March 1, 2022 • 29 mins
This week, Chelsea is sitting down with award-winning chef Mashama Bailey to look at women in the food industry – the progress we’ve made toward equality and what needs to happen next.
Mashama is the executive chef and co-founder of The Grey restaurant and The Grey Market in Savannah, Georgia and two new restaurants in Austin, Texas. She trained in New York and France, and spent many years cooking at restaurants in New York, including Gabrielle Hamilton’s Prune. She was the first African-American chef to be featured on an episode of Netflix’s Chef’s Table, and she and her business partner John O. Morisano are the co-authors of the memoir-with-recipes, “Black, White, and The Grey: The Story of an Unexpected Friendship and a Beloved Restaurant.”
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Chelsea Clinton. And this season on in fact,
we're celebrating Women's History Month. I'll be talking with trailblazing
women across a variety of industries about their personal journeys,
the progress women have made, and how far we still
(00:21):
have to go. Today, we're looking at the restaurant industry
with award winning chef Mashama Bailey. Odds are when most
people picture a chef at a high end, internationally recognized restaurant,
they envisioned a man, a white man. As you'll hear
from my guest, the truth is only of professional chefs
(00:42):
are women, and only ten of professional chefs are black.
So the percentage of professional chefs who are black women,
like our trailblazer today, Chef Bailey, it's very small. Yet
traditionally women were the cooks in their families. In fact,
it's still more often than not true today. But in
the US in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties there
(01:03):
was a rise of upscale restaurants held by celebrity chefs.
These were almost always white men, and they were treated
as food visionaries, far removed from home cooking. There were,
of course, some women chefs preparing phenomenal food at restaurants
across the country, and they were recognized as such, but
they didn't fit the image, and they rarely got the
(01:23):
same level of media attention that men did. As recently
as less than a decade ago, Time magazine ran a
cover story on the quote gods of food and included
no female chefs. Sad, certainly inaccurate and yet not surprising,
But of course there have always been women chefs who
defied the norms. Julia Child is often considered the first
(01:46):
celebrity chef, though she made shows for home cooks. Alice
Waters opened Shape Nice in nineteen seventy one and became
one of the pioneers of the farm to table movement.
And Edna Lewis, the legendary African American chef and cook author,
brought rich and delicious Southern cooking to the whole country,
and Ms. Lewis inspired a new generation of chefs, including
(02:07):
my guest Mashama Bailey. Mashama is the award winning executive
chef and co founder of The Gray Restaurant in Savannah, Georgia.
It's all day counterpart, The Gray Market, and two new
restaurants opening in Austin, Texas. She trained in New York
and France, and spent many years cooking at restaurants in
New York, including at Prune, Gabrielle Hamilton's beloved bistro in
the East Village. She was the first African American chef
(02:30):
to be featured on an episode of Chef's Table on Netflix.
She leads off season six in Case You're Wondering, and
she and her business partner John O Morrisano are the
co authors of the memoir with recipes, Black White and
the Gray, the story of an unexpected friendship and a
beloved restaurant. Mashama, thank you so much for being here today. Oh,
(02:53):
it's a complete pleasure to be here. We don't celebrate
each other enough. I don't think I thought we could
start of what drew you to becoming a chef. I
started cooking when I was twenty six, So I think
most women may know who they are when they're twenty six,
but I still didn't, and I had to kind of
back out of a lot of things that I thought
(03:15):
were normal, especially for women in the world and also
women in the food industry. What was that moment, like
a twenty six how did you decide that you wanted
to become a chef. I've always been a quiet person,
and I'm the oldest of three. I really helped my
parents raised my brother and sister quite frankly. And so
(03:37):
I was the oldest, and I was five years older
than my brother, nine years older than my sister. So
I took a lot on and I tend to follow
in a lot of ways. So my parents were social workers,
and I thought that was something that I wanted to do.
And so I had graduated school with a psychology degree
was working in a homeless shelter for families, and I
(04:00):
was horrible at it. I was insecure and ill prepared,
and I just was afraid. I think I was afraid
to actually give a lot of myself in a situation
that needed a lot from me because I didn't know
who I was. So I was afraid to give. And
so right around the time when that was being exposed
(04:23):
in my career was when we were doing a lot
of holiday parties or just a lot of like work parties.
So I would cook for the job and we would
just have pot looks like once a week, and everyone
liked when I cooked. Your food always disappeared first. It
always disappeared first. Yeah, they liked when I cooked, and
I think that's why I started getting into cooking ultimately.
(04:46):
And I was so struck reading your book when you
went to culinary school and you were given assignment to
write about your inspiration, and you want to write about
your grandmother's cooking, and you were told you couldn't write
about your grandmother's I took great offenseive that because I
was very close to my grandmother's and they very much
remained with me even though they are no longer with us,
(05:07):
And you had to go searching for someone you wanted
to write about, because you talked a little bit about
that experience and why you had to go searching and
who you found. My main experience what chefs were on
television really, so when it came to actually figuring out
who a real life chef was, I wasn't very versed
in eating in restaurants. I was first and eating in
(05:29):
my grandmother's kitchens. So I wanted to really focus on
them because I thought that they were the best cooks
that I knew. And to my chef instructors point, it
made sense that he had me go out and explore
just the vastness of where chefs come from and what
restaurants they cooking. And I ended up finding an old
(05:51):
I think it was an ebony article like that was
done in like early nineties, and it was talking about
miss Edna Lewis, and I just started digging about her
and looking at her history and looking at the cookbooks
she had written, and really learning about who she was
and how she got to become a chef in the
(06:12):
United States, and also the legacy that she created for herself.
