Noteworthy chefs that we should all be talking about. And yes, they’re all women.

There has been a lot of talk in the last couple of years about the question of females in the restaurant industry. Namely: where the hell are they? With plenty of “hot chef” roundups online and in print, they’re most often comprised of men. While millions of women cook everyday in their kitchens at home, when it comes to the professional kitchens, there is certainly a disparity. But why?

That’s a complicated question. Some say it has to do with the way kitchens are run, and that maybe women are too smart to put themselves in the stressful, cutthroat environments that the restaurant industry is known for. Others blame it on the power dynamic, that the quintessential “boy’s club” makes it very difficult for women to break through. And then there is also the attitude that putting the word, “woman” in front of the word “chef” isn’t helping things at all, that even focusing on gender discredits the quality of the work in general.

But maybe it’s not about breaking the power dynamic, maybe it’s about changing the scene as a whole, moving from celebrity chef concoctions, to a simpler, more wholesome attitude to food. As Margot Henderson said in a recent talk at Copenhagen’s MAD Symposium, she’s looking for a world where “Platters groaning with unctuous flavors. When things are sticky and oozing and people are not afraid to gnaw on a bone. Food that is a celebration of the uniqueness of the occasion, the coming together of the season and the location…When there is food whose beauty is natural and simple and time-honored, and not contrived or distorted through tricks or manipulation. I am happiest when the ingredients speak for themselves.”

It’s hard to put together a top ten list, so this is instead a collection of female chefs who are leading the way in their respective industries, be it vegan cooking or slow food.

1. Alice Waters

The quintessential mother of the locavore, slow-food, farm-to-table movement, Alice Waters is well respected, and that respect is well deserved. She has won many awards, including James Beard’s Best Chef in America, and she’s Vice President of Slow Food International. Her cooking abilities have allowed her to get political, and when it comes to food politics, she’s a leader that we can all look to for inspiration.

2. Ann Sophie-Pic

Even though she had no formal culinary training, in 1997 Sophie-Pic took over her family’s restaurant, Maison Pic in Valence, France. She won back the Michelin stars (yes, three of them) and since then has become a leader in the French food world. She now also runs La Dame Pic in Paris, where she concocts things like chestnut cream soup, and is shaking up the male-dominated French institution of cooking.

3. Renee Loux

Launching a raw foods restaurant in Hawaii in the mid 1990s, Renee Loux has been at the forefront of the sustainable food movement. Now an instructor at Natural Gourmet Institute, Loux writes and teaches about food and continues to lead the way for environmental living and eating.

4. Christina Tosi

Even if you’ve never set foot inside of it, you’ve probably heard of Momofuku Milk Bar in New York City, the bakery-inspired dessert branch of David Chang’s Momofuku restaurant group. As chef, owner and founder, Tosi has received numerous awards and has influenced pastry chefs across the country.

5. Naomi Pomeroy 

Legendary Portland restaurant Beast was opened by Naomi Pomeroy in 1997 and since then she has become a leader for the local, and national, food scene. Long before that she ran underground supper clubs out of her home, and that intimate eating experience is one she still cultivates at Beast, which seats 24 and serves a six-course prix fixed menu four times a week.

6. Gabrielle Hamilton

Opening New York City’s acclaimed restaurant Prune in 1999, Hamilton is also the author of the popular food memoir “Blood, Bones & Butter.” And she’s well spoken on the topic of women in the restaurant industry. As she wrote in an opinion piece for the New York Times, “I am fully aware that I am not a God of Food but I am equally sure that I am not a dog on a leash. For me the most moving and powerful and creative act of courage of all is to fully live your life and do your work and offer all of yourself, even in the margin. Waiting to get on a list, working to get on a list — this is a time- and soul-suck with no good end. ”

7. Tamar E. Adler

While these days she spends most of her time writing, Tamar E. Adler is just as influential as chefs spending their days in professional kitchen. The author of “An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace” (which if you have not read, please do so now), she was head chef at Farm 255 in Athens, Georgia and then moving on to Chez Panisse. A leader in the slow food movement, she has also worked as a cooking teacher at Edible Schoolyard NYC.

