Hawken grad takes the heat

Women who take the heat In the man`s world of hot kitchens, female chefs rarely find stardom Wednesday, November 01, 2006 Laura Taxel Special to The Plain Dealer Name 10 of Cleveland`s most well-known chefs. Odds are you included only one, maybe two, women, if any at all. That`s because men outnumber women in this profession -- in town and around the country -- and the women who do succeed don`t make headlines very often. Cooking still might be primarily a woman`s responsibility at home, as it always has been, but when it comes to heading up restaurant kitchens, it`s definitely a man`s world. According to a survey released in February by Starchefs.com, an online magazine for food-service professionals, 89 percent of executive chefs nationwide are male. The U.S. Department of Labor still categorizes chefs and head cooks as nontraditional jobs for women. In 2004 (the most recent statistics available), women accounted for only 21 percent of those employed in these positions. Men also consistently dominate top toque lists. Each year, five chefs are nominated for the James Beard Foundation`s outstanding chef award, one of the industry`s top honors. In the past three years, only one has been a woman. Food & Wine magazine included just two women on their annual rosters of best new chefs between 2003 and 2006. Only a handful of women chefs have achieved anything close to prominence here in Northeast Ohio. There`s Karen Small, who owns Flying Fig in Cleveland. She describes herself as the token female on every local chef round-up. Jill Vedaa of Westlake`s Saucy Bistro is a rising culinary star but remains relatively unknown. Pamela Waterman, who ended her 12-year run at Lockkeepers in August, is no longer in the restaurant business. The same is true for three other women who earned some acclaim in the past. Michelle Gaw founded Simply Done Dinners, a meal assembly service, after putting in 18 years as executive chef at the now-defunct Watermark. Donna Chriszt opened, and closed, three restaurants of her own: Jeso, J Cafe and Oz Bistro. She`s currently a teacher, caterer and food stylist. Heather Haviland, recognized as an innovative and accomplished pastry chef, has begun branching out into some serious cheffing with her weekend brunches at her Lucky`s Cafe in Cleveland. There are plenty of other women who are cooking professionally in Cleveland, but they don`t rule the roost at the region`s high-profile dining destinations, and we rarely hear about them. A legacy of anonymity \"Historically, women were not welcome in the professional kitchen,\" says Eve Felder, herself a former chef and associate dean for culinary arts at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. \"The old European apprenticeship model that has long prevailed in the industry excluded women. That`s very slowly changing,\" Felder says. The model, she adds, has never been as entrenched on the West Coast, and so aspiring women chefs have fared somewhat better there. Enrollment of women in chef-track curriculums might be on the rise, but they`re still the minority. Females represented only 20 percent of the students in the culinary program at the culinary institute in the mid-1980s. In 2001-2002, the ratio was 33 percent female to 67 percent male. In contrast, a much higher proportion of women sign up for degrees in pastry arts. But some females don`t fit that mold. \"I hate baking,\" says Chriszt. \"Always have. I`d much rather break down a side of beef than make a cake. But that`s me. It has nothing to do with differences between men and women. What you do should be about what you love.\" So why the big disparity between men and women? \"It`s sexism plain and simple,\" says chef Christine Keff, who owns Flying Fish, a popular S