Chef Sally Abé is lifting the lid on what being a woman in male-dominated, professional kitchens is really like.
Having often been the only female chef on duty, the 37-year-old describes fine dining kitchens as traditionally “a hot-headed, toxic environment” where “if you didn’t behave like one of the boys and you showed ‘weakness’ then you just didn’t cut the mustard”.
Abé’s career has taken her through many Michelin-starred kitchens; from The Savoy hotel, to Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s and then five years at The Ledbury, among others.
With relentless 16-hour days, barely having time to take toilet breaks and never calling in sick unless you were on your deathbed, Abé paints a brutal picture of professional kitchens in her new memoir, A Woman’s Place Is In The Kitchen.
Fine dining kitchens have typically had an army-like structure – “a lot of the language and terminology that we use and the hierarchy is all based on the army” – and she says that status quo is perpetuated through the ranks of the kitchen.
“Young boys that go into the army get indoctrinated, and it’s the same thing in kitchens. And if you’ve spent the last 10 years seeing a certain pattern of behaviour, then I’m sure, nine times out of 10, people will continue to perpetuate that behaviour.”
Abé writes in the book that she eventually became ‘hardened to the shouting… I had learned to let the sarcasm wash over me and to completely ignore the lewd conversations between the boys’.
The chef, who has made TV appearances on the BBC’s Great British Menu, Celebrity MasterChef and James Martin’s Saturday Morning, was only the second woman, to her knowledge, to work the Meat section (the highest-ranked section of a professional kitchen and what’s commonly known as ‘Sauce’ in the chef world) at acclaimed London restaurant, Claridge’s.
She suffered from “massive imposter syndrome” at the time, “which was causing anxiety” and she was on the road to burnout when Gordon Ramsay intervened and helped organise for Abé to see a counsellor, something she’s still grateful for.
“I don’t know where I’d be now had I not had that therapy, like I definitely think that it sort of changed my mindset hugely, and it kind of saved me really,” says the chef, who hails from Mansfield, Nottinghamshire.
She thinks the obvious lack of other women in professional kitchens probably contributed. “When I was younger I didn’t really register it as much, and as I started to get older I was like, hang on, what is going on here?”
She said she felt she “had something to prove” being one of the only women there. Saying: “I was like, yeah I’m going be the only girl and I’m going to prove [myself] to those boys.
“But it wasn’t until I got to a management position that I was like, hang on a second. Why is this? And how can we change it?”
Abé joined The Harwood Arms in 2017 as head chef, where she retained the London pub’s Michelin star, and is now a consultant chef at The Pem Restaurant – and in both she created predominately female kitchens.
“It’s just a lovely, respectful, empowering environment,” Abé says of The Pem. Male chefs, she says, are more than welcome, but “it’s just different, everyone supports each other and respects each other. There’s no screaming or shouting, or even animosity.
“But that’s a culture I’ve instilled, so regardless of whether I’ve got men or women in the kitchen, that culture would be the same because I’m very selective about who I employ.
“If you’ve not got the right attitude and you’re not going to fit in with the way I want the kitchen to run, I just won’t give that person a job. It doesn’t really matter how good their CV is.”
Despite professional kitchens still being male-dominated today, Abé receives more job applications from female chefs, thanks to her reputation for running things differently.
Only 8% of the UK’s Michelin-starred restaurants are led by women, according to a 2023 survey, and maternity leave is basically non-existent in the fine dining industry, Abé notes. “I think having children is one of the biggest barriers to women succeeding in kitchens.
“A friend of mine basically opened her own restaurant so that she could have kids, because she knew it was the only way she’d be able to juggle the two.
“I know a few chefs from my earlier days of cooking that have left the industry to to have children.”
Meanwhile men in the industry have children all the time, of course. “That’s just the patriarchy in full effect isn’t it really,” says Abé .
She’s determined to help change things for women though. While at The Harwood Arms, one of her staff became pregnant. “I just said, well, how many hours can you work? Let’s just do that and then I’ll find someone else to fill in.
“There’s always a way around it and I’d hate to think that any woman was desperate to be a chef and to be in the kitchen, and felt like that had to be a barrier.”
She hopes in the next 10 or 20 years more women will start to come through the industry. “It’s not a case of having a few successful female chefs, then overnight we’ve got a 50/50 balance in kitchens. It’s just not the way it’s going to work.
“Societal change takes a long time and it probably won’t be in my career span that we get to 50/50 in kitchens, but for me, it’s important to stand up for that and be part of that change.”
A Woman’s Place Is In The Kitchen by Sally Abé is published in hardback by Little Brown, priced £22. Available now
