Life After the Line-Cook Boys’ Club

How does the next generation of line cooks see the future of restaurant kitchens?

Consider April Bloomfield. In December 2017, a the New York Times report detailed a culture of sexual misconduct at the Spotted Pig, the Michelin-starred gastropub in New York City where the chef became a star, and the Breslin, which further cemented her place in the city’s dining ecosystem. Her business partner, the restaurateur Ken Friedman, was accused of sexual harassment, and some employees referred to the Spotted Pig’s third-floor private dining room as the “rape room,” where employees reported being groped by Friedman’s guests as well. And punctuating the horrible allegations from the employees: reports that Bloomfield had known about Friedman’s behavior and, through inaction and silence, was complicit in its continuation. Nearly a year later, she tried to explain why she had tolerated the behavior for so long, saying to the New York Times: “He had so much control, and he was so dominant and powerful, that I didn’t feel like if I stepped away that I would survive.”

This wasn’t coming from a server nor a line cook, but a trailblazing chef who donned a dead pig like a mink stole for the cover of her best-selling book. If silence was an ingredient in her epochal success, then what of all the hopeful cooks toiling behind the swinging kitchen doors at so many fine restaurants? Was acquiescing to a misogynistic “boys’ club” a secret handshake, as chef Naomi Pomeroy confessed to feeling — and regretting — in a 2018 essay? Now that revelations of sexual misconduct by some of the biggest chefs have come to light, often revealing a harrowing portrait of toxic, male-dominated environments where abuse, sexism, and inequity went unchecked, are young line cooks bringing a different attitude to the kitchen? Do they see any difference in the social dynamics of restaurant work?

“Seventeen years ago, it was the height of Kitchen Confidential era,” says Ronny Miranda, 37, who has been a line cook in the Bay Area for that long. “Hell’s Kitchen just started, Rocco’s show just started... All these networks were trying to profit off that toxic environment.”

He says that for cooks of his generation, speaking out against abusive, hostile working environments often resulted in stiff retaliation: “We endured it because we had to; we didn’t have an option. If you went against it, you didn’t have a job.” But he says that’s been changing gradually over the last several years, because chefs and line cooks alike are finally owning up to their own abusive behavior and rejecting the self-destructive lifestyles that were once so glorified — which he believes helped breed abuse. “I hate the term ‘bro-y culture,’” he says. “It’s sexual harassment and it’s just abusive.”

Amethyst Ganaway, 29, has worked as a line cook for the last seven years in Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina and runs the Geechee Gordita food blog. She says that when she first started working in kitchens, especially those of big, corporate restaurants, the atmosphere was still “very bro, very masculine.” There were always one or two creepy guys who’d take advantage of the tight corners to brush too closely against her, or in one case, fondle her braid.

“I’ve always been very vocal about what’s not appropriate,” she says. In the past, that has meant confronting the offender on her own to establish boundaries, but now, she isn’t afraid to walk out of a job if her management doesn’t support her. She also encourages other cooks who are women, particularly younger ones, to speak up. “No matter how many Michelin stars or James Beard awards [the restaurant has], it’s not worth you coming to work every day feeling uncomfortable or feeling unsafe.”

Women have to speak up for themselves in other ways on the job, too. When Hannalei Souza, 22, began working as a line cook in Lake Tahoe, she had to convince restaurant management that she wanted to work the hot line, which was dominated by male peers.

“Most of [the women] are put straight on the salad kitchen or prep kitchen. It’s like, ‘Oh, we got another woman, let’s put her on that,’” says Souza. She has not encountered sexual harassment on the job, but wouldn’t hesitate to speak up or to leave if it came down to it. “In my area, everyone is always hiring, so probably I’d just find another job,” she says. “I never once had the mindset of ‘maybe I shouldn’t work my way up because I’m a woman.’”

Shi Lin Wong, 22, also doesn’t see herself ever tolerating bad behavior in order to achieve her dreams of becoming a chef. She has been working the line at New York City’s Gramercy Tavern for a little over a year, ever since graduating from culinary school. She hasn’t experienced sexual harassment, but if she had, she would report it immediately for the sake of herself and her colleagues. “It’s a sense of pride,” she says. “I don’t want to let that down, and it’s just wrong to begin with.”

