LAST week, the culinary world was abuzz with the news that Anne-Sophie Pic, who heads the kitchen at the venerable family-run restaurant, Pic in Valence, had been awarded a coveted third star in the Michelin guide, an honour that most chefs would give their right arms for if it wasn't such a self-defeating act.
Even within the ranks of the great restaurants of the world, it is big news when a woman chef makes it to the very top. Pic is the only woman among the three-star establishments in France, and almost as unique among all other three-star restaurants in other countries - Spain's Carme Ruscalleda of Sant Pau outside Barcelona is perhaps the only other woman who has been making an equally big impression.
There's no small irony in the fact that while it may be the norm for women to be in the kitchen at home, it has never been easy for them to be accepted as equals in a professional setting - except perhaps in a few of the more liberated pockets of resistance in various parts of the world (California, for instance).
The issue is not a recent one either. According to an article by the author and food writer Daniel Rogov, the great French culinary master Fernand Point, who taught chefs like Paul Bocuse and Alain Chapel, was asked in 1950 why there were so few women in the kitchen and why he never accepted female students. He replied that 'only men have the technique, discipline and passion that make cooking consistently an art'.
Bocuse in an interview with Le Figaro in 1988, had this to say on the subject: 'The chef who names a dish after a woman is a gentleman and a diplomat - the chef who invites that same woman into the kitchen as a colleague is a fool.'
While the debate isn't quite raging on here in Singapore, there is no denying that female chefs are difficult to find in a restaurant setting. BT tracked down a few pioneering types.
IT has been almost 11 years since Magdalene Tang left her job in the financial world - where she spent an equal number of years as a foreign exchange dealer - to start her own restaurant in Circular Road. The self-taught chef has weathered a few financial storms in the past, but has since established herself and her clean, modern French cooking style among an appreciative group of regular clients.
'There's a perception that male chefs are better than female chefs,' says Tang. 'People also seem to think that male hairdressers are better than female ones.' She says all chefs need to have certain qualities - apart from talent, of course - in order to be successful in the industry. 'It's extremely tough to be a chef - the hours are long and the pressures are very great. In the kitchen, sometimes you need to shout, and a lot of women are not cut out that way - to be a (Gordon) Ramsay. It's like this in every kitchen I've been to.'
Many women cannot stand the heat, says Tang. 'You need to be very aggressive, you're cooking in a predominantly male environment and you need to be physically strong.' She observes that pastry chefs - where women can be found in far greater numbers - are different. 'They just do their own thing.'
She says she is constantly on the lookout for fresh culinary ideas. 'The only way we can learn is to keep travelling and keep eating other people's food. I've been gifted with taste buds that can identify every ingredient, so I can do reverse engineering with any dish that appeals to me.' Tang, in Vietnam last week, was inspired by what she saw and is working on ways to translate that into her own menu.
Being a female chef has its upside as well. 'If you have a customer base that's predominantly male - like mine - it's great,' says Tang. 'People tend to be more forgiving, even though a chef is a chef, regardless of gender. I wouldn't mind some female company in the kitchen, though.'
MAY LOKE La Cuisine
501 Bukit Timah Road, #01-05B Cluny Court.
Tel: 6468 8850
EACH of the women BT spoke to said that the long working hours and physical demands required to be a chef were simply a part of the job. May Loke was crunching numbers as an accountant before deciding to become a chef. 'There's always a time when you think of doing something different,' she says, so she teamed up with French chef Bernard Sautereau, a pioneer of the bistro concept in Singapore, and learned the culinary ropes.
He taught her that to be successful in the food business, she needed to know the kitchen. She spent several months working in two restaurants in Lyons where she learned a few things, apart from how to cook. 'In the kitchen, you open your eyes, your ears, and shut your mouth,' she says. 'When you want to do something and you do it the right way, you will start to have a passion,' she says.
Loke opened Chez La Many on Ann Siang Road in 2003, and then moved to Bukit Timah in 2005 with La Cuisine, a postage-stamp-sized eatery that exudes simple, home-style charm. Even though she picked up the business of being a chef very quickly, there were times in the early days when things went wrong, such as the time Sautereau looked at a dish she had prepared and plated, and then threw the contents into the bin. 'The quality was no good,' she says.