And you, I think I never thought you would write
a book, and yet you have written a book with
your partner John Black White and the Gray It's not
a cookbook per se, but there are recipes at the
end of every chapter. And I wonder if you could
talk about the experience of working with John to build
(06:35):
a restaurant. I was working at Prune under Gabrielle Hamilton's.
I was a sus chef in her restaurant, a place
that I used to love to go. It's so great
pandemic when it was such an important part of our
life here in New York City. It's such a special
restaurant and it's about as big as my hotel room
that I'm in currently, but she really helped me grow
(06:55):
as a chef and as a woman. And so I
was there for out three years. And we call him
john Oh. His middle name is Oh, Gosh, it's and
so he likes there's like he has like Norwegian like yeah,
I read in the book right, And he had like
a tattoo that he had tied. It was an honor
(07:16):
of his Norwegian grandfather. I mean, they're all sorts of
fascinating stuff that I learned in the book. We're a
special We're a special pair. So Johno reached out to her.
He was looking for a chef, and she brought my
name up because I think she felt like, and I
think I felt like at the time that I had
been there long enough. It was time for the next thing.
(07:38):
It was time for the next thing. It was time
to move on. And so she told me about the conversation.
She was like, I don't know this man. He may
be a whack of do but I just want to
let you know that I had this meeting and I
brought you up because I think you're ready. And I
know that your mother's side of the family is from
the South and this restaurant is in Savannah. This was
(07:59):
right around the scandal a Pauladine and her exposure with
how she worked with her kitchen, and I thought that
this was like a person being an opportunist, and I
just was like, I don't want anything to do with it.
I thought he was originally from the South, so I
immediately came very suspicious and you worried you'd be exploited,
(08:20):
and I thought I would be exploited. So I was
just like no, you know. And there was an emphasis
on being a woman and being a minority woman, being
a black woman, and I was like, absolutely not. And
then I learned he was from Staten Island, so he
was a New Yorker, and I was like, okay, maybe
I should at least take the meeting. And I had
(08:40):
two women who I was working with, and it was
just staring at me while I was talking to Gabrielle,
and I can remember their faces, and as soon as
she walked out the room, they were like, take the meeting.
What are you doing? Take the meeting? And I was like, okay,
I'll just take the meeting. I mean, well, it's sort
of extraordinary though that now one of the best restaurants
in the South, one of the best restaurant in our
country that is in the South started because you hadn't
(09:03):
shared New York City in connection. It's just I just
think we have to pause on that for a moment.
We were like, oh, he's from Staten Island. Totally total sense.
Let's just move down to this. I want to say,
like Carpetbagger, let's just go down South and just do it. Yeah.
So that's how we met, and then what happened. We
(09:24):
had a thirty minute meeting that turned into a four
hour meeting. He showed me the blueprints of the space.
I thought that there was no way in the world
that I could do that. Why did you think that?
Because it just was bigger than Prune. It's five times
the size of Prune. It's in a bus station that
was built in. The layout was calling for thirty five
(09:46):
seats in the front of the building, which is now
the Dina bar, which is the size of Prune. Then
the main dining room with seventy six seats. Then there
were two private dining areas, and there was outdoor seating.
And I was just like, there's no way in the
world I could do this, which is unfortunately what women
often say to ourselves. I was like, there's no way
in the world but within those blueprints. As he was
(10:09):
showing me in his office that first night we met,
he pointed to the back area where the restrooms were
and said that was where the colored waiting room was.
And I was like, excuse me, wait what and he goes, yeah,
it's still standing. The building is exactly the way it was.
The sign was still there. He didn't exactly say the
sign was still there, but Chelsea, the sign was still there.
(10:30):
It was very faded and you would almost have to
look at it where the light hit it just right,
but you could see the outline of the letters. Well,
what a effing metaphor, right, So that's what got me
on that plane and got me down there. I was like,
I gotta see this. The building was completely empty. It
was freezing. It was just like dust and debris everywhere.
(10:54):
There were no windows. And I walked in and it
was warm. It felt warm and almost felt like could
belonged to me. It felt like I was supposed to
be there. And so I stood in that colored waiting
room for a little bit and I don't know who
I was talking to, but I was talking to someone,
and I was just like, I could do this all
of a sudden. Wasn't as big, and it wasn't as scary,
(11:17):
and it wasn't as challenging. So then we proceeded to
really get to know each other. Not until then. We
went out to eat all the time, and we would
taste food together and we would just talk about food,
you know, talked about family. And I think we clung
to each other because, you know, the reality of it
is that neither one of us knew what the hell
(11:37):
we were doing, and that was why we both jumped
into the deep end of the pool. Do you think
that was an advantage? It was an advantage. You were
maybe liberated by being able to imagine something new and
different and powerful together. I lived in Savannah from the
age of five to almost eleven, so that was my
(12:00):
viewpoint on the South. It was the Candy Lady and
running around in school and making friends. I was mainly
a New Yorker, so I was very naive when it
came to just being in the South in general. I
think if I knew how deep the water was, I
probably wouldn't have done it, and I don't think he
would have either. When you say, how deep the water is?
(12:22):
What do you mean? So moving to a new city
and building a business is very hard, and when you
don't have any resources, you don't really know anyone there
who can actually help you build the business, it's even harder.
And I think that's what we were up against, and
(12:44):
that's what we're still up against. Right There wasn't anyone
else in the city that was like us, So people
were cautious about what we're gonna bring, what we're gonna serve,
who we're going to feed, And we had no idea
who that was going to be. We had no idea
who the demographic of the restaurant was going to be,
Who's going to work at the restaurant for that matter.