8. Andrea Reusing

Andrea Reusing is chef-owner of Lantern, a restaurant devoted to using local ingredients in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. As an advocate for local and seasonal eating, she serves on the board of Center of Environmental Farming Systems and is the author of “Cooking in the Moment: A Year of Seasonal Recipes.”

9. Kate Jacoby

Along with her husband Rich Landau, Kate Jacoby is chef-owner of Vedge, one of the country’s most popular vegan restaurants. Leading the way in vegan cooking, the couple recently published their first book (named after the restaurant, of course) and their farm-to-table restaurant has become a top destination for vegetable lovers as well as omnivores.

10. Amanda Cohen

Chef-owner of Dirty Candy in New York City, Canadian-born Amanda Cohen is a woman that’s all about vegetarian cuisine, bringing meat-free cooking to the masses. As she calls it, Dirty Candy isn’t a vegetarian restaurant, but a “vegetable restaurant” making the space more of a “vegetable laboratory” where Cohen comes up with unique and inventive dishes. Before opening up her own place, she worked with renowned raw food chef Matthew Kenney.

11. Monica Pope

While Houston may not seem like an immediate hub of local cuisine, Monica Pope has been working hard to cultivate a scene that joins local farmers and consumers. Named Best New Chef by Food & Wine magazine in 1996, she is the owner of the local-centric T’afia and is committed to engaging the community on food by teaching cooking classes to both adults and children.

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Image: David Sifry

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ColumnIs feminism’s next battleground in kitchens and restaurants?

In case you missed it, Time magazine recently ran a cover story titled “The Gods of Food.” The online media world of course erupted when it was quickly discovered that these “gods” of food were just that: gods. The list of the culinary elite failed to include a woman.

If you thought the under representation of women was just at Fortune 500 companies and politics, think again. Boy’s clubs are everywhere. But what’s worse is how the media exacerbates this cycle. As Amanda Cohen, chef at Dirty Candy put it in the New York Times, “The reality of the situation is that there are lots of women in professional kitchens, and there always have been, but for some reason the press choose not to cover them.”

It’s a problem of under representation in the industry itself, but it’s also a problem of image and how the media portrays women.

I wrote about this topic last week for an online French publication (if your college French is up to par, attack it here), because if you think the U.S. is the only one experiencing this problem, you’re wrong. At around the same time the “Gods of Food” article came out, so did “Génération New French Bistrot” in L’Express, a French weekly. Again, no ladies to be found. But there was “Eat Girls: La nouvelle génération des chefs” that Madame Figaro published, a selection of very talented and well-respected female chefs.

The only problem? The main photo was all of the women decked out in skintight black outfits – a mini skirt here, a pair of pleather pants there – and lips bright red with lipstick. Not only are these women talented, the article pointed out, but they are “cool and sexy.” I’ll tell you one thing: red lipstick isn’t a kitchen utensil that will help you get food out the door to hundreds of customers when you’re running a restaurant.

Pair that photo next to the lead image of “Gods of Food” and you can see the problem: sexy women, professional men. A gender stereotype that is exacerbated in all domains.

“But wait! We’re women, we’re supposed to be sexy! If we’re not sexy, are we still women?” That’s what the media would like to have us believe.

I saw an article last week with tips on transitioning from the kitchen to the dinner table. Yes, it was in fact a piece on how to cook a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner and still manage to look hot at the dinner table. From chef to host in 5 minutes flat! Once you’ve gotten rid of the apron, you’ll need two coats of volumizing mascara and some lip stain in case you were wondering.

Therein lies the problem. (And for the record, your college feminism professor is squirming right now.)

