The pink-haired chef Cristina Bowerman is the only female Michelin-starred executive in Rome and one of the very few worldwide. In this piece, she reflects on a life of abrupt changes and leaps in the dark as opportunities to challenge the stakes of tradition.
When I was first awarded a Michelin star in 2010, my restaurant had no tablecloths. For Glass Hostaria, which I’d joined four years earlier, it took time before its ambitious culinary ideas were justified by those passing through Trastevere, a quaint working-class district of Rome, enclosed instead by trattorias serving bowls of Cacio e Pepe and Carbonara on wooden surfaces covered with the quintessential red-and-white gingham.
Following my arrival as executive, I pitched new ideas for our menu. I wanted customers to eat with their hands a liquorice-flavoured sandwich, filled with a juicy fois gras lobe and sided with crunchy rice chips, a sharp mango ketchup and a fruity Passito wine mayo. They took me as a fool: nobody would bet on my success. In fact, at least initially, that dish was merely a source of business pessimism for stakeholders.
Yet, it marked the beginning of a new stage in my career and exemplified the strength I found to be different. It was, in every way, the signature dish of that footnote of my individual history.
I’ve always been wary of signature recipes set in stone, defining chefs in a seamless fashion. A dish might represent me perfectly today, but perhaps not tomorrow. Signature suggests stagnancy, which is the noun that goes farthest from my actual personality. As my nonna would say sardonically in praise of dynamism, there’ll always be time to rest… in peace.
After all, my life has been continuously astir. I left Cerignola, a rural village in the southern-Italian Apulia region where I was born, at 26 to complete my law studies in San Francisco. Despite practising law for two years, I shifted towards marketing first and graphic design later to express my creativity in motley forms, until an ad on a local newspaper promoting a newly-opened culinary school in Austin, Texas, triggered the pounding thought to change life again in my 30s.
Courage repeatedly saved me from an otherwise obvious path. I could be a spot-on woman, wife and mother, who would precisely abide by the subtle demands of a patriarchal society. I could even surrender to tradition holding at home my passion for cooking, never turning it into a proper job. This is the hiccup of tradition: potentially, it’s a springboard for success, but in turn it can also quite easily detain.
Women embody half of the workforce in kitchens worldwide. Still, it’s regrettable that, according to a report from the professional publication Chef’s Pencil, only 6% of the world’s top restaurants are led by female chefs. This trend just echoes the inequality women feel in several professional fields, always finding themselves defying the perilous gendered bias of not living up to their job requirements.
Food can do more than satiating eaters and fulfilling the ego of professionals with Michelin stars. Cuisine, I witness daily, is a cultural vehicle to push the envelope. Chefs have a responsibility: with my pink-haired revolution, I try and go beyond borders, speak out for communities of women worldwide to get rid of social constraints while rediscovering traditions and turning them into true treasures.
*
Chef Cristina Bowerman actively takes part in a number of initiatives to raise awareness on food disorders that you can read about here. Among the others, in 2015, she promoted women artists and raised money for the NGO Action Aid.
Bowerman is also a member of Chefs’ Manifesto, an advocacy group of more than 1,100 chefs from 90 countries that agreed a common set of principles to drive progress against an array of food issues.
In 2021, Glass Hostaria was awarded the Michelin Green Star for its sustainable practices. To date, she remains the only female Michelin-starred chef in Rome and one of the very few worldwide.
*
This is the first article of My Life In A Plate, a ghost-written column that gives voice to kitchen professionals around the world.
Related articles
Fois Gras Sandwich by Chef Cristina Bowerman
The liquorice-flavoured sandwich that marked the career of chef Bowerman, filled with a juicy fois gras lobe and sided with crunchy rice chips, a sharp mango ketchup and a fruity Passito wine mayo.