//features//
Spring 2020
Spring 2020
Ecofeminism in the Culinary World
Christa Bailey

The rise of sustainable practices in buisnesses is especially apparent in the culinary world. Many plant-based restaurants are sprouting up around New York City, and I decided to investigate some first hand. As a student interested in both sustainability and the food industry, I wanted to see how chefs were exploring their craft while integrating their environmental values. In researching plant-based restaurants, I noticed a high concentration of female executive chefs in their corporate structures. Considering the low percentage of women-led kitchens, I wondered if women were pioneering this plant-based culinary movement. I dined at six restaurants of differing price ranges, and noticed a variety of intentions behind vegan food production. Plant-based diets have a remarkable impact on the environment in comparison with omnivorous diets. Vegan and vegetarian diets use less water, and generate lower carbon footprints. Ecofeminism is a movement that involves the overlaps of eco-activism and feminism. Perhaps pioneering a sustainable agenda is an ecofeminist entryway for female chefs to infiltrate the male-dominated culinary world.
The highlight of my research was eating at Dirt Candy, a fine dining restaurant led by Chef Amanda Cohen. Dirt Candy’s two vegetarian tasting menus feature vegetables in the most eccentric ways. One of the appetizers consisted of a tiny pot of fermented black bean bagna cauda—an Italian dipping sauce typically made with anchovies—with bok choy “chips” sprouting out the top. The robust umami from the beans balanced the fresh leafy greens into a mystifying harmony. Other ingenious dishes included tender carrot sliders on fresh golden buns, crispy Korean fried broccoli, and a portobello mousse that could stand up to any offal pâté. Cohen’s idea behind Dirt Candy was to establish a distinguished vegetable-centric restaurant as a contrast to the overwhelming number of steakhouses and seafood concepts in the city. By composing dishes of artfully prepared vegetables, Amanda Cohen created an exceptional gourmet restaurant where the food happens to be vegetarian.
Plant-based restaurants in New York City are popping up across the spectrum of dining culture, from experimental to fast casual. Mother of Pearl is a prime example. Led by executive chef Daphne Cheng, this sleek Polynesian-inspired restaurant serves dishes like sweet & sour bao buns and watermelon poke. Sophisticated yet casual plant-based restaurants like Mother of Pearl are abundant throughout New York. Divya Alter’s East Village restaurant, Divya’s Kitchen, serves Ayurvedic cuisine, a south-asian style of food that is meant to heal the body. Alter makes this particularly apparent on the drinks menu, where she provides the healing properties of each tea the restaurant offers (there are over a dozen). On the opposite side of the health spectrum, Seasoned Vegan, Harlem’s “first full service vegan restaurant,” serves Louisiana-style comfort food. Co-owner Brenda Beener—“Chef B”—wanted to provide an alternative to traditional soul food that was true to her family’s recipes. The “shrimp” po’boy is mouth-watering with impeccably replicated, deep-fried “shrimp” on freshly baked bread. Along a similar line is Superiority Burger, created by Chef Brooks Headley. Superiority Burger serves vegetarian—often vegan—fast-food. By Chloe. is famed for plant-based burgers as well, while also serving a variety of brunch items such as soups, salads, smoothie bowls, and small-batch pressed juices. Former chef and founder Chloe Coscarelli has since left the company following a conflict with the managing restaurant group, but the concept still reflects Coscarelli’s vision of fun, inadvertently vegan food. Despite the great variety among these restaurants, they all deliver in quality and show the limitless possibilities within plant-based cuisine.
The concentration of female-chef led vegan restaurants spans across the city. A few subway stops away from Columbia’s campus is Blossom: a vegan restaurant co-founded by Pamela Elizabeth. Blossom serves many tasty options, but the cheesecake stands out in delivering rich creaminess despite the absence of dairy. The Butcher’s Daughter, a self proclaimed “vegetable slaughterhouse,” was founded by Heather Tierney and consists of a predominantly female team. Tierney sees plant-based food as a feminine phenomenon. In an interview with Vogue, she details the “dichotomy of a masculine butcher shop" and the "feminine vegetarian fare” within her restaurant. While sustainable eating is for people of all genders, Tierney’s perspective is noteworthy in that she sees women as having a central role in pioneering the plant-based dining movement. This doesn’t characterize vegan and vegetarian food as “feminine,” but it does open a door for female leadership in the culinary world. As noted, women are largely underrepresented in the food industry. Food media such as Chef’s Table and James Beard awards typically recognized 50% fewer women than men in 2017 (Eater). As of 2014, approximately 6.3% of chefs leading prominent kitchens were women. Compare this figure to the 24.2% of female CEOs in the same year (Telegram). These figures represent the massive gender inequality present in the food industry. To return to Dirt Candy’s Executive Chef, Amanda Cohen runs a largely female kitchen and acts as Board Treasurer for “Women Chefs and Restaurateurs,” an organization that supports women in food. Cohen influences the food industry by advocating for women in food while running a successful vegetarian kitchen. Ecofeminism refers to the connections between environmental activism and feminism. The overlap between sustainability and feminism is evident in the considerable number of women leading these plant-based restaurants. An ecofeminist platform in which women can use a sustainable agenda to interact with the culinary world not only benefits the environment, but also grants deserved recognition to women in food.
