Award-winning food and drink: More women than ever are excelling in fine dining, and it's showing up in their nominations for the esteemed James Beard Foundation Restaurant and Chef Awards. This year's awards will be announced May 1. Win or lose, we know their food and drink will taste good. Here are 10 of our favorite nominees and their inspirations.
Gabrielle Hamilton, Prune, Manhattan. "I was more bitten by the working and cleaning bug than the cooking bug! My first time in a dish pit, and getting to use the overhead sprayer to hose down the dirty plates, and I knew I was pretty destined for a commercial kitchen even then at 12 years old."
Rebecca Wilcomb, Herbsaint, New Orleans: "I've always loved to eat, which is how I became interested in cooking. When I was a kid, I loved to make pasta with tomato sauce. It's something that is so simple, but I loved to change something about it every time to see how even slight adjustments would result in a completely different sauce."
Sarah Grueneberg, Monteverde, Chicago: "I was a single child who went to private school. I didn't have any friends in the 'hood, so I found myself cooking at home at night. I remember trying to make lasagna, figuring out layers, putting meat sauce on bottom. Another recipe called for a leek, and I chopped the whole leek and put it all in. It was inedible. I didn't know you didn't use the green part!"
Diane Flynt, Foggy Ridge Cider, Dugspur, Virginia: "Like many working women of my generation, I was the first and the only in almost every job. When I began my cider journey by planting a cider apple orchard in 1997, several cider makers, all men, were very supportive. People who are trailblazers -- and at Foggy Ridge we were pioneers in planting cider apples in the Southern Appalachians in the late '90s -- benefit from reinforcement and I was happy to receive this from many in the wine and cider world."
Amy Brandwein, Centrolina, Washington, D.C.: She remembers her mom "teaching me how to make spaghetti and tomato sauce (around age 6), my dad introducing me to alfalfa sprouts, Brussels sprouts and farming in our backyard at a very young age. I was constantly making recipes after school, mostly cakes and cookies. I tried to make wonton cookies (and) was not successful!"
Belinda Leong, b. Patisserie, San Francisco: "When I was working at Restaurant Gary Danko, I helped out in the pastry station when there was no pastry chef. I realized I how much fun it was. I was working as the garde manger (pantry chef) and cutting onions and I said to myself, 'I don't want to cut onions and toss salad forever.' But I always had fun plating and making soufflés and crème brûlée over and over again."
Caroline Styne, co-owner, The Lucques Group, Los Angeles: "I was really inspired by Nancy Silverton. I had briefly entertained the idea of becoming a pastry chef ... and was obsessed with La Brea Bakery. I loved going into that bakery, its sights and smells, and always buying way more than I needed. And I was really inspired by my mother (who owned her own business). She was an incredibly successful business person, a mentor to many people and a single parent who inspired me to have the confidence to take a risk and start a business of my own."
Kelly Fields, Willa Jean, New Orleans, Louisiana: "Cooking dinner for the family was on my chore list. I'd cook everything from seafood from the backyard -- fish, shrimp and crabs -- to fried chicken and beyond. My mom is a fantastic baker -- I still steal her recipes -- and my dad is a great cook, but wouldn't believe that if you said it to him. My mom is an avid gardener, and grows as much as she can in the yard, meaning on the weekends she's always pickling, preserving, baking, and I have always hovered around her as she made things."
Missy Robbins, Lilia, Brooklyn, New York. "I ate at Charlie Trotter in Chicago during my second semester of my senior year in college, and I looked at the food and presentation and thought, 'This is what I want to do.' I spent my last semester working at '1789' and for a year after I graduated from Georgetown. I had no idea what I was doing. I just loved the pace of it and learning and understanding food better."
Camille Cogswell, pastry chef, Zahav, Philadelphia: "My public high school in Asheville, North Carolina, had an amazing culinary arts program that this incredible guy, Joe Lily, took from what was previously a place to throw misbehaving kids for a couple hours and turned it into a class so desired that there was an application process to be accepted by the time I enrolled in it. His dedication and mentorship meant so much to me and still does."
