Posts Written by Jessica

On Being a Chef, a Woman, and the Need for Safe Spaces

Every once in a while I come across an article on the internet about female chefs. A quick Google search for ‘female chef’ pulls up sparse results, usually a year or more between each entry. If you search ‘female pastry chef’ (more relevant to me because I AM one), you find still less. The articles that DO come up are very often written about a chef or chefs, but not by the chef.

Some background on me: I am a pastry chef – currently the assistant to the head pastry chef of where I work, and that’s not a bad place to be. I have also worked on occasion as a line cook, a prep cook, and off and on in the past I’ve worked as a short-order cook. My current position is a high-impact job, and I have to maintain some level of health and fitness to do it. I went to school for baking and pastry, and this is my life’s work, I love it, and I can’t picture myself happy doing anything else.  However, I had to take a lot of crap in a relatively short space of time to get to where I am now. I speak here as a chef who is also a woman, in order to impart my experience (not the worst, all told), but hopefully also, to start a dialogue among other women chefs as well.

My last week of school, the instructor leading our year ...

On Being a Chef, a Woman, and the Need for Safe Spaces

Every once in a while I come across an article on the internet about female chefs. A quick Google search for ‘female chef’ pulls up sparse results, usually a year or more between each entry. If you search ‘female pastry chef’ (more relevant to me because I AM one), you find still less. The articles that DO come up are very often written about a chef or chefs, but not by the chef.

Some background on me: I am a pastry chef – currently the assistant to the head pastry chef of where I work, and that’s not a bad place to be. I have also worked on occasion as a line cook, a prep cook, and off and on ...

Every once in a while I come across an article on the internet about female chefs. A quick Google search for ‘female chef’ pulls up sparse results, usually a year or more between each entry. If you ...