Gender in the kitchen

Has the whole gender in the kitchen thing been done to death? Probably yes. But I think here I have encountered a bias for the first time, and I think I also have just recently (aka this week) overcome it.

Of our instructors at school, only one makes me think of a real chef with actual restaurant experience. His demeanor and comportment triggered my trained responses, so when he asked me to do something at the beginning I always replied "Yes, Chef." I had to force myself to humanize him in my head so I could behave like all the other people in the class. Now I just reply "Yes." or "Of course." However part of the reason I think I respond to him differently than the other instructors is that he is male. I am well adjusted to working under women in a kitchen, but even so there's something about a man which elicits a different response. Its stupid, I know, and probably has to do in part with my first culinary school experience as well as my first work experience being underneath very classic male chefs, which has created the association in my head. But that isn't the part which was fascinating to overcome.

This guy has been discriminating ever so slightly against the girls in the class. Or I've been projecting such that I think he has been. I had noticed, however, that whenever he needed a job done right--a piece of meat cut in the correct way, a perfect dice, a good saute of a dish--he would call over one of the boys. Now, this is a reasonable thing to do, logically, because of the four boys, three have worked professionally, and the one who hasn't is the most competent of the non-professional cooks. Furthermore, one or two of the girls get a little grossed out at the idea of gutting fish and removing the heads from chickens, so again, in terms of pure statistics, it makes sense to call on the guys.

But I want to behead chickens too! So I started a campaign to insert myself on his list of competent people who do things right. I started choosing tasks very specifically--anytime anything needed to be chopped evenly, I tried to snag the job. I always asked, "can I try?" when he did a demo, I avoided doing dishes when he was in the middle of something serious, and I tried to never work on the dessert. I tried to act more like the guys (who never ever do dishes unless explicitly asked), and by the end of last week or the beginning of this one I felt like he was starting to see me in a different light. Having to act like one of the guys sounds stupid, but it made the most sense as a good way to get around things. And I don't like doing dishes either, so while it was sort of an asshole move towards my female colleagues, it had its advantages.

Finally this week he asked me what I'm planning on doing after the course, to which I replied that I'm going back to the US to work the line in some restaurant somewhere in DC. He paused. "Have you worked in a restaurant before?" I could see exactly what was going through his head, because it had gone through mine so many times when I had friends or classmates say they want to work in a restaurant, be a cook. Do you know what the sacrifice is? Do you understand the physical stress? The mental stress? The misery? The crappy pay? Do you love it enough? Of course, when he asked me, I was able to laugh. I replied that I've worked in a handful of interesting and diverse places during my summers off from school, and that I love the life. I also replied that I knew exactly what he was thinking, and he smiled back.

Yesterday we were deboning chickens to keep the skin intact. He first asked the boys to start the work, but then when he told them to let some other people take over, he handed one of the knives to me. And I have to say I rocked it :)