Culturally, when it comes to food, we’re often stuck in a 1950s image of women. It was almost like the copyright on a Better Homes and Gardens article from 1951 just ran out and the website decided to reprint it, with a few tweaks here and there to accommodate for modern makeup tips.

No matter how progressive we think we are, we continue to be bogged down in gender roles. Women put daily food on the table. They make meals. Men, however, cook professionally. They make works of art.

As Michael Pollan wrote in his recent book “Cooked”:

“Since ancient times, a few special types of cooking have enjoyed considerable prestige : Homer’s warriors barbecued their own joints of meat at no cost to their heroic status or masculinity. And ever since, it has been socially acceptable for men to cook in public and professionally – for money… But for most of history most of humanity’s food has been cooked by women working out of public view and without public recognition. Except for the rare ceremonial traditions over which men preside… cooking has traditionally been women’s work, part and parcel of homemaking and childcare, and therefore undeserving of serious – i.e. male – attention.”

So, until we start to work on our gender imaging, and think about feminism in the kitchen, we can expect more of the same.

As Adeline Grattard, one of the female chefs featured in the Madame Figaro article told Grub Street, “I don’t think it helps us — the opposite in fact. We’re not ‘women.’ We’re chefs. Putting the female part at the forefront is a negative thing… It discredits our importance in the métier.”

Exactly. They are chefs. Not sexy chefs. Not cool chefs. Just chefs. They should be respected for what they do, and the mass media should be challenged to diversify its coverage of the food industry and when it talks about women, do it in a way that honors their work not their looks.

Don’t want sexism in the food industry? Support chefs not because they’re famous and mega stars and a magazine assured you that an 18 course tasting menu simply was the “in” thing right now, but because their food is good, because they are innovative and doing things differently and because they are skilled, talented and passionate about their jobs.

Related on EcoSalon:

Foodie Underground: Foodie Feminism

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This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Lori L. Stalteri

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Trashy magazines. You know the ones I’m talking about – the ones with the glossy photos of all the throw away fashion that a conscious fashion lover should certainly never invest in, and all the celebrity gossip that takes up way more brain space than you should ever give to such a vacuous topic. But they’re a guilty pleasure of mine, only purchased when traveling for business. There’s nothing like making the person sitting in the airplane seat next to you think you’re a celebrity, fashion obsessed twit.

So there I was, from Portland to Sacramento headed to the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival, an event focused on inspiring people to do better for our planet, flipping through the latest issue of In Style. Sigh. Things were going as expected. Flashy stilettos. Flip. Au naturel makeup tips. Flip. Silky blouses that need to be in your closet. Flip. Dessert night with your lady friends menu. Flip. Wait, what was on that menu? In my brainwashed magazine perusing, I had glanced over a colorful page that didn’t grab my attention until a few seconds later. I flipped back. “Sugar Rush!” the article was called, with a huge photo of snack mix made with – what is that? Cap’n Crunch?

The entire article was devoted to “desserts” made with breakfast cereals. Pardon me while I get sick. Inventive combinations are what foodies thrive for, but $5 boxed cereal crammed full of high fructose corn syrup? Is this the latest in food trends? We’ve already seen deep fried snickers bars and Krispy Kreme hamburgers, but I was hoping that with the rise in popularity of organics, antioxidants and super foods, we would be moving away from trashy, classless, so-bad-for-you-it’s-out-of-control and onto something just slightly better.

I wouldn’t have been offended if this was a fun, DIY article on silly but fun foods, but these “mouthwatering desserts” (if you can call Crunch Berry Snack Mix and Cocoa Pebble Crunch cake mouthwatering) were concocted by an acclaimed NYC pastry chef. In an era of skyrocketing obesity, heart disease and diabetes, I believe it’s the duty of the leaders of our food industry to be pointing us in the right direction.

No, not everyone needs to serve organic quinoa spring rolls with brewer’s yeast and pumpkin seeds sprinkled on top, but if the chefs and bakers that are at the top of their game in their country continue to promote foods that are rich in chemically processed ingredients, what kind of progress are we going to make?

