Women Chefs Need Customers Not Just Boosters
Gender issues are important, but restaurants are businesses. Put your money where your culinary heart is.
Julie Hetyei and her friend Isabel Garcia during a collaboration at Cadet in Newington Green, June 2024
Photograph by Howard Chua-Eoan/Bloomberg
The London restaurant world is in a roil over sexism again. On Monday, the Times of London ran an interview with Jason Atherton, one of the most prominent and accomplished chefs in Britain, under the headline “I haven’t seen any sexism in the kitchen.”
The outcry on social media was immediate from women in the business who related their own experiences not just with sexism in general but harassment and what’s euphemistically called “bad boy” behavior in the kitchen. Atherton — whose two-month old ROW on 5 restaurant in London just received a Michelin star — defended himself by saying his remarks had been misconstrued. He was “absolutely against sexism, 100 percent, and I will not tolerate it.” He clarified that his reference to sexism’s invisibility didn’t apply to the entire culinary world — just his patch of it. That seemed to appease some critics.