Copper & Heat Radio explores the forces that shape our meals through narrative, sound-rich podcasts. James Beard, Signal, and IACP Award winner. Part of Heritage Radio Network.
Copper & Heat explores the unspoken rules and traditions of the kitchen. Our first season, Be A Girl, follows host Katy Osuna's experience as a woman working in kitchens of fine dining, Michelin-star, restaurants.
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Why are restaurant kitchens organized the way they are? What is a kitchen brigade? What does a typical day of a cook look like? How does someone move up the ranks? And what do women do to work their way up the ranks in a kitchen?
Some of the stats:
Women make up a little over 50% of students graduating culinary schools
Women make-up over 50% of total foodservice employees
Somewhere between 30%-50% of back-of-house employees identify as women
27% of line cooks are ladies
19% of chefs are ladies
7% of head or executive chefs are ladies.
How does traditional masculinity affect the culture of a restaurant kitchen? As a woman, how do you gain respect? Why are women cooks so rare? How do traditional gender roles play out? Why is the burden on women to change to fit into the culture, rather than the other way around?
We talk a lot about my experience as a woman in kitchens, but there’s a lot more to the gender conversation.
Here are a few articles about gender and sexuality from different perspectives:
“I Hid Who I was for So Long Until I Became a Cook” by Andy Baraghani
“What It’s Like to be Queer, Trans, Black and a Line Cook” by Charlie Anderle
“Queer Food Is Hiding in Plain Sight” by Angie Wang
What kind of strength does it take to make it in a kitchen? Why is it that weakness is gendered as female (“stop being a little girl”)? How does the pressure to be tough affect cooks? How do cooks and chefs deal with that pressure? We talk about stress, anxiety, and depression in this episode. For those struggling, The Chefs With Issues Facebook Community and Website are wonderful and have helped me personally a lot. Remember, you are not alone.
What kind of pressures do cooks face to always be at work? How do you find balance while working in kitchens? Why is being a mother seen as the biggest barrier for women working in the industry? What options exist for people who want to have a better work-life balance, but still want to work in interesting restaurants?
What makes a Chef? What’s the difference between a home cook and a professional one? Why is cooking at home seen as work for women and cooking professionally seen as work for men? How do food media and awards reinforce these stereotypes?
A segment of the episode focuses on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. To learn more about the list and the controversial Best Female Chef award, check out these links:
The World’s 50 Best official website (https://www.theworlds50best.com/)
World’s Best Female Chef award official website (https://www.theworlds50best.com/awards/best-female-chef)
Crenn Says Best Female Chef Award Is 'Stupid,' And This Former Judge Agrees With Her (https://www.forbes.com/sites/clarkwolf/2018/05/07/crenn-says-best-female-chef-award-is-stupid-and-i-agree/#77bd365d2db9)
Why we believe The World’s Best Female Chef Award is affirmative feminism in action (https://www.theworlds50best.com/blog/News/why-we-believe-worlds-best-female-chef-award-is-affirmative-feminism-in-action.html)
In this episode, Katy sits down with Chef David Kinch, the chef-owner of Manresa Restaurant, a 3-star Michelin restaurant in Los Gatos, California. They discuss everything from work-life balance to the media’s role in bringing more equity to fine dining.
This episode is an excerpt from The View From The Kitchen panel event hosted by the New York Times and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in the summer of 2018. Kim Severson, a New York Times correspondent that was on the team that broke the #MeToo stories in the food industry, has a conversation with Chef Reem Assil, Chef Dominique Crenn and Chef Tanya Holland about issues facing the food industry.
Chef Reem Assil https://www.eater.com/2018/4/27/17263640/reem-assil-dyafa-daniel-patterson-oakland-opening https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/mbkqvv/the-tenacity-of-chef-reem-assil
Chef Tanya Holland https://www.tanyaholland.com/ https://sf.eater.com/2018/1/26/16938936/tanya-holland-bro-culture-top-chef-season-15
Chef Dominique Crenn https://sf.eater.com/2018/11/29/18118124/atelier-crenn-three-stars-dominique-crenn-san-francisco https://www.eater.com/ad/16090818/dominique-crenn-investment-living-wage
This is the last episode in the Be A Girl season. Over the last 7 episodes, we’ve talked about a lot of the challenges facing women working in restaurant kitchens - from the hierarchical structure of the kitchen, to the stereotypical view of women’s cooking. Though there aren’t any clear-cut solutions we ask: What has changed? How are those changes affecting people in the industry? Where do we go from here?
It’s been a wild few months for us at Copper & Heat! Back in April we won a James Beard Broadcast Media Award and we’re still reeling. In this episode, Katy talks to Geraldine DeRuiter, another James Beard Media winner, about some of the complicated feelings that come along with winning an award, being in the spotlight, and how we keep creating. There’s a couple of Geraldine’s blog posts that we talk about in the episode, here they are! “I Made The Cinnamon Rolls From Mario Batali’s Sexual Misconduct Apology Letter” “I Won A James Beard Award and I Think You Are So Great” For more info on this year’s James Beard Media Awards: View the full list of winners here View the full Media Awards Ceremony here Geraldine and I talk about some of the issues with representation and recognition in awards, but there’s so much more to the topic. Here are a couple other articles about what’s happening (or not happening) to improve representation in food media: Five Major Takeaways From the 2019 James Beard Awards by Hillary Dixler Canavan A Critic for All Seasons by Korsha Wilson For Our Food Culture To Diversify, Our Restaurant Criticism Needs To, Too by Irene Li
