What it's like to cover trials in a pandemic

September 2021 marked two years since I ended my 11-year career at CNN Digital and started a new chapter as a field producer with Court TV. Gotta be honest, it’s been a fairly solitary journey, but not in a wholly sad way! Read on…

The pandemic hit six months after I started, but my team didn’t work from home for long. By June 2020, as Covid restrictions bent to due process, we were back on the road and finding our way into courthouses. Often, that meant squeezing into makeshift overflow rooms in closets, offices, even holding cells.

At Derek Chauvin’s trial, journalists were relegated to a conference center auditorium across the street from the courthouse where we sat alone at tables six feet apart. Other times, it was just me and my team in a Covid-restricted courtroom with trial participants. It was a surreal experience that heightened the sense of importance of our roles as witnesses to history. It continues today, although we’re slowly getting back into more courtrooms.

There were parts of traveling during the pandemic that I enjoyed. Roads were free of traffic. Planes were the cleanest I’d ever seen them. There were no lines at the airport. Walking the empty streets of big cities and small towns was eerie but sort of cool in a last-person-on-earth kind of way. In places where indoor dining was still a thing, I often had entire bars and restaurants to myself. I had my first bubble dining experience in snow-covered Green Bay outside the bright lights of Lambeau Field. It was magical, something I never thought I’d say in remote proximity to sports!

In other words, we still had a job to do and I didn’t do that part alone. I’m grateful to the visual storytellers and broadcast veterans who essentially helped this writer learn television — the correspondents, engineers and photojournalists who stood by me in the Covid trenches, and the producers and editors back in Atlanta who patiently walked me through ISOs, packages, fiber, TVUs, ifbs, sots, VOs and donuts. I’m a better journalist, collaborator and leader thanks to y’all.

Remembering September 11

Twenty years ago today, my friend Alex woke me with a phone call. I was a 20-year-old undergrad in Halifax, Nova Scotia — one hour ahead of New York time — and it was close to 10 a.m. A plane just hit the World Trade Center, Alex said. Had I heard from my family in New York City? 

Few of us had cell phones back then, and my Uncle Robert was one of them. When I tried to call him and it went straight to voicemail, the reality of the situation started to sink in. I called my Uncle Greg, the other hot shot with a cell. Rob was in the towers, he said. It was Tuesday morning — where else would he be? 

Like many who lived through that day, my life is pre- and post-911. Before 9-11, to me, the World Trade Center was a fancy office building, one where my uncle Robert happened to work, not a tourist destination or a symbol of American prosperity. It stood out among the city’s Beaux Arts landscape as a sleek, futuristic beacon, and I jumped at any excuse to visit. I recall the thrill of procuring a visitor sticker with my name spelled correctly at the north tower security desk. I remembering wandering through the maze of elevator banks until I found the one bound for the uppermost floors, where Uncle Robert worked in the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald. Rocketing up elevators is how I learned to pop my ears as a child, and no elevator in Manhattan was faster than those in the World Trade Center. I remember looking out the window of my uncle’s office into the endless horizon of buildings and thinking how lucky I was to call this dense island home, as if all the buildings and sidewalks belonged to me.

Back then, pre-911, that was how it felt to grow up in New York, as if the city was ours alone. No one ever wanted to visit. In movies and television shows, New York City was dangerous, dirty and expensive, but also flashy, fun and exciting. To those of us who lived there, the city was all of those things. We accepted the good and the bad with a blithe ease. Uncle Robert survived the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, but I honestly don’t recall the adults in my family talking about it, at least not with us kids. Nor when when my aunt unwittingly dodged a mass shooting on the Long Island Railroad by taking a different train, or when an armed robber surprised my mother and siblings in our apartment. New Yorkers are survivors who are defined by trauma and resilience. Before 9-11, it was a solitary honor. I repeat, nary a cousin, camp friend or penpal ever wanted to visit. According to the adults, sports meetups and academic competitions were always in Queens or New Jersey because parking and hotels were too expensive in the city. But we knew it was just that no one else had lived enough to be tough like us. When I recently visited the city for work, a colleague remarked that she thought I was from upstate. It pierced like the harshest of insults. I may no longer live there, but I am always a New Yorker. I’ve earned the title.