So I think that naivete also helped us get through
(13:09):
some very challenging issues as far as like who are
suppliers are going to be? Where are we going to
be able to work with black farmers? Was I going
to be able to hire black cooks? Who was going
to be in the front of house that was a
representation of me and also John Oh And we still
struggle with those types of demographics within the space. We'll
(13:32):
be right back to stay with us. It is really
always puzzling to me, which feels like maybe two tame
of a word that so often we do think of
(13:53):
cooking and feeding is being women's work. And yet you're
still fairly rare as a woman at the home of
her restaurant, at the chef of her own kitchen. And
yet in your book you talk about how you've seen
a shift and the Lewis was the first black head
chef in the United States, and that was in ninete.
(14:16):
But you didn't learn about her in culinary school. You
had to researcher. You had to researcher, right, So that's
also part of the channel, that's part of the challenge
people should be learning about her in culinary school. I
think if I did not know about her, I probably
wouldn't have thought that I could do the job that
I'm doing today because that seat had been planted twenty
years ago. So when you think about food and you
(14:39):
think about African Americans and food, especially African American women,
you think about domestic My great grandmothers were domestics. My
great great grandmothers were domestics. So when I say domestics,
I mean cooking in houses of affluent white people, right.
So when I talked to my father about being a chef,
he automatically pictured that for my future and I was
(15:02):
a private and that's when he really got sensitive about
my career choices, is when I became a private chef.
So when you think about women in the kitchen, especially
when you think about black women in the kitchen, you
don't think about them running the kitchen. You think about
them being a member of the kitchen. So right now,
there's about a hundred and fifty thousand chefs in the
(15:22):
United States, and there's only about of them that are women,
and they're about ten percent that are African American, just
African American. So I can't imagine that there must be
about half that if less than that, or black women.
So I think what we're seeing, what social media we're seeing,
(15:44):
the way that the conversation has been really surrounding food,
American food and figuring out what American food is. You're
seeing a spotlight on the black community. But I'm not
quite sure if the stats have shifted, but ever so slightly.
And this conversation is really important because I feel like
that is part of my next role, part of my
(16:06):
next step. Like I've had my head down. I've been working,
I've been feeding that ego, and now it's time to
shed that and help make room for the next generation
of men and women, especially focusing on women who want
to be able to do this as a career. And
I think for us it's very simple where the nurture
(16:28):
is of our family. We have, we have the babies,
and we raise the children, and so I think when
it comes to that, we really need men to help
support that part of how to build a family in
order for us to really be successful in these careers
that are so demanding, which I am curious, how then
you do that in your own kitchen and your own restaurant.
(16:49):
How do you ensure that you are recruiting and then
retaining women whether they're cooking on the line or they're
standing at the front of the house. We've been really
focusing on that because they about restaurants, it's like you
kinda are on all the time, especially when you're cooking.
You're there very early and you're they're very late, and
it's almost like a badge of honor if you're the
(17:11):
first person there in the last person to leave. And
what we're starting to implement is that that's not really
the badge of honor. The badge of honor is actually
finding balance within your life. Actually being able to come
to the job, do the job, and go home and
have some balance and some separation and have your own life.
And taking out that way of thinking is the beginning
(17:34):
of how we really start to lead by example when
it comes to building a healthy staff and a healthy model.
And so we're not being frantic or we're keeping the
stress level down for the cook, the average line cook
that's coming in. When we first opened, we were like
balls to the wall. Everybody was going for it, and
(17:55):
if you were not in the front of the pack,
you were left behind. And it wasn't by designed. It
just happened like that because that's the majority of the
life that I lived when I was learning how to
cook and restaurants. That's the model. That's the model that
I knew, and so I was leading by this example
of if you're not there all the time, then you're
not doing a good enough job. And it took years
(18:18):
for me to actually look at that and see that's
not how you run a successful business. You're never got
to get around the fact that cooking is just hard
and it requires you to be present. Is very hands on,
but we are trying to figure out best ways to
provide balance. And I think as far as being a
leader in the African American community in the South, I
(18:39):
think me being out there more talking about things like this,
talking about the need for us to pursue this career
in a disciplined fashion, then I think the more people
will be interested in learning from what we have to offer.
And presumably all of what you just talked about in
terms of of how you help build and nurture a
(19:02):
healthy community has helped you survive COVID nineteen because people
had the resources to be people as well as also
be shafts or bartenders or work at the front of
the house. Yeah. I had a friend in Atlanta during
the book tour. We were talking about just the crisis
of staffing now, and he said he didn't realize how
(19:25):
many people were unhappy in this business. And I thought
that that was like, really a very observant way of
looking at it, because when you think about cooks in
a cook's life, a lot of us love it and
a lot of us just do it. And I think
what we're finding out now with this shortage and employment
(19:46):
is that a lot of people really want to do
something else. But the ones who really want to cook
are the ones who show up on your door with
their knives sharpened and they're just ready to go. And
that just makes me really optimis stick about food in
America and food in general. This is a lifestyle, This
is for life. People are cooking for life. You meet
(20:07):
cooks who have been cooking for twenty thirty years, that's
their career. So we have to start looking at restaurants
and we have to start looking at people who work
in them as career minded people and treating them as such.
And I imagine you do have a lot of career minded,
especially women who ask you for advice. And so what
(20:28):
do you say to young or maybe even not so young,
women of color, black women, chefs who ask you like
can I do this? Can I make it? What advice
do you give? One of my first things that I
think is really important is finding your support system because
we need a lot of help and support because it's
(20:48):
a male dominated industry. Work is hard. Sometimes it's even
hard to get to work, Like if you live in
a neighborhood that you can afford on a cook salary,
but you want to work in a michel and start kitchen,
I doubt if you live walking distance to that kitchen.
