She Chef (2022)

Directed by Melanie Liebheit and Gereon Wetzel

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reading Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2000) by chef, adventurer and overall food lover, the late (very great) Anthony Bourdain. It’s a fascinating look into a kitchen culture dominated by broken abusive men, who elicit respect (or fear) from their staff consisting of (mostly) similarly broken men. Homophobia, misogyny and good ol’ racism permeate this weird fossil of a book that belonged to a world that I remember, but truly can’t fathom today (doesn’t mean that we have no problems whatsoever, though).

When Bourdain mentions women outside the kitchen, they’re usually referred to as “pussy” or “chicks” (charming). However, when he mentions them inside the kitchen, he regales us with some anecdotes to show us how much he respects them for surviving the kitchen environment. Women line cooks (no mention of female chefs whatsoever) are a “true joy” (p. 57) to work with, as they can be a “civilizing factor in a unit where conversation tends to center around who’s got the bigger balls and who takes it in the ass.” (p. 57).

According to Bourdain (circa 2000), a good female line cook should have the following traits: “tough-as-nails, foul-mouthed, trash-talking”, “studly” and they should under no circumstances be “weak reeds” (p. 57). They should also come into work when highly pregnant, never call in sick, and ignore or laugh off any abuse or sexual harassment they might incur. In other words – they should be men.

After weeks of me exposing myself to that nonsense (I admit that the last third of the book did get better), She Chef was a breath of fresh air. Although it premiered at DOK Leipzig in 2022, I’ve only recently heard of the film, as it came out in German cinemas in May 2023.

The movie tells the story of chef Agnes Karrasch. After acquiring a degree in Travel and Tourism Management and completing several stints as a private caterer as well as a guest chef, Karrasch started her training at the Steirereck, a Michelin-star restaurant located in Vienna. At the end of her training, her boss, impressed by what he saw, recommended Agnes for the Austrian junior national team to compete in the Culinary World Cup 2018, which they won. Now 25, Agnes begins her wandering years and sets out to intern at three very different Michelin-star restaurants.

Agnes makes her ambitions exceedingly clear: she wants to work in haute cuisine, she wants to have a restaurant of her own one day, and she’s fine to not have children or a family life to achieve these goals.

Her journey begins at Vendôme in Bergisch-Gladbach in the west of Germany, which then had three Michelin stars (now bumped to two). Over three weeks Agnes works at every station the restaurant has to offer and makes friends with the kitchen crew, including the then sous-chef Dennis Melzer (now head chef of Vendôme), with whom she remains close friends to this day.

Agnes and Dennis

Vendôme is a traditional fine dining establishment, as we see virtually no women in the kitchen, except for the dessert station. The jokes are crude and, as expected, Agnes experiences everyday sexism (at one point the head chef Joachim Wissler asks her whether a small girl like her can handle big knives), which she (in good old Bourdain fashion) shrugs off. Just like Bourdain describes, Agnes takes part in the jokes and shakes off anything uncomfortable for the chance to be and learn at this venerated establishment.

The feeling that things have to change starts to creep in early on in the movie. Although it seems that it doesn’t even occur to Agnes to talk back, there are glimpses of her resisting the testosterone-filled environment she finds herself in, even in the early stages of her internship. She tells the pâtissière about her sexist experiences in Steirereck and reminisces how she was the only woman out of 16 chefs in the kitchen. There’s a blatant belief that, if you become pregnant, you’re automatically out of the industry, to which Agnes replies: “I won’t leave the kitchen. You’ll have to carry me out of here.”

In the end of her internship, she genuinely seems happy and leaves with a glowing review. Next we see her making her way to Disfrutar in Barcelona.

The three founders and head chefs of Disfrutar from left to right: Oriol Castro Forns, Eduard Xatruch Cerro, Mateo Casañas Puignao

Disfrutar is an experimental restaurant, specializing in molecular cuisine/gastronomy, and right off the bat the atmosphere is very different from Vendôme, as the head chefs are much more communicative and there are several women in the kitchen (seems like a low bar).

