At a recent food summit in Taipei, organised by S.Pellegrino and Gastronauts Asia, Margarita Forés, May Chow and Ana Roš shared their thoughts on diversity in the kitchen
A lot has changed in the food industry the last decade. What was once a man’s world now boasts more female chefs, including some of the world's best.
While more could still be done to promote better gender representation, what the industry has achieved so far deserves to be celebrated. And that’s exactly what Italian natural mineral water brand S.Pellegrino did to cap its 120th anniversary festivities in Taipei, Taiwan last month.
In collaboration with Gastronauts Asia (which is behind the Women in Gastronomy culinary symposium), S.Pellegrino invited the world’s best female chefs to share their thoughts on finding gender balance and their motivations to choose a career in the kitchen. The panel discussion was part of the Inspirational Women of the Era Summit, held at the Regent Taipei, which also included a lavish gala dinner and awarding ceremony.
The guest chefs were Philippines’ Margarita Forés (Asia’s Best Female Chef 2016), Hong Kong’s May Chow (Asia’s Best Female Chef 2017), and Slovenia’s Ana Roš (World’s Best Female Chef 2017).
IN THE BEGINNING
If there’s one thing we learned about these chefs, it's that they didn’t choose this field with hopes of shattering the idea that cooking professionally is a man’s job. Forés fondly recalled how as a child she loved to eat. Living in New York in the 1970s, she found herself exposed to a lot of novel Italian dining concepts such as fresh pasta joints, opened by immigrants who called the city their new home. “Working at Valentino, I enjoyed fashion. But at night, I would find myself cooking pasta for my friends," she shares, adding how she loved the fact that she was "feeding people".
Chow, on the other hand, was inspired by the TV show Yan Can Cook, while growing up in Canada in the 1980s. It helped too that she enjoyed a variety of delicious food from an early age, thanks to her mum, a housewife who cooked for five families and would prepare 10 to 15 dishes every day. Her connection with food, she says, is on an emotional level. "There’s something about the textures and doing things by hand that really spoke to me,” she muses.
See also: May Chow Of Little Bao Is Asia's Best Female Chef 2017