After 9-11, the world shared in our trauma and mourned with us. Our grief was collective, a national day of remembrance, a turning point in history. For a brief moment in time, Rudy Giuliani emerged as America’s mayor, a respectable leader. The story of my uncle’s life and death became part of a bigger narrative that continues to evolve. It felt weird, especially as the terror attacks became the justification for war, the demonization of Islam and the transformation of our national security agenda. I still struggle with how to privately grieve the public loss of my uncle given what his death has spawned. I still struggle with how to talk about it with my family. 

About three weeks after 9-11, I returned to New York for my uncle’s memorial service. His remains had not been recovered, but the time had come to acknowledge the loss of Robert Francis Sliwak, a beloved husband, father, brother and uncle. Getting there was no easy feat with commercial flights into New York grounded, and my school community pitched in. My friend Matt drove me to the port of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and the dean of students paid for my ferry ticket to Maine and my bus ride to New York. To this day, I hear from my Canadian friends more than anyone else on each anniversary, and remain grateful for their fellowship.

The towers were still smoldering when I arrived in New York, blanketing downtown in a dark plume of smoke that was visible from our rooftop in Yorkville. As the writer in the family who had eulogized my father three years earlier, I volunteered to do the same for Uncle Robert. At his standing room service in Long Island, I recalled my visits to his office and his visits to our apartment to raid our fridge. I described how losing him felt like losing another father, since he was among those who stepped up to help my family after my father died. I pleaded with the crowd to stand by my aunt Susan and my cousins. Ryan was just 6, Nicole and Kyle just 3 when their father died. Now, looking back over the past 20 years, I fear that I failed to heed my own advice. I left New York in 2008 for a change of scenery, to escape the ghosts, and we drifted apart. Through social media, I’ve caught glimpses of their inner lives and how Uncle Robert’s death continues to shape their identity.

“The hardest part about not growing up with my father was not being able to remember the person he was,” my cousin Kyle, now a 21-year-old recent college graduate, said in an Instagram tribute. “My story is still being written and my connection to him has only grown ever since his passing. So on this day, I do not mourn his loss, but celebrate his life.”

Today, my mother absurdly called me around 7:45 a.m. Why? To see how I’m doing, she insisted, after I told her I wasn’t feeling well the day before. I couldn’t help suspecting she did it to rouse me for the ceremony, just as she still calls to remind me of birthdays, wedding anniversaries and (increasingly) deathaversaries. Anyway, it worked. Today, for the first time I can remember, I tuned into the ceremony at the 9/11 memorial. The tolling of the bells marking each deadly moment sent chills throughout my body. Then, the reading of names began. There’s no way I’ll make it to Sliwak, I thought to myself. Suddenly, I recalled my first trip to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. For years, I avoided it. Finally, I went for the first time in 2016 at my husband’s request. As morbid as it may sound, it felt like a homecoming. There’s a priority line at the museum for relatives of people who died in the attacks who can enter for free. New Yorkers love preferential treatment since so little of the city is just for us.

The real perk is access to the repository of the city medical examiner’s office, a secure room within the museum where unclaimed and unidentified remains are stored. It’s one of few places that is still ours, where we can be alone with our grief. I don’t know this for a fact, but it stands to reason that Uncle Robert is in there, somewhere. I look forward to returning one day.

Remembering Veronica L. Cook

In the last week of 2020, as we clung to hope of better days, one of my oldest friends shared incomprehensible news: her mother and brother had just died within days of each other, suddenly and by sheer coincidence. Desperate to somehow lighten my friend’s load, I jump at the chance to write the obituary. It was a joy and an honor to reflect on the extraordinary life of Veronica L. Cook. Originally posted here.

