In the past couple of years, new restaurants with women at the helm have been on the rise. Triplets, Fat Fish and, most recently, Garden of Dream, come to mind right away. All three are women-owned and have women as chefs. And yet, we have a hard time remembering the last time we ate at a hotel restaurant in Bangkok (and really, any restaurant, with a few exceptions) where women held significant power. While in the home, cooking remains largely a woman’s domain, in professional kitchens, the opposite tends to be true. Here, we speak to women chefs and restaurateurs we admire, to find out what it took to get here, and the triumphs and trials along the way.

The First Obstacle

Watching Chef Supatra “Suu” Kanitchapong work in her compact and efficient kitchen at Gastro 1/6, poaching eggs and setting Spanish tortillas in the oven, you’d never guess that she was ever anything but a chef. But her previous life was quite different. “I worked at my family’s shipping business for six years. I hated it. It just wasn’t me.” Her long-time colleague, co-owner of Bo.Lan, Duangporn “Bo” Songvisava, too, wanted to be in the kitchen from the very start. But, she says, “Thai society says you need a degree, so I studied arts at Silapakorn, even though I didn’t see the point.”

Spice Market’s Chef Supanat “Ann” Khanarak’s parents couldn’t believe that she wanted to be a chef. “I should not be cooking,” she remembers. “My family wanted me to be a lawyer or an architect.”

Then again, whereas some conservative ideas delayed our chefs from reaching for their dreams, other patriarchal legacies actually helped. Chef Ranitar “Gee” Charitkul, who was at the helm of two restaurants in New Zealand before returning to Thailand and becoming owner and chef at the new Garden of Dream, picked up her skills precisely because she was a woman. She says, “I never had formal training, but I grew up in a Chinese family, and my grandfather didn’t like women much. So I spent a lot of time out of the way, in the kitchen.”

From School to Kitchen

Despite family opposition, which affects aspiring male chefs as well, and despite the general impression that the kitchen is a woman’s domain, in the professional realm, the scales become drastically imbalanced. In Bangkok’s major hotels, the Executive Chefs, those in charge of food and beverage for all the restaurants dining outlets, are invariably male. In some rare circumstances, the Executive Sous Chef, in charge of an individual dining outlet, is a woman, as in the case of Kempinksi’s Sra Bua and Four Seasons’ Spice Market and Madison. We asked our interviewees who don’t work at hotels why that was the case.

“When I first got back, I applied to a lot of hotel jobs,” says Gee, whose winery restaurant Belmont Square in Blenheim, NZ, was lauded by local magazines. “But I never got any replies. Maybe it’s because they require a certificate.”

Shirley Tangkarawakun and Saranya “Pook” Makinson of Fat Fish, though, voluntarily pulled themselves out of the hotel restaurant scene. Pook says, “We did a few weeks’ training at Dusit Thani. We thought about applying, but we knew it was going to be really hard. The kitchen is hard, and it’s long hours of standing. You have to be young.”

Curious to know when the disparity starts, we asked them about their experience at the traditional culinary program at Le Cordon Bleu Bangkok, where they started out with several women in their class. “In the end, it was just the two of us,” Pook says. “The whole class was 45 people, and it looked like there were only ten boys left, but by the final term, it was [the ten boys] and the two of us. It’s mainly the stress and pressure than mainly a lot of women cannot handle. And if they can, there are also family issues. They would rather have a home than work late nights, late hours.”

Leadership in the Kitchen

Women getting their foot in the door of a professional kitchen is one thing. Working their way up to the top is a long, difficult journey. Anyone who has read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential has the impression that the professional kitchen is an ultra-macho place, where the cooks are tattooed convicts swearing and beating each other up in between making your sandwich. Suu even worked in a kitchen where two men once had a knife fight because one of them was late. Bo says, “Working your way up, you have to look tough and be loud. If you don’t do that, then people won’t respect you because it’s such a male-dominated industry.”

Pook remembers how one of her female kitchen staff found it very tough when the restaurant first opened. “She cried every day. Everytime she made a mistake, the guy in charge screamed at her.” Social dynamics aside, sometimes, there are also physical limitations. Bo says, “The obstacle I had to get over was carrying a big pot of charcoal or pouring a big drum of oil into the deep fryer,” she says. “People are like, ‘Well you get paid the same amount as me, why do I have to do your work?’”

On the other hand even though Chef Anne’s Sra Bua kitchen has only four women out of a staff of eleven, everyone is treated the same. She says, “In my kitchen, I rotate the people every three months. I want the people to learn everything, not like guys can only work in the hot line and girls only desserts.”

Being Successful

Clearly, it takes a lot of resilience for a woman to become successful in the business. Whether the particular kitchen is brash and freewheeling, or calm and cooperative, consistency and confidence are qualities all our interviewees agree on. “If anyone would like to become a chef, you have to be proud and trust yourself,” says Chef Ann. “If you trust yourself then you can do it.”
For full interviews, visit http://tinyurl.com/5wkp4rw

Essentials

Duangporn “Bo” Songvisava. Bo.lan, 42 Soi Phichaironnarong, Sukhumvit Soi 26, 02-260-2962
Pavita “Anne” Saechao. Sra Bua by Kiin Kiin, Siam Kempinki, 991/9 Rama I Rd., 02-126-9000
Supatra “Suu” Kanitchapong. Gastro 1/6, RMA Institute, Soi Namthip 2, Sukhumvit Soi 22, 080-603-6421
Anchalee Pornrungsit. Madison, 155 Four Seasons Hotel, Ratchadamri Rd., 02-126-8866
Supanat “Ann” Khanarak. Spice Market, 155 Four Seasons Hotel, Ratchadamri Rd., 02-126-8866
Saranya “Pook” Makinson and Shirley Tangkaravakun. Fat Fish, Sukhumvit Soi 31, 02-261-2056
Ranitar “Gee” Charitkul. Garden of Dream, 4/F, Opposite, Sukhumvit Soi 51, 02-662-5057