This region has long been home to some excellent female chef/owners - women such as Susanna Foo and Margaret Kuo, who successfully ruled the front of the house, the back office, and the kitchen.
But the last year has seen more women rise to top chef spots in marquee restaurants than ever before: Jennifer Carroll at 10 Arts (in the Ritz-Carlton); Marcie Turney at Bindi at 13th and Sansom; Erin O'Shea at Marigold Kitchen in University City; Luciana Spurio at Le Virtu in South Philadelphia; Ane Ormaechea at Cafe Apamate on South Street; and Alison Barshak, of Alison at Blue Bell, who is about to open her second restaurant, Alison two, in Fort Washington.
So we wondered if our current crop of female chefs could be traced to any changes in the mood and management of professional kitchens.
Are the older, European-trained male chefs, perhaps more given to chauvinism, retiring and making way for younger male chefs raised to see women as equals?
Are diners more attracted these days to the way women cook intuitively, as compared with many male chefs who go the techno route, treating the kitchen as a chemistry lab?
Were all the explanations we heard before about why women were not in greater numbers as executive chefs nothing more than excuses?
Have the hours changed? Is the work less physically demanding? Has somebody somewhere found the magic to balancing career and children?
We asked six area chefs who run highly praised kitchens and happen to be women:
They range in age from 30ish to nearly 50; three - Barshak, Ormaechea and Turney - are full or part owners of their restaurants; and all have men working under them.
The women gave us an earful.
Jennifer Carroll is a Philly native (Somerton section) who left a career in law to enroll at the Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College.