***

When she was at her best, Veronica Cook was outwardly serious and reserved. But those who knew her say she was a joker at heart with a wry sense of humor who fought like hell for those she loved.

“Lord, take me now,” she was known to grumble with a sly smile when her children said something she didn’t like.

She battled systemic racism as a Black single mother raising two children in New York’s grittier days. When Sean and VaNessa grew up, she was a cool mom who socialized with them and their partners, dining and dancing into the night. When grandchildren arrived, Veronica became a doting grandma who showered them with gifts. When the grandchildren outgrew their clothing, she donated the items to children in need through her favorite nonprofit, “Little Essentials.”

Other times, when Veronica buckled under the weight of intergenerational trauma and decades of oppression, she wielded her intensity against those who loved her and refused to seek the kind of help her children thought she needed.

“She was a complicated person, especially toward the end of her life,” recalls her daughter, VaNessa Cook-Williams. “The most positive memories I have are of her being my greatest supporter.” 

A lifelong New Yorker, Veronica’s story is the story of the city, one of millions comprising the glittering mosaic she called home. And what a view of it she had from her 15th floor upper Manhattan apartment overlooking Inwood Hill Park in one direction and subway yards in the other. On Nagle Avenue, Veronica raised two children into thriving adults. And in that home, she drew her last breaths in the final week of 2020 at 75 years old.

She appreciated the “small things”

Veronica Cook was born on March 20, 1945, in Bronxville, New York. She came of age in an era of great social and political change, but life didn’t come easy.

She was the first of 15 children born to Mildred Watts, and Watts’ only child with Robert Small. Watts fell on hard times as a young single mother supporting herself as a seamstress, Veronica’s aunt, Lillian C. Brannan, said. 

Another relative, a great aunt who babysat Veronica, became her guardian, and subjected her to physical and emotional abuse, Brannan said. “It was a harsh household, but once she got out of the bubble, she became a different person.”

Brannan observed the transformation in Veronica – or Vera, as she called her -- when she visited Brannan’s family in Virginia in the summers of her youth.

“She would love to go out in the forest and grass. She would take blades of grass and make skirts and dresses. She was so talented with things with that,” Brannan said.

When Vera joined her cousins in the hot muddy yard to play, Brannan recalls there would be hell to pay if she scuffed her patent leather shoes or dirtied her dresses. Or whenever she helped herself to an extra biscuit. The cousins tried to clean her off and hid extra biscuits in their pockets to pass onto her.

“She got such pleasure out of small things we did for her, the love shown for her,” Brannan said. 

Back in Yonkers, Veronica’s fighting instincts kicked in when she was a teenager. She reported her abusive aunt to authorities and landed in a group home, Brannan said.

She graduated from the High School of Commerce on the Upper West Side -- precursor to Brandeis High School -- a model in its time of a comprehensive curriculum serving a majority-Black and Latino student body.

After studying fashion design, she got an apprenticeship with Oleg Cassini, according to Brannan. She married her first husband, Ozzie Phillips, and gave birth to their son, Sean Phillips, in 1965. In 1970, Vera got a job at Otis Elevator, but her passion for fashion and the finer things in life persisted.

“She used to sew and fashion her own clothing, I remember her and me making all of our maternity clothes, she could cut and design from newspapers on the table,” Brannan said. “She was a very beautiful woman in looks and personality, she had a lot of grace and poise. She can be remembered for her beautiful smile and eyes.”

By then, Brannan had moved into an apartment across the hall from Veronica’s in Yonkers. The two women were close in age and raised their children together, surrounded by other relatives who lived in the building. “Those were happy times,” Brannan said.

After Veronica separated from Phillips, as the story goes, Kenneth Cook spotted Veronica reading by the window of her home one day and decided he would marry her. They wed in 1978 and had their only child, VaNessa, in 1981. They moved into the apartment on Nagle Avenue, where Kenneth Cook’s family lived.

