As a matter of course, she inquired whether he had many women working in the kitchen. Longtime female veterans of the business will tell you that it wasn't easy for them to earn respect in the boy's club environment of most kitchens in the Seventies and Eighties. One woman I talked to was actually denied entrance into France's state-run culinary institute because they did not accept female applicants. Another remembers being physically assaulted and kissed in one Houston kitchen. In Austin, the ratio is no less slanted.
Women account for only a handful of chefs, pastry chefs, and sous-chefs in restaurants.
The few that are out there are largely unknown to restaurant-goers and foodies. The profound underexposure of women among Austin's food luminaries causes one to wonder whether a certain locker-room mentality still prevails in kitchens around the city. Obviously the issue is a sensitive one. A recent comment Chronicle Cuisines editor Virginia Wood made in her column about the lack of women participating in the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival prompted a flurry of impassioned responses from both male and female professionals, on both sides of the issue. The very intensity of those responses suggests that there may be no single truth to the matter.