Which is why it’s up to the rest of us.

The more we continue to promote sweet potato fries instead of Doritos, fried brussel sprouts instead of Ore-Ida tater tots and carrot beet cake instead of fried twinkies, the more food progress we’ll get to experience. Because, in case you needed a reminder, better food is better for us and our planet. And that doesn’t include Cap’n Crunch.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground. Each week, Anna will be taking a look at something new and different that’s taking place in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to culinary avant garde.

Image: Minette Layne

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No matter what your personal opinions are on the foodie trend, you can’t deny that an increased appreciation for good food has lead to an increased support of DIY gastronomy. In the beginning stages of the column earlier this year, we covered the growing trend of amateur involvement in culinary culture. Independent food markets and home-run bakeries are just the beginning of a whole group of people that celebrate their love of food on a daily basis. The amateur food movement is like bake sales on steroids, so to say.

And that’s a good thing if you’re a food lover, because not only can you perfect your own craft, you can also take advantage of those around you. In fact, thanks (once again) to the internet, it’s becoming easier and easier to spread the DIY food love.

Let’s say you live on a food centric block; you’re probably constantly sharing recipes and popping a new recipe test run in a tupperware so your neighbor can try it out. Add social networking to that equation and you’re primed to reap the benefits of an amateur foodie culture gone wild.

The beta version of a food focused network called Super Marmite was recently launched in France. The location-based service allows cooks to post what they’ve got in the works, how many extra servings they’ll have and how much it will cost to get you a taste of the fare. For someone who often makes too much of one thing, or simply doesn’t have enough room in her freezer to keep the latest culinary endeavors, a site like this sounds intriguing. For the consumer, it also provides an alternative to fast food and restaurants.

In the U.S you can opt for a similar service, Book of Cooks. The site allows professional and amateur chefs to set up online restaurants or bakeries to showcase their goods, and exploring them is as simple as clicking the region where you want to find food and diving right on in.

Of course you quickly get into the legal questions related to selling food for consumption by others, but the concept of regional sites that focus on food sharing is not only one that promotes community, but maybe even smarter, healthier food choices.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground. Each week, Anna will be taking a look at something new and different that’s taking place in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to culinary avant garde.

Image: Book of Cooks

The post Foodie Underground: Sharing the Food Love appeared first on EcoSalon.

The point of Foodie Underground is to take a look at all things related to the underground food movement, but sometimes all those cool, avant-garde, underground things start to add up and lead to more than just a small movement; they start to become mainstream.

Food carts can be found in smaller cities that don’t start with words like “San” and “New,” a town without a farmers’ market is getting harder to find, and around the country people are starting to think about what the word “organic” really means. They may have started as underground trends, but the fact that more people are paying attention to what they eat and where it comes from is a good thing.

Proof? The National Restaurant Association surveyed almost 2,000 chefs to find out what they think the trends of 2010 will be come year’s end, and the answer wasn’t bacon. At the top of the list was locally grown produce, with 88 percent of the chefs naming it a hot trend. Some of the other trends that ranked highly in various categories were restaurants with on-site gardens, environmentally friendly kitchen equipment, locally produced wine and beer, and organic produce.

Where does that put the underground food movement? In a good spot. It means that all the efforts that go into sourcing food locally, brewing craft beers, supporting community gardens, and all the other things that conscious foodies around the country partake in on a regular basis are having a significant positive impact.

The work comes in turning these trends into culinary norms; until the general population comes to expect locally sourced produce whenever possible, and puts a value on organic, fresh food, then we’ve still got plenty of hours to put in supporting the ongoing underground movement.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground. Each week, Anna will be taking a look at something new and different that’s taking place in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to culinary avant garde.

Image: bokchoi-snowpea

The post Foodie Underground: Local Foods and Sustainability Really Booming appeared first on EcoSalon.