“She listened to her children”

Veronica’s keen visual sense imbued her home and she passed it on to her children. African masks and abstract paintings adorned the walls of their home. Like many teens in 1980s New York, Sean Phillips was obsessed with graffiti and hip-hop, bombing subway cars, then becoming a street art collector as he settled into a career with the MTA.

Veronica took care to cultivate her daughter’s aesthetic sensibilities as both a hobby and an armor, just as she did for herself. She encouraged her passion for fashion, photography, and cosmetology, while enforcing a rigid personal care regimen of daily makeup and weekly salon visits for blow outs. Cook-Williams now understands that her mother saw it as a way to protect or even beautify against the indignities of white America, but at the time she saw it as criticism.

It’s easy to imagine how Veronica’s experiences of workplace sexism and racism may have hardened her. As an administrative assistant in Barnard College’s security department from the mid-1980s onward, she lamented that she did not feel seen as an equal to her white associates, Cook-Williams said. She was constantly fighting her supervisors – also white -- for time off and flexible hours. “That’s what happens when you work for the man” was a common refrain at the dinner table, her daughter said.  

Nevertheless, she pressed on. When Veronica retired in 2009, she joked to her daughter that she might leave raw chicken feet strewn about campus, the ultimate senior prank. Whether she followed through is a secret she took to the grave. 

She applied the same relentlessness to pursuing opportunities for her children, cobbling together the money and means to get them into top-tier parochial schools. When a teacher at VaNessa’s Upper East Side private school said she was falling behind in math because she wasn’t trying hard enough, Veronica fought back. She worked out a deal with the same private tutor who instructed VaNessa’s classmates and advised her to seek a neuropsychological assessment, ultimately determining that she had a learning disability. 

“She listened to her children,” said Margit Mateo, who married Veronica’s son, Sean. “She stuck up for them.”

And she cared for their spouses. When Mateo spoke of needing a long winter coat, one showed up at her doorstep two days later. Where Veronica sometimes struggled to show love through words or direct actions, she compensated by gift-giving, her daughter recalls.

After she retired, Veronica’s health took a turn for the worse. A cancer diagnosis exacerbated longstanding medical conditions, including diabetes. She withdrew from society into the confines of Nagle Avenue, turning away her children at holidays and refusing their calls.

Her son-in-law Winslow Williams often accompanied her to doctor appointments and learned parts of her story. He said he worried about the toll chemotherapy took on her quality of life and her mental health. But Veronica was headstrong and would not be told what to do, he said. She insisted on living her life without the support of a home health attendant.

“I’ll remember her as a friend, somebody who had a great sense of humor,” he said. “I will miss her greatly”.

Veronica’s daughter found her mother’s body on the same day the family learned that her son Sean had died. As the family now sees it, at least Veronica was spared the heartbreaking news of her son’s death.

In addition to her daughter, son-in-law and daughter-in-law, Veronica leaves behind granddaughters Ophelia and Kailyn and great-grandson, Kal-El.

Last week I met my grandfather the hero for the first time. Now what do I do with myself?

This year marked the 20th anniversary of my father's death so it was hard for me to get into the pomp and circumstance of Father's Day. However, I spent much of last week pondering the complexities of familial bonds and how a single unit shapes the community. No grand conclusions yet, and there's surely some overlap with today's immigration debate but I'll leave those topics for others to hash out. 

For now, I'd like to share some of my recent discoveries about my grandfather, Zalman Grinberg, a physician and Holocaust survivor who was kind of a big deal in the ultra specific world of Jewish DP (displaced people) Zionism in the post-World War II era. (Say what? I'll get there.) He died when I was two years old so I have no personal memories of him. For most of my life I only knew him as a figure from the pages of history books and this NYT obit (yes, that's me in the NYT, nbd).

I knew that he earned a level of acclaim for smuggling Jewish babies out of the ghetto in Kovno, Lithuania, including the uncle for whom I am named. I got to know him a little more last week while visiting St. Ottilien, a Benedictine monastery in Germany where he helped start a hospital in April 1945 for Holocaust survivors -- most of whom were Jews -- who had nowhere to go after their liberation.