Wong says that her employer gave out booklets and organized mandatory sexual harassment training for the whole staff, which she appreciated. And she doesn’t feel alone, as she works with plenty of other women.

“I love it when I see a lot of females on the line,” she says. “It’s really cool because it’s such a male-dominated industry.”

According to the United States Department of Labor, 41.8 percent of cooks in the U.S. were women in 2018. Also in 2018, in another study, it was shown that 71.1 percent of chefs and “head cooks” in the U.S. were reportedly male. That suggests that the lower ranks of cooking positions are filled by plenty of women nowadays. And the rise of celebrity chefs like Bloomfield, Christina Tosi, and Alex Guarnaschelli, and other women may have helped increase the number of women in the kitchen over the last couple decades.

Ray Delucci, 22, is a line cook from Buffalo, New York. But he’s also become something of an advocate for line cooks all from over as the creator of the podcast Line Cook Thoughts and its associated Instagram account, @linecookthoughts, sharing interviews with line cooks.

“I always ask, ‘What you do want to see change?’” says Delucci. “And a lot of times that [answer] is more recognition for female chefs.”

Delucci says he’s had friends who dealt with the stress of working in the restaurant industry in unhealthy ways, and felt he should try to give back to the community that he works in by sharing the stories of what line cooks are going through.

“I had no idea that if I’d message cooks every day, they’d sent me paragraphs of why they love their jobs. Just the other day, someone sent me pages,” says Delucci. “It shows that cooks have so much to say, it’s like, why are we not talking about it more?”

Just sharing the thoughts of line cooks has become therapeutic for Delucci, and he hopes for many others. He says it’s part of a growing awareness that chefs need to open up more and talk through their feelings in order to get to the heart of issues such as workaholism, substance abuse, and abusive behavior. He feels that there has been a hole since the passing of Anthony Bourdain, who was seen as a leader of and champion for line cooks. The need is palpable for a profession where the median pay in 2018 was $12.12 per hour, or $25,200 per year. “There’s so much behind a cook at Chipotle, or someone working two jobs to support their family... there’s so much they have to say and so much they want out of their industry,” says Delucci.

Taking a hard look at the lifestyles and stresses of line cooks may be a corrective from “the Kitchen Confidential era.” It’s also necessary in moving away from the hostile workplace ethos that characterized restaurant kitchens before. Several of the cooks featured on Delucci’s platform have echoed a need to take care of oneself better.

It’s been nearly 20 years since Bourdain helped glamorize not only unhealthy work schedules, but also a toxic, male-driven culture of restaurants’ back of house in Kitchen Confidential — a legacy that he later apologized and tried to make up for. And it’s been almost 15 years since the publication of Bill Buford’s best-selling memoir about trailing the now-disgraced chef Mario Batali, Heat, which Shane Mitchell reviewed at the time as “less a studied exploration of the influence of Italian cuisine than a steamy romance about big men and their equally large appetites.”

The next generation of young cooks might look to books such as Kwame Onwuachi’s Notes From a Young Black Chef, which describes the pervasive emotional abuse and mind-numbing experiences inside fine dining kitchens. And instead of saucy exposes, they might read more stories from women and marginalized people in the industry, like this account of what it’s like to be a trans line cook.

The gender dynamics in restaurant kitchens are already beginning to change, according to many of the cooks I spoke with. Amethyst Ganaway says that now, it’s not unusual to see men, particularly young ones, say something to their older colleagues, like “Hey man, that’s not cool, respect a woman’s boundaries.” But, she adds, “I hope the change isn’t just because it’s becoming something that’s hashtaggable.”

Bringing these conversations out of individual restaurant kitchens to start a broader discussion about what changes are needed within the profession might be a good start. Says Delucci: “I think young people have a lot of power, and we should have a lot of responsibility to try to change the industry.”

Cathy Erway is the author of the The Food of Taiwan: Recipes from the Beautiful Island, and The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove. She hosts the podcast Self Evident, exploring Asian America’s stories.
Zoë van Dijk is a Los Angeles-based freelance illustrator.

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