You have to think about the whole lifestyle of how
you're going to achieve your goals and your dreams. So
(21:09):
I think like really having people in your life that
fully support what you're doing and that will help you
to your goals. And then I also think about like
being really true to yourself and understanding what you want
to get out of it. Because everyone doesn't have to
own a restaurant. Everyone doesn't have to be a chef
in a restaurant to have influence in the food culture
(21:30):
in the United States. We all don't have to be
at the stove cooking. So figure out, like what you
are bringing to this career and understand if you really
want to be in it, because cooking it requires you
to learn and pay your dues and be repetitive and
be able to handle stress and be able to work
when you're tired. But I don't know if any other
(21:53):
thing that you can be successful at that doesn't require
those same things. So I think you have to really
want it, you have to love it, and you also
have to really have a good support system around you.
I was struck in your book how much you do
talk about your family and how much John and your partner,
talks about his wife, clearly recognizing on the page how
(22:15):
important your support systems have been to both of you
have been building and maintaining the gray. I was living
in you know, East New York, Brooklyn, working and soho
and riding the train at one am in the morning,
and I was evicted. Like it was just so many
things that went on because I wasn't making enough money
(22:35):
and I never told my family. But if I needed
to go eat dinner or it needed to recharge that
I could do that. I didn't tell him because I
didn't want to worry them. It's like when I used
to come home for a visit and I would have
a burn on my hand. My mother would just like,
what are you doing with your life? Like why are
you beating yourself up like this physically endangering yourself? And
(22:56):
I'm like, it's just a burn, it's fine. Or it's
just a cut, it's fine, you know. You know, now
as a mom, I'm like, oh my gosh, what if
my children want to do that? You know, there're to
five and seven I have time, but still have a
lot of empathy for your mom. Definitely. I just I
just think that it's been a great experience. It's probably
the only thing in my life that I've given my
(23:16):
whole self to. And now as I'm sort of rounding
this next corner as a business partner and we're expanding,
and my role is changing, and I'm no longer the
person who is turning on the lights and turning on
the ovens and straining the stocks. I'm the person who's
(23:36):
really sort of figuring out the culture of the business
and really working to maintain that. I'm so excited that
my journey is and was what it was because I
feel like it could really help to inform the next
generation on how they can be better in this industry
and how we can build a better culture in this industry.
(24:01):
We're taking a quick break. Stay with us. Since we
are talking during Women's History Month, I wonder what role
you think the restaurant industry, because it is a huge
(24:23):
part of our economy really has and ensuring that restaurant
owners chefs are doing their part to support opportunities for women,
advancement for women, ultimately equal participation for women restaurants and
restaurateurs have to be more vocal about what we need,
and I think we have to put that on the consumer,
(24:44):
We have to put that on the guests. I think
we have to be loud about who we are and
we have to demand that same thing from our clientele.
And I think that that's how we are going to
be able to change the status quo of who works
in restaurants and how the people in restaurants are being
treated and how they can actually carve out a life
(25:05):
for themselves. And that usually is financial right that usually
is given by support, like this is a financial business,
this is a for profit business. So in order for
us to do the things that we do, we have
to charge what we need to charge. The margins and
restaurants are really really small, so we tend to box
ourselves in corners because sometimes we can't afford to get
(25:28):
equipment fixed, So we can't afford to get a blender.
Then we can't afford for our cook to take off
so she can go to her kids recital, like if
we can't afford those things. So I think really looking
at the numbers and the margins of how restaurants run
and filtering that money back into the business to support
the staff. I think it's probably what chefs and restaurant
(25:51):
tours can do in order to change the lifestyles of
how people live in restaurants, especially women. And do you
think consumers are more aware now in these COVID times,
at least with all of the rhetoric around supporting frontline workers,
or do you think it hasn't really shifted. I think
at the beginning they were really concerned and very thankful,
(26:13):
and I think now it's going back to well, where's
my food? And why aren't you open? And why does
this cost so much? And so I think this is
going to be a little bit longer than everyone expected.
So we have to be way more kinder, way more
generous than we thought we were initially going to have
to be in order to rebuild this industry. You shared
(26:36):
earlier the statistic of how many chefs there are and
only a quarter women. Is there a statistic like that,
or maybe that is the statistic that enrages you in
a way to just try to do more, or that
gives you real optimism that there are more women than
there were when you started. You know, it's funny because
(26:58):
I'm very empathetic to the lifestyle that we choose, and
especially being a woman working in this field, it's hard,
but I am a champion for women and I want
us to be happy. I know that when I see
women in kitchens that they are happy, they are truly
chosen the lifestyle that they want to have. And I
(27:21):
really wish and want to be an advocate for women
not being afraid to come into this industry and ask
for what they want because they can have all of it.
And I think a lot of us look at it
and say, well, I can never get married or I
can never have children, and that's not true. You can
come in and you can have a balanced life and
(27:41):
you can do the thing that you love to do.
And so I do see a lot more women, especially
in the South, cooking professionally, and so I just want
us to really decrease that gap that there is because
we have a lot to bring to the table. Like
I said, I think you know, for a long time,
when you want a good meal, you go to a
(28:03):
woman to cook it, and if you want to go
to a restaurant, then the men are cooking. So what happened?
Why aren't we doing it professionally? And I just don't
think that we think that there's enough room for us
so we can have the lifestyle that we want. And
I really want to be an advocate to that we
can have the lifestyle that we want well, and that
you are exhibit a of that. Mashama Bailey, thank you
(28:26):
so much for your time today. And I can't wait
until we're a little bit further through COVID and hopefully
I can have the chance to come eat at the Gray.
Oh Chelsea, this was an honor and a pleasure. If
you can't make it to Savannah or Austin, you can
(28:47):
find The Gray on social media at the Gray Savannah
and for a truly great read, I highly recommend their book,
Black White and The Gray. The story of an unexpected
friendship and a beloved restaurant and act is brought to
you by I Heart Radio. We are produced by a
mighty group of women and one amazing man, Erica Goodmanson,
(29:07):
Mart Harror, Sarah Horowitz, Jessmine Molly, and Justin Wright, with
help from Lindsay Hoffman, Barry Laurie Joyce, Kuban, Julie Subran,
Mike Taylor, and Emily Young. Original music is by Justin Wright.