St. Ottilien, a Benedictine monastery in Upper Bavaria, was home to an American camp for displaced people after World War II.

Have you ever been to a monastery? It's like a little village centered on religious life, with men casually walking around in black robes. St. Ottilien rises out of undulating green farmland on the approach along on a winding road from the village of Eresing. It has modern amenities -- guesthouse, gift shop, beer garden -- along with a primary school, an organic farm and a printing press. These modest facilties sit in the shadow of the monastic residence, adorned by a collection of church spires, including a bell tower that sounds every 15 minutes. It was ringing when I first arrived at St. Ottilien on a misty late Saturday afternoon; it was easy to imagine the bells clamoring in my grandfather's ears when he took up residence there 73 years ago.

He had spent the previous nine months at a slave labor camp in Kaufering after being separated from his wife and son. As Allied Forces closed in, the Nazis loaded him and other captives on a train to Dachau to be exterminated. Shortly into the trip, Allied Forces bombed the train, mistaking it for a munitions transport. Those who survived, including Zalman, buried the dead in their first autonomous act in 6+ years. From there, they made their way through the forest to St. Ottilien, which had been turned into a German Army hospital four years earlier. Zalman is credited with brokering an arrangement to house the survivors in a gymnasium on the grounds, alongside German doctors and patients and the monks. Several people died on the way and after they arrived at St. Ottilien, and they are buried in the Jewish cemetery on the monastery's grounds.

The survivors were free, but their future remained uncertain. Zalman attempted to articulate what he perceived as their plight in a semi-famous speech at what a "liberation concert," one month after the Nazi regime surrendered to Allied Forces:

“We act as delegates of millions of victims to tell all mankind, to proclaim all over the world how cruel people may become, what brutal hellishness is concealed within a human being, and what a triumphant record of crime and murder has been achieved by the nation of Hegel and Kant, Schiller and Goethe, Beethoven and Schopenhauer.

However, we do not want revenge. If we took this vengeance it would mean we would fall to the depths of ethics and morals the German nation has been in these past l0 years. We are not able to slaughter women and children! We are not able to burn millions of people! We are not able to starve hundreds of thousands!

We are free now, but we do not know how, or with what to begin our free yet unfortunate lives. It seems to us that for the present mankind does not understand what we have gone through and experienced during this period. And it seems to us that we shall neither be understood in the future. We unlearned to laugh; we cannot cry any more; we do not understand our freedom: this probably because we are still among our dead comrades!

Let us rise and stand in silence to commemorate our dead!

The site of a liberation concert where Zalman Grinberg described the plight of Holocaust survivors.

The speech was one of several steps on Zalman's part that drew him into the leadership of Jewish Holocaust survivors, in particular, those who advocated for Israeli statehood as a solution to the DP question. He co-founded the Central Committee of Liberated Jews and served as its first chair to advocate for this goal. He toured America and spoke to large audiences to raise money and support for the cause, all the while throwing major shade at the American and British governments and international aid groups (Jewish and secular) for what he and others described as a policy of neglect toward survivors. Sound familiar?

As his stature as a public figure rose his influence as a physician waned at St. Ottilien, the Benedictine monastery in Germany where his work on behalf of DPs began. As I learned last week, St. Ottilien became a haven for Jewish survivors from 1945 to 1948. It was the home to the only hospital in an American DP camp run by Jewish staff, who worked alongside monks and German nurses and doctors. More than 400 "Ottilien babies" were born there as part of the DP baby boom. I had the great pleasure of meeting several of those former babies last week, and many of them described their parents' stints at St. Ottilien as the happiest time of their lives. Those are stories for another day.

Then a bunch of other stuff happened to Zalman, including a move to Israel, then to the US, but those, too, are stories for another day. But it was definitely surreal to be regarded as the granddaughter of a hero, especially in relation to a person I never knew -- someone who had actually chosen to not have a relationship with me or my family for reasons that certainly merit their own story. More on that later, but the experience of last week certainly left me wishing that I had heard more about St. Ottilien from Zalman instead of from historians. 

