Food Writing in the #MeToo Era

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/16/insider/metoo-food-writing.html

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Traci Des Jardins, a Northern California chef with six restaurants who once beat Mario Batali on “Iron Chef America,” first told me the frog story in 2005 when I was interviewing her for an article in The Times.

She was 19 and working at Troisgros, a temple of nouvelle cuisine in Loire, France, where she had landed an apprenticeship. She was young, a woman and an American with Mexican roots, as helpful in the strict and often brutal hierarchy of the French brigade de cuisine as a package of raw steaks might be in a tiger’s cage.

A farmer had brought in dozens of live frogs. A cook called her over. She knew it was a setup, but she walked to the prep table anyway. You don’t say no in a professional kitchen.

A couple of cooks were cutting the frogs in half, amused by the way they squirmed and bled. She was handed a pair of shears.

Instead, she grabbed a frog, looked one of the cooks directly in the eye and whacked it on the table. It was, she thought, the most humane way to do it. But she also wanted to make a point. She then continued to prepare each frog so its legs could be served for dinner.

“You just have to adapt,” she told me, “but not give in.”

At the time, I saw it as a tale of exceptionalism, of how agile and tough she — and all women chefs, really — had to be to walk the long road to success.

Now, in the #MeToo era and with an increasing number of restaurants rooting out physical and sexual harassment at all levels of their organizations, I view the story as a blatant example of bullying and sexism.

Like a lot of people’s, my lens changed. And so has what qualifies as news for food writers.

In between stories about cooking and cultural trends, I now spend my days reporting about sexism, sexual abuse and harassment in the food world.

The emotions involved are stronger than any I have come across since I started writing about food full time 20 years ago.

The story of a culture coming to terms with pervasive sexual harassment weaves through issues of class and race, sexual orientation and gender. Victims’ voices rightfully have new power. And debates ensue over whether men are speaking loudly enough against it, and whether they should be speaking at all.

There are practical questions: Should home cooks throw out the cookbooks from chefs exposed for regularly grabbing and propositioning women? What if the chef is facing sexual assault charges?

Should you make a reservation at a restaurant where blatant sexual harassment or assault allegedly occurred? Should chefs who have committed harassing behavior that might be considered low-level piggishness be allowed to continue their careers? Or are they as bad as chefs accused of rape?

Is reformation, whether for a high-profile chef or a low-level bar manager, even an option?

And when does the sexualized camaraderie that many people in the restaurant business enjoy cross over into harassment?

The answers to some of those questions, I’ve found, change with generations.

Earlier this year, I moderated a panel of women chefs in New York at the Cherry Bombe Jubilee, a conference presented by the people who produce media focused on women in the food business.

I asked the crowd of 800, most of them women, if anyone had not experienced sexual harassment. It was a rhetorical question.

From my perch on the stage, I saw only one hand go up. It was Mimi Sheraton, the very opinionated former restaurant critic and reporter for The Times, who is 92.

I’ve spoken with other women of her generation who said they hadn’t been sexually harassed, either. Some told me that a woman whose boss pressures her for sex should simply leave the job, that getting drunk and sitting on a famous chef’s lap invites unwanted sexual behavior. Much of #MeToo, in their opinion, is overblown.

On the other side of the spectrum are young women (and quite a few men) who believe that a woman should not have to leave a good job because a cook continues to hit on her, that she should be able to lie down drunk at the feet of anyone she likes and not be assaulted.

In the middle are women like Ms. Des Jardins, who knew enduring harassment was the price of success and developed ways to get men to knock it off.

It wasn’t ideal, but it was what it was.

“We’re not past it by any means,” she said when I called her to talk about the frog story recently, “but it’s time to focus on the people who are doing it right. And there are plenty of them.”

Coming Soon

Check back here for video of “The View From the Kitchen: Restaurant Culture in California,” Kim Severson’s July 17 discussion, hosted by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, with three leading California chefs: Dominique Crenn, chef and co-owner of Atelier Crenn; Tanya Holland, chef and owner of Brown Sugar Kitchen; and Reem Assil, owner and founder of Reem’s California.

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