences, Cuni credits her current success to the transformative mentorship of Chef Sara Foster, a passionate advocate of menuing locally grown foods. “Coming out of culinary school, I thought fine dining had to look like what was in the magazines. You needed to wear the white chef coat. It meant serving truffles and requiring reservations,” Cuni reminisces. “I did that for a while, but then started working for Sara, and she was, ‘Hey, let’s go to the market. Let’s go to the farm.’ It changed everything.” Eventually, Foster sold one of her restaurants to Cuni, who now owns and operates two sites of The Root Cellar Café and Catering in North Carolina.
Cuni enjoys blazing new culinary trails for women. She’s a founding member of the North Carolina chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier, the international organization for women in food, beverage and hospitality. And at a recent Restaurant Association of North Carolina Chef of the Year culinary competition, she was the first woman to make it into the final round. She is also the only woman in the Sterling Silver Signature Chefs cohort. But her proudest achievement is the recent launch of the Feed-Well Fridges program, an initiative she began last summer to address food insecurity—and reduction of restaurant waste—in North Carolina’s Chatham County.
Heather Kurosz
“French toast was the first thing I ever made myself,” recounts Heather Kurosz, Executive Chef, Pennings Farm Market Harvest Grill in New York’s Hudson Valley. “My earliest memories are of being in the kitchen with my grandmother, who was not the best cook. But my mother was and still is a great cook and was the driving force behind my education choices.”
Kurosz admits that initially, she viewed cooking as a job, rather than a vocation. “It was a means to an end,” she says. “But the more I learned and the better I got at it, the more attention I received. I began to really enjoy it.” She began to nurture career aspirations, applying success and failure toward her improvement. Kurosz recalls a job interview that required her to make a particular recipe: “It was a simple vegetable soup, but each vegetable had its own preparation requirements. I was unfamiliar with how to treat fava beans and dragon tongue beans. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job and I was very embarrassed. But I was then very motivated to learn and prove myself. That failure taught me a lot.”
Kurosz says she found gender to be a non-issue in culinary school. “Chefs were judgier if you were a vegetarian or vegan. They didn’t seem to care whether you were a man or a woman,” she remembers. But her real-world experiences in different kitchens outside of school opened her eyes. “I began to recognize that not everyone was indifferent. Women seemed welcome in bakery and pastry kitchens, but not so much in other areas.” It didn’t help, she notes, when other women accepted or even joined in on biased rhetoric and jokes in an attempt to fit in. Kurosz observes that cultural differences also play a role in perceptions of women in the culinary workplace.
Changing those perceptions relies on hard work, regular communication and demonstrable respect for colleagues, she says of the elements for creating a comfortable and productive workspace. It also means speaking up. “In the beginning of my career, I wasn’t given a chance to prove myself because I was ‘too quiet’ or ‘not strong enough to lift heavy pots,’ but as I progressed and got my foot in one door after another, things became easier.” Part of that, Kurosz notes, is due to the growing realization that the job is as much about people as it is about food. “I love learning from other cooks, hearing their stories and telling them mine.”
If she could go back in time to advise her younger self—or go forward to influence the next generation—Kurosz says she would emphasize the importance of integrity. “Work hard. Be honest. Speak up for yourself. Eat everything!”
Your Premium Partner
Sterling Silver® Premium Meats is proud to support top chefs—women and men—with high quality beef products, along with an array of online resources designed to both educate and inspire. Among these is the In The Kitchen With Sterling Silver podcast hosted by Chef Pete Geoghegan. The latest edition features extended interviews with Chefs Cuni, Bourbon and Kurosz.
To listen to the roundtable discussion on Women in Culinary, access the podcast here
