There’s nothing like a list to get people angry. That much was clear last week, when Time Magazine put together their Gods of Food issue and featured almost no women, inflaming food lovers the world over, as these inadequate breakdowns of “The Best” tend to do. So why do them at all?
In the U.S., the Time issue was controversial because of a cover that heavily implied New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was fat (Headline: “The Elephant in the Room.”). Around the rest of the world, it featured three famous male chefs: David Chang of Momofuku, Alex Atala of D.O.M. and René Redzepi of Noma. As Eater extensively covered, inside the magazine wasn’t much better: a tree of influencers in the food world included no women, a list of 13 Gods of Food had a few – though none of them were female chefs – and small sidebar about pastry chefs featured two women.
Eater’s Hillary Dixler interviewed editor Howard Chua-Eoan about how the issue came together and his responses about the issue were frustrating. He dismissed women Dixler suggested who could have been included by saying “they don’t have that…” (What? Je ne sais quoi?) while admitting that yes, there’s a gender imbalance in the food world:
Why are there no female chefs on the chef family tree?
Well I think it reflects one very harsh reality of the current chefs’ world, which unfortunately has been true for years: it’s still a boys club. There are of course very good and terrific female chefs: Carme Ruscalleda, Elena Arzak, April [Bloomfield] of course, Anita Lo of course, and of course Alice [Waters]. But it’s very strange, the network of women, as Anita herself has been saying for so many years now, isn’t as strong as the network of men. And when you look at this chart it’s very clear. It’s all men because men still take care of themselves. The women really need someone — if not men, themselves actually — to sort of take care of each other. The thing about the women I named, they are all spectacularly good chefs. But they also had to force their way to where they are now, they are almost their own creations. It’s unfortunate, the women who are there are very good, but very few of them actually benefitted from the boys club, as you can see from the chart.
“At this point, rather than have someone on the list who other people will say ‘fills a quota,’ we did not want to fill a quota of a woman chef just because she’s a woman, Chua-Eoan added, essentially admitting that their ranking system was based off of old school ideas of success, and therefore ultimately flawed. “We wanted to go with reputation and influence.”
The New York Times tried to explore the question of why female chefs get overlooked in their Room for Debate section, featuring short essays from male and female chefs in the industry. But none came up with anything other than what’s commonly known, and what Chua-Eoan has already said here. Anita Lo of Annisa wrote, “‘The Gods of Food’ represents an old world point of view. Let’s make it the last vestige. And let’s use the conversation it started as an opportunity for change.”
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