For all of those reasons, ever since my trip -- Zionist politics aside -- I've been searching for parallels between me and Zalman, apple-doesn't-fall-far-from-the- tree style.

I was struck by what Israeli historian Dr. Ada Schein described as Zalman's penchant for "spontaneous leadership" -- quick-decision making under chaotic circumstances through a mix of charisma and fast action. "Sounds like me," I thought, although on paper I have very little to show for it. My resume of spontaneous leadership largely consists of breaking stalemates on where to go for dinner or rousting friends for impromptu hikes and a stint as an employee council chair. And that time in kindergarten I wrote a letter to the NYC DOE requesting doors on bathroom stalls in my elementary school (and prevailed!). But I still like this idea of spontaneous leadership, as it shifts agency to the individual to get s--t done from those who are supposed to be in charge. Maybe that's what we have in common, a healthy skepticism of officialdom in various forms. I'm confident that those who know me will back me up on this.

So this is the pressure people face in the shadow of larger than life relatives. Let's see where it leads...

You can get rid of the judge, but what about the system?

Early numbers suggest that voters have elected to recall the judge in Brock Turner case. Even if it’s the end for Aaron Persky there’s still a system in place that gives judges latitude to make similar decisions based on numerous factors, including his age, his track record and more. You can read about them in this piece, which includes an analysis of 52 cases of NCAA Division I athletes investigated by police for allegations of sexual violence over the past 20 years. [TL;DR - 13 of them resulted in prison or jail time].

This is why first-time offenders like Brock Turner get the benefit of the doubt

Why we still need 'women's dinners'

I wrote this after attending a beautiful dinner at the 2017 Atlanta Food & Wine Festival prepared by six renowned women. It was one of those women-only affairs and I went into it asking why we still need these gender-specific events. What I discovered surprised me and I was pleased with how the piece turned out. Then I couldn't get anyone to publish it. So ... here it is!

***

Behind the scenes at the Atlanta Food and Wine Festival's "Powerful and Delicious" dinner at 2017, which featured an all-female roster of food and beverage professionals.

Whenever chef Katie Button thinks she’s had enough of the tendency to single out women in the kitchen, something happens to remind her of women’s overall standing in the industry.

The owner and executive chef of two acclaimed restaurants in Asheville, North Carolina, Button is a success in her own right. But, when she’s with her business partner husband or male sous chef, strangers often assume she works for them, not with them. 

“It’s happened like four times since I've been here,” Button said, chuckling as she peeled tomatoes in the prep kitchen of the Atlanta Food and Wine Festival in early June. The din of clanging metal trays, sizzling grills and knives knocking on cutting boards echoed through the cavernous space as Button and four other women prepared for the main event: a lavish five-course dinner with pairings hosted by women for women, aptly named “Powerful and Delicious.” 

Toward the back of the room, Whitney Otawka was peeling white Georgia shrimp while her husband pressed mini hot dog buns on a grill for a Southern twist on a lobster roll. Otawka is the name and face of their partnership, having built her reputation on Top Chef Season 9 and high-profile stints in Hugh Acheson restaurants. Now, she’s the culinary director of Georgia’s historic Greyfield Inn on Cumberland Island. 

Yet, just like Button, those who don’t know her often assume she’s her husband’s pastry chef.

Such is the lot of an acclaimed woman chef even in an era when there’s more opportunity for them than ever in food and wine. The slights bring to mind Time magazine’s infamous 2013 Gods of Food issue featuring three men on the cover and not a single woman on its list of “influencers.” Four years later, women chefs are still fighting to be recognized as chefs first and foremost, free of a gender label just like their male counterparts, as if the kitchen were a microcosm of struggles against gender bias playing out in American on a near-daily basis. 

Organizers of the annual Atlanta Food and Wine Festival say this dynamic shows the need for events by women and for women, and they’re not alone. Mimicking the business world, women-centric events are common at food festivals and they make up a growing number of industry conferences, intended to inspire and uplift women and build community.