If you like this episode of In Fact, please make
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(29:28):
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Hi, I'm Chelsea Clinton. And this season on in fact,
we're celebrating Women's History Month. I'll be talking with trailblazing
women across a variety of industries about their personal journeys,
the progress women have made, and how far we still
(00:21):
have to go. Today, we're looking at the restaurant industry
with award winning chef Mashama Bailey. Odds are when most
people picture a chef at a high end, internationally recognized restaurant,
they envisioned a man, a white man. As you'll hear
from my guest, the truth is only of professional chefs
(00:42):
are women, and only ten of professional chefs are black.
So the percentage of professional chefs who are black women,
like our trailblazer today, Chef Bailey, it's very small. Yet
traditionally women were the cooks in their families. In fact,
it's still more often than not true today. But in
the US in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties there
(01:03):
was a rise of upscale restaurants held by celebrity chefs.
These were almost always white men, and they were treated
as food visionaries, far removed from home cooking. There were,
of course, some women chefs preparing phenomenal food at restaurants
across the country, and they were recognized as such, but
they didn't fit the image, and they rarely got the
(01:23):
same level of media attention that men did. As recently
as less than a decade ago, Time magazine ran a
cover story on the quote gods of food and included
no female chefs. Sad, certainly inaccurate and yet not surprising,
But of course there have always been women chefs who
defied the norms. Julia Child is often considered the first
(01:46):
celebrity chef, though she made shows for home cooks. Alice
Waters opened Shape Nice in nineteen seventy one and became
one of the pioneers of the farm to table movement.
And Edna Lewis, the legendary African American chef and cook author,
brought rich and delicious Southern cooking to the whole country,
and Ms. Lewis inspired a new generation of chefs, including
(02:07):
my guest Mashama Bailey. Mashama is the award winning executive
chef and co founder of The Gray Restaurant in Savannah, Georgia.
It's all day counterpart, The Gray Market, and two new
restaurants opening in Austin, Texas. She trained in New York
and France, and spent many years cooking at restaurants in
New York, including at Prune, Gabrielle Hamilton's beloved bistro in
the East Village. She was the first African American chef
(02:30):
to be featured on an episode of Chef's Table on Netflix.
She leads off season six in Case You're Wondering, and
she and her business partner John O Morrisano are the
co authors of the memoir with recipes, Black White and
the Gray, the story of an unexpected friendship and a
beloved restaurant. Mashama, thank you so much for being here today. Oh,
(02:53):
it's a complete pleasure to be here. We don't celebrate
each other enough. I don't think I thought we could
start of what drew you to becoming a chef. I
started cooking when I was twenty six, So I think
most women may know who they are when they're twenty six,
but I still didn't, and I had to kind of
back out of a lot of things that I thought
(03:15):
were normal, especially for women in the world and also
women in the food industry. What was that moment, like
a twenty six how did you decide that you wanted
to become a chef. I've always been a quiet person,
and I'm the oldest of three. I really helped my
parents raised my brother and sister quite frankly. And so
(03:37):
I was the oldest, and I was five years older
than my brother, nine years older than my sister. So
I took a lot on and I tend to follow
in a lot of ways. So my parents were social workers,
and I thought that was something that I wanted to do.
And so I had graduated school with a psychology degree
was working in a homeless shelter for families, and I
(04:00):
was horrible at it. I was insecure and ill prepared,
and I just was afraid. I think I was afraid
to actually give a lot of myself in a situation
that needed a lot from me because I didn't know
who I was. So I was afraid to give. And
so right around the time when that was being exposed
(04:23):
in my career was when we were doing a lot
of holiday parties or just a lot of like work parties.
So I would cook for the job and we would
just have pot looks like once a week, and everyone
liked when I cooked. Your food always disappeared first. It
always disappeared first. Yeah, they liked when I cooked, and
I think that's why I started getting into cooking ultimately.
(04:46):
And I was so struck reading your book when you
went to culinary school and you were given assignment to
write about your inspiration, and you want to write about
your grandmother's cooking, and you were told you couldn't write
about your grandmother's I took great offenseive that because I
was very close to my grandmother's and they very much
remained with me even though they are no longer with us,
(05:07):
And you had to go searching for someone you wanted
to write about, because you talked a little bit about
that experience and why you had to go searching and
who you found. My main experience what chefs were on
television really, so when it came to actually figuring out
who a real life chef was, I wasn't very versed
in eating in restaurants. I was first and eating in
(05:29):
my grandmother's kitchens. So I wanted to really focus on
them because I thought that they were the best cooks
that I knew. And to my chef instructors point, it
made sense that he had me go out and explore
just the vastness of where chefs come from and what
restaurants they cooking. And I ended up finding an old
(05:51):
I think it was an ebony article like that was
done in like early nineties, and it was talking about
miss Edna Lewis, and I just started digging about her
and looking at her history and looking at the cookbooks
she had written, and really learning about who she was
and how she got to become a chef in the
(06:12):
United States, and also the legacy that she created for herself.
And you, I think I never thought you would write
a book, and yet you have written a book with
your partner John Black White and the Gray It's not
a cookbook per se, but there are recipes at the
end of every chapter. And I wonder if you could
talk about the experience of working with John to build
(06:35):
a restaurant. I was working at Prune under Gabrielle Hamilton's.