While women are shining in these plant-based kitchens, male chefs are supporting this environmental movement in their work as well. Celebrity chefs such as Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Matthew Kenney are running plant-based kitchens that bring ethically made food to the gourmet table. Jean-Georges’s ABCV serves as a plant-based spinoff to his acclaimed ABC Kitchen. However, Kenney in particular has created dozens of vegan hospitality concepts around the world, each with a different focus such as pizza or fast food. I ate at Kenney’s Flatiron District Mediterranean restaurant, XYST. The menu features straightforward dishes with creative surprises, such as the “wild + cultivated mushrooms,” accompanied by a tangy kale polenta. I also dined at gourmet vegan restaurant Avant Garden, owned by Ravi Derossi. Animal rights activist Derossi told The New York Times that he “just want[s] to do a really nice, upscale vegan restaurant that breaks the mold of what people think vegan restaurants are.” Avant Garden’s menu is succinct yet dynamic with powerful flavor combos such as sunchoke spread, juicy olives, and pickled pear atop a crusty sourdough toast. The chefs behind upscale restaurants such as these are showing that ethical values need not lower culinary standards. They are proving that sustainability belongs in fine dining.
As sustainability continues to infiltrate the culinary world, the media is highlighting chefs’ environmental efforts. Just this year, the Michelin Guide established a new emblem to award to chefs in recognition of sustainable gastronomy. This attention towards the environmental impacts of food production suggests that the culinary world is progressing in terms of social and environmental consciousness. Accordingly, the recognition of women in food increased (and in some cases, doubled) from 2013 to 2017 (Eater). While sustainable gastronomy contributes new aspects to the culinary world, it does not necessarily detract from the elegance and quality of the food. I encourage you to explore this elegance in plant-based dining, whether in NYC or at home. Women in food are pioneering a sustainable agenda that is challenging a male-dominated restaurant culture, and thus redefining the culinary world. This new trend offers diners an opportunity to expand their horizons and participate in the expanding of what culinary leadership can look like.
//Christa Bailey is a first year at Barnard College. She can be reached at [email protected].
Photo courtesy of Dirt Candy
The highlight of my research was eating at Dirt Candy, a fine dining restaurant led by Chef Amanda Cohen. Dirt Candy’s two vegetarian tasting menus feature vegetables in the most eccentric ways. One of the appetizers consisted of a tiny pot of fermented black bean bagna cauda—an Italian dipping sauce typically made with anchovies—with bok choy “chips” sprouting out the top. The robust umami from the beans balanced the fresh leafy greens into a mystifying harmony. Other ingenious dishes included tender carrot sliders on fresh golden buns, crispy Korean fried broccoli, and a portobello mousse that could stand up to any offal pâté. Cohen’s idea behind Dirt Candy was to establish a distinguished vegetable-centric restaurant as a contrast to the overwhelming number of steakhouses and seafood concepts in the city. By composing dishes of artfully prepared vegetables, Amanda Cohen created an exceptional gourmet restaurant where the food happens to be vegetarian.
Plant-based restaurants in New York City are popping up across the spectrum of dining culture, from experimental to fast casual. Mother of Pearl is a prime example. Led by executive chef Daphne Cheng, this sleek Polynesian-inspired restaurant serves dishes like sweet & sour bao buns and watermelon poke. Sophisticated yet casual plant-based restaurants like Mother of Pearl are abundant throughout New York. Divya Alter’s East Village restaurant, Divya’s Kitchen, serves Ayurvedic cuisine, a south-asian style of food that is meant to heal the body. Alter makes this particularly apparent on the drinks menu, where she provides the healing properties of each tea the restaurant offers (there are over a dozen). On the opposite side of the health spectrum, Seasoned Vegan, Harlem’s “first full service vegan restaurant,” serves Louisiana-style comfort food. Co-owner Brenda Beener—“Chef B”—wanted to provide an alternative to traditional soul food that was true to her family’s recipes. The “shrimp” po’boy is mouth-watering with impeccably replicated, deep-fried “shrimp” on freshly baked bread. Along a similar line is Superiority Burger, created by Chef Brooks Headley. Superiority Burger serves vegetarian—often vegan—fast-food. By Chloe. is famed for plant-based burgers as well, while also serving a variety of brunch items such as soups, salads, smoothie bowls, and small-batch pressed juices. Former chef and founder Chloe Coscarelli has since left the company following a conflict with the managing restaurant group, but the concept still reflects Coscarelli’s vision of fun, inadvertently vegan food. Despite the great variety among these restaurants, they all deliver in quality and show the limitless possibilities within plant-based cuisine.
