It was a throwaway line in a cookery column that got me thinking. Allegra
McEvedy, who co-founded Leon restaurants and has cooked in kitchens as
diverse as the River Café and Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Grill in New York,
wrote that men and women approach food so differently that she reckoned she
could tell the sex of the person who made any plate of food in front of her.
She’s not the only one. Alice Waters, whose cooking has influenced and
inspired restaurant cooking around the world, also believes that “men and
women bring different things to the kitchen. The simpler the dish, the
chances are it is probably made by a women,” she says. “Women’s natural
instincts, especially if they have children, are to be nurturing. Our main
focus is to feed people something that is good for them and that will make
them happy . . . some men are in touch with that side of things, but
educationally and culturally they are encouraged to look at cooking from a
career point of view, to see it as an artistic endeavour. They tend to be
more self-absorbed and involved in their own creations and self-expression
and more disconnected from what’s happening in the dining room. Instead of
‘Are people liking the food?’ they are more likely to think: ‘I am the Chef,
they should be liking it’.”
On the whole, the male style of cooking as wizardry – think of Heston
Blumenthal, Pierre Gagnaire and Ferran Adrià – wins the accolades. Scroll
down the newly announced S. Pellegrino World’s Fifty Best Restaurants list
and the top places are dominated by men famed for their artistry, and
dedication to experimentation and surprise. The first two restaurants where
women are in charge of the kitchens – Alice Waters’s legendary Chez Panisse
in Berkeley, California, and the River Café, run by Ruth Rogers and Rose
Gray – are establishments with a completely different style. These are
places where simplicity and seasonality reign supreme, and the pared-back
approach wins over complex technique.
Clearly there are dramatic contradictions to such generalisations. Chefs such
as Simon Hopkinson, Rowley Leigh, Alastair Little and Jeremy Lee embody the
simple, honest ingredients-led cooking pioneered by Waters, just as at the
Connaught Angela Hartnett has taken on the Gordon Ramsay mantle. But
Waters’s view is wholeheartedly endorsed by Skye Gyngell, continuously
winning applause for her fresh seasonal cooking at the restaurant at
Petersham Nurseries, where the herb and vegetable gardens are overseen by
Lucy Gray, daughter of Rose Gray of the River Café. “I think we find it
easier to step away from the food and do less and less with food than men
do,” says Gyngell.
Like Waters she feels the simple approach comes more naturally to women than
men, who invariably have to shake off the influence of centuries of
old-school, testosterone-fuelled tradition in which elaborate techniques and
macho skills are the measure of the chef. “I’ve had endless conversations
with female chefs about this and I think men are much more ego-bound and
competitive and their food is often more showy,” she says. “The whole idea
of experimental ‘molecular gastronomy’, for example, is a phenomenally male
concept. It reminds me of those Transformer toys: ‘Can I take all these
elements and turn them into an aeroplane, or a fast car . . .?’ Women don’t
have that desire to make a big impact in the same way. The differences go
way beyond what you see on the plate. I think I am as demanding as a male
chef and our kitchen is very emotional, but not in a high-octane, screaming
sort of way. Personally, I also think of myself as a cook, not a chef. I’m
not worried about what other people are doing or what’s fashionable, and it
doesn’t matter to me how fast I can chop.”
Sophie Cookes, who works with Gyngell, agrees. “I think I could mostly tell
whether a man or woman has made a dish and people have said they can
recognise the same thing about my food. I cooked for the male editor of Gourmet
Traveller, and I had gone out of my way to make the food look simple but
beautiful. He took one look at it and immediately said: ‘You can tell a girl
made this!’ ”
Jean Cazals, a food photographer whose life is spent taking pictures of chefs’
dishes, believes that “women are more relaxed and spontaneous in the way
they put together dishes. I don’t feel they need to impress so much,” he
says, “whereas men can be very strict and ordered about their food. But, you
know, that is the same throughout nature. It is usually the male bird or
animal who has all the colours and markings, because we need artifice to
seduce women, whereas women are more concerned with substance.