The “Powerful and Delicious” dinner boasted an lineup of six women with impressive credentials: Three Top Chef contestants with five successful businesses under their direction. The first woman sommelier of Tampa steakhouse Bern’s was curating the wine list and the first vice president of Murray’s Cheese was doing cheese pairings. 

But even at their level it’s hard for them to escape gender politics— especially when they keep getting invited to events based on their gender. So, why do they keep doing them? The short answer is because they’re fun (most of the time) and they build communities. 

“It’s the best company,” Otawka said. “It's just a different sort of vibe across the board when you're surrounded by other professional women.” 

Women tend to be more collaborative and supportive of each other in those settings, she said. Often, there’s more direct compliments and less bragging about one’s own work. 

But, she and the other chefs long for the day when they won’t have to explain what it’s like to be a female chef. But as their stars grows so does the tendency to make them ambassadors for their gender.

Otawka said women-driven events take up most of her schedule and it drives her “a little crazy.” She appreciates the recognition but she wishes it were for something more, say, gender-neutral. After all, when five men get together to cook it doesn’t become “the dude dinner,” she pointed out. 

She co-signs Michelin-starred chef Dominique Cremen’s famous lament that she may well always be a “woman chef” first and a chef second. Even Cremen has said she was tempted to refuse a patronizing award for “the World’s Best Female Chef” until she decided she was better off using the prestige to help normalize the idea of women chefs.

Similar motivations inspired Otawka and her husband to make her the face of their brand. It was the obvious choice for their personalities— she’s the outgoing architect with the big ideas and he’s the quiet carpenter who executes their vision. But it was also a conscious decision to ensure she would never be mistaken for less than an equal partner. 

“I didn't want people to overlook the fact that I was also a chef because I still get questions like “Oh, you’re the chef?”

A few feet from Otawka, pastry chef Rebecca Masson sliced peaches into razor-thin half-moons for a tart. Though she’s “a little over” the whole women in the kitchen thing she acknowledges expectations can be different for women.

While working in New York kitchens db Bistro Moderne, Daniel and the Red Cat, she realized she had to develop a hard shell against gendered criticisms if she was going to make it. Now, as owner of Fluff Bake Bar in Houston, she gets flak for not embodying the stereotypical “apron-wearing,” happy-go-lucky pastry chef. 

“Like, why do you expect me to come out of the kitchen and fawn over you while I’m working? You don’t expect Chris Shepherd to stop running the line and come out of the kitchen and do a song and dance.”

The slights Button experienced earlier that day remind her that the equitable treatment she’s experienced over the years isn’t necessarily the norm. She took a chance in giving up a prospective career in engineering to wait tables in DC. She worked her way up to the world-renowned kitchen of elBulli in Spain and returned home with her husband to start a hospitality group. 

But she realizes that life gets in the way for a lot of women, especially for working mothers. If sharing her story at a $150/plate dinner helps normalize women chefs others then it’s worth being singled out as one.

“I hope it inspires someone,” she said.

But there’s no denying the energy is different in a room dominated by women, whether it’s the kitchen or the dining room, said cheese expert Liz Thorpe, who worked with Masson on cheese and dessert pairings. The events themselves can be beneficial to chefs and guests. Like businessmen hitting the green for a round, getting women together builds relationships that open the door to opportunities.  

“The things that motivate and inspire and drive women are not the same for men, and that’s worth talking about,” she said. “Women are interested in the stories behind the people. They want to know how and why they got there. Women share a lot of commonalities that they can benefit from talking about.

Annie Pettry, the owner of Decca Restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, said she cringes at the “female chef” distinction because she’s never felt as if she was treated differently for being a woman in 23 years of working in kitchens, mostly under other women.  

The fact that women chefs are still considered worthy of singling out underscores the need for more visibility, she said.

“If we’re still talking about it it’s still an issue,” she said. “We’ll just have to keep talking about it until it’s not anymore.”