By Alan J. Liddle
SAN FRANCISCO A decade after Women Chefs & Restaurateurs' first national event here, the organization and hundreds of its members returned for a conference filled with soul searching, peer counseling, education and a pinch of fiery commentary.
The WCR's 10th anniversary national conference, held Nov. 1517 at the Mark Hopkins InterContinental Hotel, was highlighted by special honors for finedining legend Ella Brennan. During the event's fourth annual Women Who Inspire awards dinner, restaurateur Brennan of Commander's Palace in New Orleans received the WCR Barbara Tropp President's Award, which recognized a lifetime of culinary excellence.
Eight restaurant professionals from across the nation who believed women were not fully sharing in the economic and educational gains being enjoyed by some of their male counterparts founded WCR in 1993. Intended to create a peer support network, the organization primarily has attracted chefs and owners of upscale, independent restaurants.
But to live up to the WCR's founding goals of "exchange, education, enhancement, equality, empowerment, entitlement, environment and excellence," the next generation of leaders may need to seek members from outside that circle of boutique restaurants, keynote speaker Joyce Goldstein suggested.
Goldstein, a founding WCR board member who for several years operated the trendsetting Square One Mediterranean restaurant in San Francisco, focused on the WCR's entitlement goal of providing "opportunities, encouragement and support for women of all backgrounds who wish to enter or advance in the restaurant industry."
"All women and all backgrounds I'm going to say that over and over because they don't always enter the business through our [upscale restaurant] doors,"
Goldstein noted. "Sometimes they enter through fast food and larger companies. Are they included in this definition?"
But if Goldstein questioned the group's progress with its entitlement goal, she expressed nothing but pride about the organization's scholarship program and sounded satisfied about WCR's results in the area of empowerment for women. WCR's empowerment role, she said, reflects efforts to "examine the issues of women in the workplace and advocate the improvement of work environments in the restaurant industry.
"Have we had an impact there?" Goldstein asked. "I think we have."
She concluded by addressing the younger members of WCR, which today claims more than 2,000 members, and revisiting the theme of inclusion.
"It's time for you guys, during the next 10 years, to sit down and take a fresh look at these goals and see if we have met them," Goldstein said. "Do we want WCR to be more inclusive or more exclusive? It's your call and worth lots of discussion, even if we ultimately reject reaching out to all of the women in the restaurant industry, and you might have to rewrite some of these goals."
The advice and insights flowed like a decade old Cabernet Sauvignon down a connoisseur's gullet during the key "Voice and Vision of the WCR's Founders" general session.
Barbara Lazaroff, who along with partner Wolfgang Puck helped create some of America's best known contemporary dining spots, including the Spago finedining group, advised aspiring operators and chefs to judge their progress according to personal goals and values. "You don't have to be on the cover of Food Arts" to be successful, the WCR cofounder and owner of Imaginings Interior Design explained.
Lazaroff also counseled her peers to "be flexible" while developing business concepts, and "if you see a trend, be ready to jump on it."
WCR co founder Mary Sue Milliken, a TV cooking show celebrity and co owner of three Border Grill restaurants in Southern California and Las Vegas and Ciudad in Los Angeles, told how she survived an earlier business failure. "I really thought I wouldn't exist after it closed," she said. But in the end the experience "cemented" her relationship with partner Susan Feniger, taught her it was permissible to "ask for help" and prompted her to tell aspiring restaurateurs, "Don't trust anyone to do the financials but yourself."
If she had a regret, Milliken indicated, it was that as a chef and business owner, she waited too long to assess her own "strengths and weaknesses." After doing that, she said, she was free to embrace what she does well and work to improve other things.
New York chef restaurateur Anne Rosenzweig of Inside underscored the necessity to go with the flow when one's career path veers unexpectedly. When she encountered a "good old boys" network during her time at the "21" Club, she "learned to manipulate" her way through that system, the WCR co founder acknowledged. She also recalled that she got into teaching after losing a restaurant lease.
Even if your career is progressing as you expected, be aware and act on "the tremors," advised WCR co founder Lidia Bastianich, the New York chef owner of Felidia,
Becco and Lidia's. Referring to the start of her career and the guilt she felt about time spent away from her children, Bastianich sought to reassure others in the audience now experiencing those feelings that one can pursue a career and raise children. She cited advice she subscribes to that "children want happy parents."
Johanne Killeen, WCR cofounder and chef owner of Al Forno restaurant in Providence, R.I., said fledgling chefs and restaurateurs who might have been driven to join the industry by the sort of "passion" that seized her must remember to "think exit strategy.
She explained that "all of a sudden the future is here."
The audience clapped loudly at several points during the founders' session but was particularly engaged when one of its own suggested that WCR might help lead a revolt against school lunch programs "to change the garbage our children are fed."
Some panelists expressed exasperation when a journalist questioned them about their thoughts on food trends for the next decade.
"This constant obsession with trends is turning us into the most shallow of people," Goldstein opined, adding, "It's better to look at food safety; it's going to be a huge issue." |
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