The concentration of female-chef led vegan restaurants spans across the city. A few subway stops away from Columbia’s campus is Blossom: a vegan restaurant co-founded by Pamela Elizabeth. Blossom serves many tasty options, but the cheesecake stands out in delivering rich creaminess despite the absence of dairy. The Butcher’s Daughter, a self proclaimed “vegetable slaughterhouse,” was founded by Heather Tierney and consists of a predominantly female team. Tierney sees plant-based food as a feminine phenomenon. In an interview with Vogue, she details the “dichotomy of a masculine butcher shop" and the "feminine vegetarian fare” within her restaurant. While sustainable eating is for people of all genders, Tierney’s perspective is noteworthy in that she sees women as having a central role in pioneering the plant-based dining movement. This doesn’t characterize vegan and vegetarian food as “feminine,” but it does open a door for female leadership in the culinary world. As noted, women are largely underrepresented in the food industry. Food media such as Chef’s Table and James Beard awards typically recognized 50% fewer women than men in 2017 (Eater). As of 2014, approximately 6.3% of chefs leading prominent kitchens were women. Compare this figure to the 24.2% of female CEOs in the same year (Telegram). These figures represent the massive gender inequality present in the food industry. To return to Dirt Candy’s Executive Chef, Amanda Cohen runs a largely female kitchen and acts as Board Treasurer for “Women Chefs and Restaurateurs,” an organization that supports women in food. Cohen influences the food industry by advocating for women in food while running a successful vegetarian kitchen. Ecofeminism refers to the connections between environmental activism and feminism. The overlap between sustainability and feminism is evident in the considerable number of women leading these plant-based restaurants. An ecofeminist platform in which women can use a sustainable agenda to interact with the culinary world not only benefits the environment, but also grants deserved recognition to women in food.
While women are shining in these plant-based kitchens, male chefs are supporting this environmental movement in their work as well. Celebrity chefs such as Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Matthew Kenney are running plant-based kitchens that bring ethically made food to the gourmet table. Jean-Georges’s ABCV serves as a plant-based spinoff to his acclaimed ABC Kitchen. However, Kenney in particular has created dozens of vegan hospitality concepts around the world, each with a different focus such as pizza or fast food. I ate at Kenney’s Flatiron District Mediterranean restaurant, XYST. The menu features straightforward dishes with creative surprises, such as the “wild + cultivated mushrooms,” accompanied by a tangy kale polenta. I also dined at gourmet vegan restaurant Avant Garden, owned by Ravi Derossi. Animal rights activist Derossi told The New York Times that he “just want[s] to do a really nice, upscale vegan restaurant that breaks the mold of what people think vegan restaurants are.” Avant Garden’s menu is succinct yet dynamic with powerful flavor combos such as sunchoke spread, juicy olives, and pickled pear atop a crusty sourdough toast. The chefs behind upscale restaurants such as these are showing that ethical values need not lower culinary standards. They are proving that sustainability belongs in fine dining.
As sustainability continues to infiltrate the culinary world, the media is highlighting chefs’ environmental efforts. Just this year, the Michelin Guide established a new emblem to award to chefs in recognition of sustainable gastronomy. This attention towards the environmental impacts of food production suggests that the culinary world is progressing in terms of social and environmental consciousness. Accordingly, the recognition of women in food increased (and in some cases, doubled) from 2013 to 2017 (Eater). While sustainable gastronomy contributes new aspects to the culinary world, it does not necessarily detract from the elegance and quality of the food. I encourage you to explore this elegance in plant-based dining, whether in NYC or at home. Women in food are pioneering a sustainable agenda that is challenging a male-dominated restaurant culture, and thus redefining the culinary world. This new trend offers diners an opportunity to expand their horizons and participate in the expanding of what culinary leadership can look like.
//Christa Bailey is a first year at Barnard College. She can be reached at [email protected].
Photo courtesy of Dirt Candy