I was a sus chef in her restaurant, a place
that I used to love to go. It's so great
pandemic when it was such an important part of our
life here in New York City. It's such a special
restaurant and it's about as big as my hotel room
that I'm in currently, but she really helped me grow
(06:55):
as a chef and as a woman. And so I
was there for out three years. And we call him
john Oh. His middle name is Oh, Gosh, it's and
so he likes there's like he has like Norwegian like yeah,
I read in the book right, And he had like
a tattoo that he had tied. It was an honor
(07:16):
of his Norwegian grandfather. I mean, they're all sorts of
fascinating stuff that I learned in the book. We're a
special We're a special pair. So Johno reached out to her.
He was looking for a chef, and she brought my
name up because I think she felt like, and I
think I felt like at the time that I had
been there long enough. It was time for the next thing.
(07:38):
It was time for the next thing. It was time
to move on. And so she told me about the conversation.
She was like, I don't know this man. He may
be a whack of do but I just want to
let you know that I had this meeting and I
brought you up because I think you're ready. And I
know that your mother's side of the family is from
the South and this restaurant is in Savannah. This was
(07:59):
right around the scandal a Pauladine and her exposure with
how she worked with her kitchen, and I thought that
this was like a person being an opportunist, and I
just was like, I don't want anything to do with it.
I thought he was originally from the South, so I
immediately came very suspicious and you worried you'd be exploited,
(08:20):
and I thought I would be exploited. So I was
just like no, you know. And there was an emphasis
on being a woman and being a minority woman, being
a black woman, and I was like, absolutely not. And
then I learned he was from Staten Island, so he
was a New Yorker, and I was like, okay, maybe
I should at least take the meeting. And I had
(08:40):
two women who I was working with, and it was
just staring at me while I was talking to Gabrielle,
and I can remember their faces, and as soon as
she walked out the room, they were like, take the meeting.
What are you doing? Take the meeting? And I was like, okay,
I'll just take the meeting. I mean, well, it's sort
of extraordinary though that now one of the best restaurants
in the South, one of the best restaurant in our
country that is in the South started because you hadn't
(09:03):
shared New York City in connection. It's just I just
think we have to pause on that for a moment.
We were like, oh, he's from Staten Island. Totally total sense.
Let's just move down to this. I want to say,
like Carpetbagger, let's just go down South and just do it. Yeah.
So that's how we met, and then what happened. We
(09:24):
had a thirty minute meeting that turned into a four
hour meeting. He showed me the blueprints of the space.
I thought that there was no way in the world
that I could do that. Why did you think that?
Because it just was bigger than Prune. It's five times
the size of Prune. It's in a bus station that
was built in. The layout was calling for thirty five
(09:46):
seats in the front of the building, which is now
the Dina bar, which is the size of Prune. Then
the main dining room with seventy six seats. Then there
were two private dining areas, and there was outdoor seating.
And I was just like, there's no way in the
world I could do this, which is unfortunately what women
often say to ourselves. I was like, there's no way
in the world but within those blueprints. As he was
(10:09):
showing me in his office that first night we met,
he pointed to the back area where the restrooms were
and said that was where the colored waiting room was.
And I was like, excuse me, wait what and he goes, yeah,
it's still standing. The building is exactly the way it was.
The sign was still there. He didn't exactly say the
sign was still there, but Chelsea, the sign was still there.
(10:30):
It was very faded and you would almost have to
look at it where the light hit it just right,
but you could see the outline of the letters. Well,
what a effing metaphor, right, So that's what got me
on that plane and got me down there. I was like,
I gotta see this. The building was completely empty. It
was freezing. It was just like dust and debris everywhere.
(10:54):
There were no windows. And I walked in and it
was warm. It felt warm and almost felt like could
belonged to me. It felt like I was supposed to
be there. And so I stood in that colored waiting
room for a little bit and I don't know who
I was talking to, but I was talking to someone,
and I was just like, I could do this all
of a sudden. Wasn't as big, and it wasn't as scary,
(11:17):
and it wasn't as challenging. So then we proceeded to
really get to know each other. Not until then. We
went out to eat all the time, and we would
taste food together and we would just talk about food,
you know, talked about family. And I think we clung
to each other because, you know, the reality of it
is that neither one of us knew what the hell
(11:37):
we were doing, and that was why we both jumped
into the deep end of the pool. Do you think
that was an advantage? It was an advantage. You were
maybe liberated by being able to imagine something new and
different and powerful together. I lived in Savannah from the
age of five to almost eleven, so that was my
(12:00):
viewpoint on the South. It was the Candy Lady and
running around in school and making friends. I was mainly
a New Yorker, so I was very naive when it
came to just being in the South in general. I
think if I knew how deep the water was, I
probably wouldn't have done it, and I don't think he
would have either. When you say, how deep the water is?
(12:22):
What do you mean? So moving to a new city
and building a business is very hard, and when you
don't have any resources, you don't really know anyone there
who can actually help you build the business, it's even harder.
And I think that's what we were up against, and
(12:44):
that's what we're still up against. Right There wasn't anyone
else in the city that was like us, So people
were cautious about what we're gonna bring, what we're gonna serve,
who we're going to feed, And we had no idea
who that was going to be. We had no idea
who the demographic of the restaurant was going to be,
Who's going to work at the restaurant for that matter.
So I think that naivete also helped us get through
(13:09):
some very challenging issues as far as like who are
suppliers are going to be? Where are we going to
be able to work with black farmers? Was I going
to be able to hire black cooks? Who was going
to be in the front of house that was a
representation of me and also John Oh And we still
struggle with those types of demographics within the space. We'll
(13:32):
be right back to stay with us. It is really
always puzzling to me, which feels like maybe two tame
of a word that so often we do think of
(13:53):
cooking and feeding is being women's work. And yet you're
still fairly rare as a woman at the home of
her restaurant, at the chef of her own kitchen. And
yet in your book you talk about how you've seen
a shift and the Lewis was the first black head
chef in the United States, and that was in ninete.