Now, however, she says her simple French menu is 'much more than acceptable'. She dispenses with the heavy cream sauces in favour of a lighter style of cuisine, focusing on the freshest ingredients available. 'Kitchen life is tough enough,' she says. 'You need to have the feeling. As an accountant, you work because you have to - here, I do it because I love it.'
MARISA BERTOCCHI Original Sin
#01-62, Chip Bee Gardens, Blk 43, Jalan Merah Saga.
Tel: 6475 5605
MARISA Bertocchi, the owner-chef of the well-regarded Mediterranean-style vegetarian restaurant Original Sin, has been in Singapore long enough to pronounce judgment on the dearth of women in restaurant kitchens here. 'It's more prominent in Asia than, say, Australia, where the system is a little different,' she says.
Bertocchi was a sous chef at Michelangelo's for several years before opening Original Sin with her partners in 1997. 'The first thing I noticed here was that the hierarchy was a lot more pronounced whereas everyone's more on an equal level back home,' she says. 'It is more of a male-dominated industry in Singapore - I found I really had to earn respect and prove myself to the staff before they took me seriously. It took a long time but now we've got a good team together.'
Coming from an Australia-based Italian family that made their own wine and olive oil, Bertocchi was used to working in kitchens. She got a job as a kitchen hand at 18, and has more or less been in a kitchen ever since. 'You've got to get your hands dirty and you need a lot of stamina - many women in Asia don't go down that route because they are busy pursuing a career with more so-called status, such as law or medicine.'
After nine years, Bertocchi is still in the restaurant every day, although there are now chefs to do the daily cooking. She still develops menus with the executive chef, but she also has two young children to care for.
'Any woman thinking of having a family will think twice about being a chef. You need to be younger to be really motivated - you have to be very passionate about cooking to see it through.'
AFTER being a culinary consultant, cookbook author and self-taught cook for over 25 years, Devagi Sanmugam started her career as professional restaurant chef when she opened Devagi's about two-and-half months ago. 'Now I know why women don't do this,' she says. 'When I teach, I just do little portions but now, what I do is what people are eating - it's a lot more challenging.'
Devagi, who has been cooking since she was 11, is known as the Spice Queen because of her expertise with all kinds of spices and while there are many types of Indian dishes on the menu, she also offers a variety of items across various cuisines, including Peranakan dishes, Thai curries and Indonesian food. Most regulars just ask her to come up with a menu for them.
Several members of her family are also professional cooks, so she has always known what she was getting herself into. She says the physical aspect of being is a major deterrent to women, but it was a challenge she wanted to face. 'I've already done the rest - people have read my books, seen my shows, now I want them to eat my food.'
She says that dealing with Asian food requires a lot more preparation than Western cooking. In a typical day, she will use about five kilos of garlic and shallots - a lot more than a chef in a western restaurant would use. 'When you cook Asian, there's also a lot more fire risk - it's like a furnace in the kitchen because everything is either boiling or frying.'
She adds: 'When I was young and said I wanted to be a cook, my father used to think that I was going to work in a prata shop - it was common for families to look down on the profession.' Devagi's proudly displays large press clippings of herself on the walls of her restaurant. 'I need to show myself off, otherwise people won't respect me,' she says. 'They need to know who I am.'
CHRISTINA EE Broth
21 Duxton Hill.
Tel: 6323 3353
CHRISTINA EE is one of the few female chefs in town who has been in the industry from the start of her career. After her training at Shatec, she got a job in the kitchen at Le Duc, the fine dining French restaurant at the former Marco Polo Hotel. She then moved to the Compass Rose restaurant at the top of the Westin Hotel for eight years before being recruited by owner Steven Hansen for the opening of Broth in 2001, where she has been head chef ever since.
'There were about 10 women in my Shatec class and now I think there are only two of us in the industry,' she says. She says her apprenticeship at Le Duc made a good impression, and probably helped to determine the course of her career. 'It was a good training ground where the old-timers taught me things that books cannot.'
Even as a pre-teen, Ee was helping her mother cook food for the staff of her father's manufacturing company. 'My mother was a good cook so I started by helping her with kitchen chores. By the time I was 12, I was already doing the cooking.' The modern Australian cuisine she prepares at Broth focuses on fresh ingredients and a light cooking style.
She admits that the career path she chose for herself was a tough one. 'Normally, girls prefer to work on the pastry side, but I'm the odd one out because I prefer salads and hot cooking - now, I'm married to the job.'