Crispy egg yolk with mushroom gelatin

During her stay at Disfrutar the pandemic hits hard, and the restaurant has to close twice, due to government regulations. Agnes goes back home for the first time and then returns, before the restaurant has to close again and she decides to end her internship then and there. Although she has two other internships lined up, she’s not able to complete them due to the pandemic. However, after she stumbles upon an interview with Poul Andrias Ziska, the head chef of Koks, the most remote Michelin-star restaurant in the world located on the Faroe Islands, she applies for an internship and gets in.

As she’s getting ready to leave, she gets a job offer from her friend Dennis Melzer, who’s about to open his own restaurant in Berlin, and says that she’ll be honored to work with him after her internship at Koks. Agnes and Dennis talk regularly, and there’s a definite feeling of change in the conversations and how they relate to their work, during and after the pandemic. As it starts to taper off, both of them reflect on the working conditions in the fine dining industry. They actively don’t want to return to the endless hours, the fact that you don’t have a life outside the restaurant if you want to achieve something in high gastronomy and the constant pressure, mind games and yelling.

It’s a widely known fact that the industry exploits its workers left and right, that it works them to the bone with no sick or personal days; and as a woman it’s impossible to even think of having children, if you want a viable career. However, a lot of young chefs, including Agnes and Dennis, see what that wrought in the face of pandemic (especially the no-sick-day policies). They are the future of the industry, and they see that the old ways (the toxic Anthony Bourdain[1] ways) don’t work anymore, that no one should put their lives and health on the line to hold on to a job, regardless of its exclusivity.

The glass ceiling for female chefs in fine dining is touched upon frequently in the movie, but no easy solutions are offered, and Agnes is not painted as a girl boss. Although it seemed like it at Vendôme, there is no typical male narrative of perseverance and eventual acceptance of the prevailing rules, as the movie easily could’ve been flavored with the “making it”- narrative. Instead, also due to the pandemic, we see Agnes gradually grow as a person, take in new information and practices, and sometimes surprise herself with her own decisions.

At Koks, Agnes experiences a working environment radically different from what she’s experienced before. Established by a young chef, who doesn’t believe in strict patriarchal hierarchies and never yells at his employees (what an incredibly low bar), Koks provides Agnes with a communal experience. Instead of shouting, the chefs help each other out, for the first time she doesn’t feel that her gender matters at all, and together they’re able to produce interesting and incredible food. Agnes is taken seriously from the start, and at the end of the internship Poul offers her a full-time position.

Agnes and her fellow chefs greeting the guests outside and then running back to the kitchen

Although she feels guilty for disappointing her friend, she accepts.

She Chef is a tender antidote to male-led narratives like Chef’s Table, or even Wetzel’s other fine dining documentary about the father of molecular gastronomy (he kinda stopped calling it that) Ferran Adrià. Instead of being pure food porn (to which I wouldn’t have been opposed either), the excellent food photography emphasizes Agnes’ growth as a chef and human being. From Vendôme’s traditional high end fare on meticulously arranged plates garnished with carefully tweezed off tarragon tops, to Disfrutar’s modernist cuisine-inspired jellies and foams, and finally to Koks’ locally sourced (weird) cockles and whale meat – every shot underlines the progress fine dining has undergone in the last couple of years and how its young chefs are changing the future of the industry.

Poul Andreas Ziska and his (delightfully) weird food

Much to my delight, the movie avoids the pitfalls of a girl boss narrative, wherein a female lead pretty much has to take on male traits to survive the “testosterone-heavy, male-dominated” (p. 57) world she chose for herself. Instead, we get a very intimate view into the ambitions of a very talented young female chef, who is absolutely aware of her chosen profession’s flaws, but tries to change them and doesn’t adhere to the stereotype Bourdain prescribed for his perfect female cook.

[1] I know, I’m harping on good old Tony a lot. Truth is, I love his writing, especially his later books, where he admits himself that Kitchen Confidential was a product of its time and his very bad life back then.