She's the boss

A year ago, Time Out New York ran a dozen pages of photographs and charts delineating the Big Apple's culinary superstars. Of the 49 chefs and restaurateurs spotlighted, only three were women. Boston is a smaller city with many fewer restaurants. Yet a similar spread would look much more female-friendly here .

Some things about Boston -- its size, less competition, and slightly cheaper cost of living -- make it a somewhat gentler and more accessible restaurant climate. It's also a city where women, some encouraged by the late Julia Child, have prospered in the business, compared to New York, dominated in early years by Frenchmen. Those successes in Boston have encouraged more women to aim high.

As a result, this is home to many of the country's premier women chefs. Two restaurants with female chefs appeared on Gourmet magazine's top 50 list recently -- Lydia Shire's Locke-Ober and Barbara Lynch's No. 9 Park. Chefs such as Ana Sortun of Oleana and Jody Adams of Rialto have been honored with James Beard Foundation Awards. Many local winners of Food & Wine magazine's best new chefs over the years have also been women. Restaurants such as UpStairs on the Square and Full Moon in Cambridge and the Grapevine in Salem, all of which are run by women, have long histories and loyal fans.

And in some of the newest hip spots, the tradition continues. At Om in Harvard Square, Rachel Klein creates what she calls "globally inspired" cuisine for crowds of young trendsetters. Iris Robert, who graduated from Tufts University less than a year ago, but grew up cooking, manages -- at age 23 -- a kitchen of mostly men at her father's Petit Robert Bistro in the South End. And Azita Bina-Seibel, a pioneer here, recently opened Bin 26 Enoteca, an Italian wine bar on Charles Street that's packed most nights.

When Bina-Seibel opened Ristorante Toscano on Beacon Hill with three partners in 1983, she says, "there were only four women [owners] in the industry that I can remember. It was a totally different world." Bina-Siebel also owns the Beacon Hill restaurant Lala Rokh with her brother, Babak Bina.

Look around now and the numbers have changed dramatically. Susan Regis is chef of the stylish new Restaurant Pava in Newton Centre. Farther afield, Mary Dumont, chef at the Dunaway Restaurant in Portsmouth, garnered a Food & Wine magazine Best New Chefs of 2006 award, a first for New Hampshire. Amanda Lydon shares chef duties at Nantucket's Straight Wharf. Laura Brennan is chef and owner of Caffe Umbra in the South End. Michela Larson, one of the early women restaurateurs (Michela's opened in 1985), is building a big new establishment, Rocca, in the lower South End. And Lynch of No. 9 Park is planning a three-concept complex on Congress Street for 2007 (see related story).

Women restaurateurs in New York agree that their climate is different. "It's very bleak," says Patricia Yeo, chef and owner of Sapa in the Flatiron district of Manhattan. "It's tough in New York and women really have to decide" about the pressures, Yeo says. Women tend to run smaller places, such as Rebecca Charles at Pearl Oyster Bar in Greenwich Village. The history of the city is one reason, says Sara Moulton, television cooking celebrity. "Up until 10 years ago, New York was completely dominated by French chefs." All the best restaurants were French, she says, and "the French didn't hire women." That's beginning to change, she says, and in another decade or so, New York will be transformed. In Boston, there were early pioneers and there was Julia Child, says Moulton.

The pioneers made a difference, says Adams. When she decided to cook in Boston, Child sent her to Lydia Shire. "With Lydia, the world was blown up," Adams says. "Anything was possible." Shire had opened Biba in 1989, serving food that Boston hadn't seen before -- offal and suckling pig and plenty of foie gras -- and managed to carry it off despite a recessionary economy.

Adams, who has just been honored as a role model by Women Chefs and Restaurateurs and nominated by Share Our Strength for its chef-restaurateur of the year award, thinks the public eye lately is drawn to TV shows like Top Chef, which show extreme personalities. But that's not what works in a kitchen, she says, where being a good teacher and mentor is important. Adams thinks that's a role in which women can excel since they're less likely to espouse that "super-high competitiveness" gene. She laughs when she explains that some young cooks don't think she's mean enough. "It's a hierarchy" -- and she's in charge, she says -- "but everybody has a sense of ownership."

Klein of Om agrees that in the kitchen women make a difference to the atmosphere. The 32-year-old runs a staff of cooks who are all under 28 except for a Nepalese cook in his late 30s. "It can get raunchy in a kitchen," she says. Everybody is tired, sweaty, and "half these kids are hung over. Women keep the guys in check." Competitiveness has its place, she believes, but the gung-ho "we're-going-to-battle mentality" doesn't work.

After work, the chef often crosses Harvard Square to have a glass of wine at Noir bar below Rialto in the Charles Hotel. Sometimes she sees Adams. "Jody's been really nice to me," says Klein.

Harvard Square has been a revelation for Klein, who came here from a job as chef of Lot 401 in Providence. "When I came up here, I was so shocked that I wasn't the only woman," she says, pointing across the narrow street from Om to UpStairs on the Square, owned by Mary Catherine Deibel and Deborah Hughes. Before moving three years ago, the restaurant had a 20-year run as UpStairs at the Pudding.

It's not always women helping women. Iris Robert's adviser is her father, Jacky. "I basically grew up in the restaurant business," Iris Robert says, but "it was the one thing I didn't want to do." To earn spending money in high school, she worked at Locke-Ober, where her father was in the kitchen, and then at Chatham Bars Inn, where he worked at the time. She found herself drawn to cooking. When the elder Robert opened his second bistro, he put her in charge. "I make sure everything is prepped, give everyone tasks, do things myself. He [her father] makes our more old-fashioned dishes, pates, quenelles, and so forth. I do everything else," she says.

Some days can be difficult, Robert says. "I'll have issues that I'm sure everyone has in management." The right way to handle problems? "You'll never know the answer," she's decided. "You set a good example and earn everyone's respect. Generally, I get it."

New or seasoned, these women all share the same major challenge: long hours. "I recently started working a little less because it was so overwhelming," says Robert. Still, the 60-plus hours a week are common and she knows first-hand how hard it is to have a family life. Bina-Seibel remembers that when she owned Azita in the South End in the early '90s, her son was a baby. "I used to take him to Azita in his stroller until my husband got out of work and could take him home."

With a new restaurant, she's working constantly. "I promised my son I'd do this for several months, and then get my old schedule back," she says. "It's a lot of sacrifice."

At times, they long for a regular life. Klein describes a conversation with her boyfriend in which she tells him she'll be home at 9 "but that 9 ends up being 11:45."

Some concerns are the same. "How do you have a baby?" wonders Klein.

Supportive husbands can make all the difference, say Bina-Seibel and Adams, crediting their spouses with making their careers possible.

Despite the stresses, young women chefs are dedicated to their work, and bemused by the public perception.

"Everyone thinks it's glamorous," says Klein, "but there's a lot that's really [not]."

"When people my age find out I'm a chef, it's like 'wow,' " says Robert. "It's hard to fit together," she says, "when you're in 100-degree temperature for 12 hours at a time."

And yet, she adds, a sigh in her voice: "At the same time, it's an art."