Forbes: Women Are Heating Up The Restaurant World

By JULIETTE ROSSANT What should we make of the fact that Heidi Brown has gotten a few more women chefs into the pages of Forbes Magazine? Her May article in a new section of the magazine called ForbesWomen, "How Women Are Heating Up The Restaurant World" focuses on Traci Des Jardins and the ways women chefs are dealing with the economic downturn. It profiles the chef along with snapshots of eight other women chefs from around the country. These include: Susan Spicer, Gabrielle Hamilton, April Bloomfield, Jody Adams, Anita Lo, Michelle Bernstein, and Mary Sue Milliken & Susan Feniger. Typical for Forbes these are the briefest of profiles - the last doesn't even mention that Susan Feniger recently opened another restaurant, Susan Feniger's Street, taking a risk in a difficult economic climate. The article starts with big names: Move over, Mario. Take a hike, Emeril. Look who's cooking now: A handful to ambitious and talented female chefs who are running their own restaurants and creating compelling brands, that's who. Many of these chefs, including Traci, have been around for years, and they certainly do run important restaurants, but are these chefs really creating brands? And, there are now more then a handful of successful women chefs in America. (see Super Chef coverage of the White House Woman Chef that includes over forty important women chefs - there are certainly more now). Are they competing with Emeril Lagasse or Mario Batali, both of whom have product lines, multiple restaurants around the country, cookbooks and were heavily featured on the Food Network? The article never really asks why there are no women chefs with Batali-size empires. True, the author writes about family and child rearing duties that do not fit well with the hours of a chef. Yet, many of the women in the article do have kids. Have they simply not wanted to get as big as Mario or Emeril? Have they not wanted to give up their lives in the kitchen for ones centered in media? The point of the article is that women chefs have it rough and are therefore tough enough to get through economic downturn. If executive women face challenges in the corporate world, these female culinary go-getters take even more heat. Restaurant kitchens, where every chef must train, are still male-dominated boot camps that often tolerate (or encourage) harassment and ridicule. Heidi does not investigate how these stereotypes are breaking down in restaurants that are predominantly staffed by women. She does not investigate Traci's management style and compare it to male chefs like Mario Batali or Joachim Splichal, for whom Traci worked. Traci is getting ready to open a restaurant in Lake Tahoe, CO, while she is also coming up with ways to attract more customers to San Francisco eateries, Jardiniere and Mijita. The article never really gets around to telling why she is opening there and her strategy to cope with the economic climate with a new restaurant. She laid off 12 to 15 of her staff in January, including her pastry chef. She has also introduced a more reasonably priced Monday-night dinner and wines at a lower price point, following a 15% drop in wine orders in the last quarter of 2008. How are her decisions different from male chefs, many of whom are doing the same thing? Forbes leaves us in the dark. For in depth analysis, Super Chef suggests that readers turn to the chapter on the careers of Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger or any of the other other chefs discussed and analyzed in Super Chef. Previous articles: Forbes Celebrity Chefs 2007: Food Network Heaven Forbes Tastemakers 2 Are British Super Chefs Richer Forbes Celebrity 100 Chefs 2006: Cute? Juliette Rossant: Forbes Tastemakers Celebrity Chefs from 2005 Forbes Celebrity Chef 100 Latest Forbes Celebrity Chef Column Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging, cookbooks, cookbook reviews --> back to Super Chef