“The differences start with the choice of menu and ingredients and go all the
way through to presentation: men are more robust and artistic; women have a
much more honest, lighter, healthier approach,” agrees David Selex, formerly
of the Sugar Club and now in charge of the kitchens at Mews of Mayfair. “My
wife, for example, is a very good cook; she seasons perfectly and has a very
feminine touch, whereas my flavours are much bigger, stronger, bolder. A
girl in the kitchen will be more consistent. She will get on with things and
work well in a team, whereas the boys just want to get on to the most
difficult section of the kitchen. It’s all about being The Man; young butts
strutting their stuff like peacocks. In Anthony Bourdain’s book Kitchen
Confidential there are some very funny stories about the chefs he worked
with in his first job in Cape Cod, who swaggered around like gods, dressed
like pirates with their ‘bad-ass knives’, and their ‘moves’ like
skate-boarders at their grills . . . and you know it’s true”.
Not everyone is buying the sex idea, however. John Torode, of Smiths of
Smithfield, who as well as guiding his own brigade of chefs has watched
countless amateurs and celebrities cook spontaneously for him as a judge on Masterchef,
is adamant that “a good cook is a good cook, and that’s that. For me the
chef’s sex has far less to do with the way a dish is put together than the
cultural background of the person cooking, and how much they have
travelled,” he says. And at Leith’s School of Food and Wine, Jenny Stringer,
the principal, says that the school’s teachers are divided on the debate.
“The consensus is that individual personality comes through more than sex.
However, many of the women felt that the girls keep things more simple and
the boys are more extravagant; whereas many of the male teachers thought
just the opposite, that the male approach was more rustic.”
At Moro, where the husband and wife team of Sam and Sam (Samantha and Samuel)
Clark are celebrated for their vibrant, flavour-packed,
Mediterranean-inspired food, Samuel believes that although they are joined
at the hip when it comes to their feelings about food – “we both think
alike” – his wife “finishes a plate with a little bit more je ne sais quoi,
a little more flair and finesse than me”.
Though the majority of restaurant kitchens are still dominated by men, Clark
feels that even in male bastions the macho image is softening. Marcus
Wareing, of Petrus, double Michelin-starred stalwart of the Gordon Ramsay
empire, agrees. Like John Torode, he has no time for the idea that you can
tell the sex of the cook purely from a particular plate of food. “So much
depends on your background,” he says. “Take Angela Hartnett at the
Connaught. She has worked with me and with Gordon in male-dominated kitchens
and as a result her menu is very robust. I don’t think you would look at her
food and say there was anything obviously feminine about it.” However, he
believes that women, left to their own devices, do tend to cook food that is
lighter and healthier, and that many male-dominated restaurant kitchens are
becoming more attuned to the feminine attitude, “because, especially at
lunchtime, we are designing our food much more around what women want to
eat”.
As someone who eats out constantly for a living, Giles Coren, the Times
restaurant critic, is also sex-sceptic when it comes to restaurant food, but
believes cooking in the home tells a different story. “Any dish that doesn’t
involve meat is probably made by a woman,” he says. The same is true of
chefs’ books. “I think I could tell after reading a few lines from a recipe
book whether it was written by a man or a woman,” he says.
“If you read Nigel Slater, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall or Jamie Oliver, three
men who are more different than you can imagine, they all have in common the
same basic ethos . . . buy a fantastic piece of meat, slam it in the oven
and crack open a bottle – Keith Floyd used to be the same – check your meat
after a while, poke it about a bit and eat it when it’s ready. Whereas you
take a book by Delia, or Sophie Grigson, and everything will be broken down,
minute by minute, what to do if this happens or that goes wrong. Just like
women are in real life, they are always giving little warnings and
instructions. I find myself thinking, like Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady:
‘Why can’t a woman be more like a man . . .!’ ”
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