few women named in food & wine ‘best new chefs’ list
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As they do every year, Food & Wine magazine has issued its list of ‘Best New Chefs,’ those they see as the rising stars of the culinary world. It is the 26th awards and the printed list and it aims to honor chefs who have achieved great things, but have been in their kitchens five years or less. The winners this year represent a wide range of geographic locations. Three of the chefs on the list are from Texas, one is from Brooklyn, and NONE are from Manhattan, marking an important evolution for the magazine. They are reaching beyond their borders. However, any strides that the magazine made when picking geographically diverse winners, took a few steps back based on the gross gender layout of their 2014 winners list. There have long been more male chefs than female, but the world is changing rapidly and this would have been the year for Food & Wine to change right along with it. Alas, they missed the opportunity and out of a list of 12 new and upcoming chefs, only 2 were female. This debate was already sparked following TIME Magazine’s November feature “Gods of Food.” There was an incredible backlash from the piece where many voiced their disgust of the magazine in other female chef and non-chef publications. This would have been the perfect moment for Food & Wine to learn from TIME’s mistake, but instead they issued a grossly imbalanced list in the year 2014. Julia Moskin wrote an article for the New York Times entitled “A Change in the Kitchen” which points out that 30 to 50 percent of the culinary staff in the fastest growing restaurant groups are women. She asks, “why even women who make it to the top rank of chefs struggle for recognition- have often been posed, and never fully answered.”TRANSCRIPT