(14:16):
But you didn't learn about her in culinary school. You
had to researcher. You had to researcher, right, So that's
also part of the channel, that's part of the challenge
people should be learning about her in culinary school. I
think if I did not know about her, I probably
wouldn't have thought that I could do the job that
I'm doing today because that seat had been planted twenty
years ago. So when you think about food and you
(14:39):
think about African Americans and food, especially African American women,
you think about domestic My great grandmothers were domestics. My
great great grandmothers were domestics. So when I say domestics,
I mean cooking in houses of affluent white people, right.
So when I talked to my father about being a chef,
he automatically pictured that for my future and I was
(15:02):
a private and that's when he really got sensitive about
my career choices, is when I became a private chef.
So when you think about women in the kitchen, especially
when you think about black women in the kitchen, you
don't think about them running the kitchen. You think about
them being a member of the kitchen. So right now,
there's about a hundred and fifty thousand chefs in the
(15:22):
United States, and there's only about of them that are women,
and they're about ten percent that are African American, just
African American. So I can't imagine that there must be
about half that if less than that, or black women.
So I think what we're seeing, what social media we're seeing,
(15:44):
the way that the conversation has been really surrounding food,
American food and figuring out what American food is. You're
seeing a spotlight on the black community. But I'm not
quite sure if the stats have shifted, but ever so slightly.
And this conversation is really important because I feel like
that is part of my next role, part of my
(16:06):
next step. Like I've had my head down. I've been working,
I've been feeding that ego, and now it's time to
shed that and help make room for the next generation
of men and women, especially focusing on women who want
to be able to do this as a career. And
I think for us it's very simple where the nurture
(16:28):
is of our family. We have, we have the babies,
and we raise the children, and so I think when
it comes to that, we really need men to help
support that part of how to build a family in
order for us to really be successful in these careers
that are so demanding, which I am curious, how then
you do that in your own kitchen and your own restaurant.
(16:49):
How do you ensure that you are recruiting and then
retaining women whether they're cooking on the line or they're
standing at the front of the house. We've been really
focusing on that because they about restaurants, it's like you
kinda are on all the time, especially when you're cooking.
You're there very early and you're they're very late, and
it's almost like a badge of honor if you're the
(17:11):
first person there in the last person to leave. And
what we're starting to implement is that that's not really
the badge of honor. The badge of honor is actually
finding balance within your life. Actually being able to come
to the job, do the job, and go home and
have some balance and some separation and have your own life.
And taking out that way of thinking is the beginning
(17:34):
of how we really start to lead by example when
it comes to building a healthy staff and a healthy model.
And so we're not being frantic or we're keeping the
stress level down for the cook, the average line cook
that's coming in. When we first opened, we were like
balls to the wall. Everybody was going for it, and
(17:55):
if you were not in the front of the pack,
you were left behind. And it wasn't by designed. It
just happened like that because that's the majority of the
life that I lived when I was learning how to
cook and restaurants. That's the model. That's the model that
I knew, and so I was leading by this example
of if you're not there all the time, then you're
not doing a good enough job. And it took years
(18:18):
for me to actually look at that and see that's
not how you run a successful business. You're never got
to get around the fact that cooking is just hard
and it requires you to be present. Is very hands on,
but we are trying to figure out best ways to
provide balance. And I think as far as being a
leader in the African American community in the South, I
(18:39):
think me being out there more talking about things like this,
talking about the need for us to pursue this career
in a disciplined fashion, then I think the more people
will be interested in learning from what we have to offer.
And presumably all of what you just talked about in
terms of of how you help build and nurture a
(19:02):
healthy community has helped you survive COVID nineteen because people
had the resources to be people as well as also
be shafts or bartenders or work at the front of
the house. Yeah. I had a friend in Atlanta during
the book tour. We were talking about just the crisis
of staffing now, and he said he didn't realize how
(19:25):
many people were unhappy in this business. And I thought
that that was like, really a very observant way of
looking at it, because when you think about cooks in
a cook's life, a lot of us love it and
a lot of us just do it. And I think
what we're finding out now with this shortage and employment
(19:46):
is that a lot of people really want to do
something else. But the ones who really want to cook
are the ones who show up on your door with
their knives sharpened and they're just ready to go. And
that just makes me really optimis stick about food in
America and food in general. This is a lifestyle, This
is for life. People are cooking for life. You meet
(20:07):
cooks who have been cooking for twenty thirty years, that's
their career. So we have to start looking at restaurants
and we have to start looking at people who work
in them as career minded people and treating them as such.
And I imagine you do have a lot of career minded,
especially women who ask you for advice. And so what
(20:28):
do you say to young or maybe even not so young,
women of color, black women, chefs who ask you like
can I do this? Can I make it? What advice
do you give? One of my first things that I
think is really important is finding your support system because
we need a lot of help and support because it's
(20:48):
a male dominated industry. Work is hard. Sometimes it's even
hard to get to work, Like if you live in
a neighborhood that you can afford on a cook salary,
but you want to work in a michel and start kitchen,
I doubt if you live walking distance to that kitchen.
You have to think about the whole lifestyle of how
you're going to achieve your goals and your dreams. So
(21:09):
I think like really having people in your life that
fully support what you're doing and that will help you
to your goals. And then I also think about like
being really true to yourself and understanding what you want
to get out of it. Because everyone doesn't have to
own a restaurant. Everyone doesn't have to be a chef
in a restaurant to have influence in the food culture
(21:30):
in the United States. We all don't have to be
at the stove cooking. So figure out, like what you
are bringing to this career and understand if you really
want to be in it, because cooking it requires you
to learn and pay your dues and be repetitive and
be able to handle stress and be able to work
when you're tired. But I don't know if any other
(21:53):
thing that you can be successful at that doesn't require
those same things. So I think you have to really
want it, you have to love it, and you also
have to really have a good support system around you.
