If you read my post A Year of Lessons which I wrote as we were leaving Amman for Beirut in 2016, I paint a fairly positive picture of working in Blue Fig’s kitchen as a consultant. What I don’t think I even realised when I was writing it, was how challenging some parts of that year of lessons had actually been for me. In Amman I had begun to slip into a dark hole as I was subjected to leering men whispering comments under their breath as I was labeled a foreigner who was likely easy regardless of what I was wearing or doing. I’ll never forget going to the Abdoun Mall at 10am on a Thursday and having men stare at me like I was naked going up the escalator. There was nothing playful or flirty in their approach. It was downright dirty. I couldn’t walk on the streets without being called to, cars slowing down menacingly. Never one to wear revealing clothing normally, I couldn’t bare my shoulders or legs, certainly no cleavage to speak of. While these men sexualised me in horrible ways, it made me feel about as un-sexy, unfeminine, ugly as I had ever felt in my life. 

We used to joke, but it is no joke, that every woman should move to Beirut after suffering that kind of indignity in Amman. The women of Lebanon celebrate their femininity, their gorgeous freedom to dress how they choose and show off their assets, not diminish themselves. Yes, this is superficial, but gosh how it matters. I walked the streets freely never feeling disrespected or diminished. I threw on shorts and a tank top and wasn’t given a second glance. I was slowly filled back up with what had been taken from me. The only time I was slightly uncomfortable was early in my time there, when a taxi driver who couldn’t have been less than 70 years old, with thick hair sprouting from his ears, started to climb over the seat towards me when we were stopped in traffic and said, “attini bose” or give us a kiss. I quickly exited his car. 

While Lebanon is so much more liberal on the surface, my experience working with restauranteurs and in professional kitchens belied that progressiveness. In one strategy session before opening a restaurant, we were discussing how the kitchen and menu I was setting up would work. The consultant told me that the Philippine ladies he would be hiring (because they were cheap labor and “clean”) would have to be allowed to take time off every month for their periods. Stunned, I fought back saying that was a completely irrelevant issue. He didn’t budge. While heading the kitchen at Super Vega, delivery men always walked right past me towards one of our male cooks with their queries. They looked past me like I didn’t exist. I was called a “stubborn woman” by another consultant for demanding that things be done to a certain standard with quality ingredients. He wondered out loud to me how my husband liked my stubbornness. One chef working under me (not for very long) belittled my techniques because they were not the standard slap-dash, lazy, methods he’d always used successfully. I didn’t yell at my staff - another mark against me. I hoped to install a certain level of inquisitiveness in my cooks, hoping my philosophy might just rub off on them to be used on down the line once I was gone. I worked hard and demanded the same of the men working for me.  All of this was viewed by some of the men I worked with as cause for concern.

This is not to say there aren’t women, formidable women, working in the food industry of Lebanon. Mireille Hayek is the owner and chef behind the wildly successful Em Sharif empire which has expanded to the Gulf and Harrods in London. Aline Kamakian started the popular Armenian restaurant Mayrig which has also grown outside of Lebanon. Rouba Khalil has her namesake catering company and store fronts which are immensely popular.  Liza restaurants in both Beirut and Paris is fronted by Liza Asseily. However, I wonder if the chefs in their kitchens doing the daily grunt work are also women?  Another group of wonderful female professionally trained chefs welcomed me to their city within months of my arrival. They’d gone to France or the UK or US to train, most had worked abroad before bringing their skills back home. They’d written cookbooks, opened restaurants, were influencers, and consulted for food businesses around the world.  We supported one another and I got most of my initial work through their kindness and recommendations. Recognising the challenges of being women in the field, when I opened my kitchen atelier space it was with the thought in part that it could be a space where this group of women could host events, work on projects together, launch their books or products, support each other.  

Lebanese women in the more rural areas are revered for their mooneh skills (making seasonal preserves and pantry items). There were endless NGOs whose entire plan was based around training women to support their families by working in food. It’s work women are able to do from home while still attending to their household duties to bring in some extra cash. Our book Empowering Women through Cooking Lebanon was done in conjunction with the World Food Program which had workshops and  education all based around professional work in food services. I visited some of these women in the North of Lebanon, far from the more comparatively progressive ideals of Beirut, and came away feeling empty. The women I met talked so positively about their culinary training, but not one of them was actually working in the industry. How I wished that day that my Arabic had been adequate enough to ask them more about why they weren’t working. I imagine that lack of childcare gets in the way, but also have been told that if a man and woman are competing for the same work in a kitchen, the man usually wins. 

This was put into depressingly clear focus while I was creating a new concept and menu for two young female restauranteurs who planned to work on site themselves and see their restaurant through on their own. Along with me they’d also hired female designers to oversee the branding and menu design, a female photographer…..but when it came time to hire the kitchen staff (which I also oversaw) and suggested we look for female chefs to work in the kitchen, they recoiled in horror! A woman couldn’t possibly do this kind of hard work day in and day out.  How could she do this work and have a family? How would she keep the standards high? Again I tried to reason with them, asked them how they thought I had gotten to where I was? I didn’t just one day start developing menus without any prior experience in kitchens. Were my days of working in the catering kitchen of Daniel Boulud in New York cutting hundreds of baguettes into thin slices at just the right angle and width while being shouted at by another female chef for nought? What about the hours on my feet and menu planning and recipe development? The hauling of groceries on my own from the supermarket through the streets of London? The cleaning up after an event? They wouldn’t budge. This to me was such a betrayal of women and said so very much about the myths and limitations women were placing on themselves. It still makes me incredibly sad to think about.