I was struck in your book how much you do
talk about your family and how much John and your partner,
talks about his wife, clearly recognizing on the page how
(22:15):
important your support systems have been to both of you
have been building and maintaining the gray. I was living
in you know, East New York, Brooklyn, working and soho
and riding the train at one am in the morning,
and I was evicted. Like it was just so many
things that went on because I wasn't making enough money
(22:35):
and I never told my family. But if I needed
to go eat dinner or it needed to recharge that
I could do that. I didn't tell him because I
didn't want to worry them. It's like when I used
to come home for a visit and I would have
a burn on my hand. My mother would just like,
what are you doing with your life? Like why are
you beating yourself up like this physically endangering yourself? And
(22:56):
I'm like, it's just a burn, it's fine. Or it's
just a cut, it's fine, you know. You know, now
as a mom, I'm like, oh my gosh, what if
my children want to do that? You know, there're to
five and seven I have time, but still have a
lot of empathy for your mom. Definitely. I just I
just think that it's been a great experience. It's probably
the only thing in my life that I've given my
(23:16):
whole self to. And now as I'm sort of rounding
this next corner as a business partner and we're expanding,
and my role is changing, and I'm no longer the
person who is turning on the lights and turning on
the ovens and straining the stocks. I'm the person who's
(23:36):
really sort of figuring out the culture of the business
and really working to maintain that. I'm so excited that
my journey is and was what it was because I
feel like it could really help to inform the next
generation on how they can be better in this industry
and how we can build a better culture in this industry.
(24:01):
We're taking a quick break. Stay with us. Since we
are talking during Women's History Month, I wonder what role
you think the restaurant industry, because it is a huge
(24:23):
part of our economy really has and ensuring that restaurant
owners chefs are doing their part to support opportunities for women,
advancement for women, ultimately equal participation for women restaurants and
restaurateurs have to be more vocal about what we need,
and I think we have to put that on the consumer,
(24:44):
We have to put that on the guests. I think
we have to be loud about who we are and
we have to demand that same thing from our clientele.
And I think that that's how we are going to
be able to change the status quo of who works
in restaurants and how the people in restaurants are being
treated and how they can actually carve out a life
(25:05):
for themselves. And that usually is financial right that usually
is given by support, like this is a financial business,
this is a for profit business. So in order for
us to do the things that we do, we have
to charge what we need to charge. The margins and
restaurants are really really small, so we tend to box
ourselves in corners because sometimes we can't afford to get
(25:28):
equipment fixed, So we can't afford to get a blender.
Then we can't afford for our cook to take off
so she can go to her kids recital, like if
we can't afford those things. So I think really looking
at the numbers and the margins of how restaurants run
and filtering that money back into the business to support
the staff. I think it's probably what chefs and restaurant
(25:51):
tours can do in order to change the lifestyles of
how people live in restaurants, especially women. And do you
think consumers are more aware now in these COVID times,
at least with all of the rhetoric around supporting frontline workers,
or do you think it hasn't really shifted. I think
at the beginning they were really concerned and very thankful,
(26:13):
and I think now it's going back to well, where's
my food? And why aren't you open? And why does
this cost so much? And so I think this is
going to be a little bit longer than everyone expected.
So we have to be way more kinder, way more
generous than we thought we were initially going to have
to be in order to rebuild this industry. You shared
(26:36):
earlier the statistic of how many chefs there are and
only a quarter women. Is there a statistic like that,
or maybe that is the statistic that enrages you in
a way to just try to do more, or that
gives you real optimism that there are more women than
there were when you started. You know, it's funny because
(26:58):
I'm very empathetic to the lifestyle that we choose, and
especially being a woman working in this field, it's hard,
but I am a champion for women and I want
us to be happy. I know that when I see
women in kitchens that they are happy, they are truly
chosen the lifestyle that they want to have. And I
(27:21):
really wish and want to be an advocate for women
not being afraid to come into this industry and ask
for what they want because they can have all of it.
And I think a lot of us look at it
and say, well, I can never get married or I
can never have children, and that's not true. You can
come in and you can have a balanced life and
(27:41):
you can do the thing that you love to do.
And so I do see a lot more women, especially
in the South, cooking professionally, and so I just want
us to really decrease that gap that there is because
we have a lot to bring to the table. Like
I said, I think you know, for a long time,
when you want a good meal, you go to a
(28:03):
woman to cook it, and if you want to go
to a restaurant, then the men are cooking. So what happened?
Why aren't we doing it professionally? And I just don't
think that we think that there's enough room for us
so we can have the lifestyle that we want. And
I really want to be an advocate to that we
can have the lifestyle that we want well, and that
you are exhibit a of that. Mashama Bailey, thank you
(28:26):
so much for your time today. And I can't wait
until we're a little bit further through COVID and hopefully
I can have the chance to come eat at the Gray.
Oh Chelsea, this was an honor and a pleasure. If
you can't make it to Savannah or Austin, you can
(28:47):
find The Gray on social media at the Gray Savannah
and for a truly great read, I highly recommend their book,
Black White and The Gray. The story of an unexpected
friendship and a beloved restaurant and act is brought to
you by I Heart Radio. We are produced by a
mighty group of women and one amazing man, Erica Goodmanson,
(29:07):
Mart Harror, Sarah Horowitz, Jessmine Molly, and Justin Wright, with
help from Lindsay Hoffman, Barry Laurie Joyce, Kuban, Julie Subran,
Mike Taylor, and Emily Young. Original music is by Justin Wright.
If you like this episode of In Fact, please make
sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode, and
tell your family and friends to do the same. If
(29:28):
you really want to help us out, please leave a
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