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Hartnett beats the boys to be named top chef at food Oscars
Jonathan Prynn, Consumer Business Editor09.07.09
Angela Hartnett has become the first female chef to smash through the “Pyrex ceiling” and land the restaurant industry's top accolade.
She was named chef of the year at the Cateys (the fine-dining world's equivalent of the Oscars), following in an illustrious but entirely male line.
Previous winners of the award, which dates back to 1984, include her boss Gordon Ramsay, Heston Blumenthal, Marcus Wareing, Rick Stein and Raymond Blanc.
The popular one-Michelin-starred chef, who runs Murano in Mayfair and York and Albany in Camden, is one of only a handful of British women chefs who have succeeded at the highest levels in one of the most notoriously testosterone-fuelled of industries.
The award will help soften the reputation of London's professional kitchens as the domains of fiery, ego-driven macho chefs swearing at hapless underlings, particularly women.
It comes 15 years after Hartnett was given her first job in a top London restaurant, working alongside Wareing in Ramsay's breakthrough venture, Aubergine.
She came on a one-day trial and when she was kept on, Wareing famously predicted that she would not last a fortnight.
However, her six-day-a-week commitment, initially earning around £10,000 a year as a pastry chef, caught Ramsay's eye and he quickly promoted the young protégée he called “Dizzy Lizzy”.
The 40-year-old, who was taught to cook by her Italian grandmother, later worked at Royal Hospital Road in Chelsea, Petrus in St James Street and Amaryllis in Glasgow, before becoming chef patron at the Connaught in 2002.
After a spell launching a restaurant in a hotel in Miami she returned to London to set up her own Italian restaurant, Murano, and the “pub with rooms” York and Albany last year.
In their citation the judges said it was “her seemingly effortless representation of everything good about hospitality, rather than her gender” that won her the award, presented at The Grosvenor Hotel on Tuesday night. She was up against fellow Ramsay-stable chef Jason Atherton of Maze and John Williams, executive chef at The Ritz.
Hartnett told the Standard: “It's a total honour to be the first woman to get this award. Nobody can ever beat that. Being a woman has not held me back.
“There are lots of guys out there who are equally as talented as me but because there are so few women it helps me stand out. It has made my ascent easier, not been a hindrance.”
However, she admitted that even her own family sometimes doubted her abilities: “My mother said to my brother just before I opened the Connaught: I love Angela but are you sure she can cook?'”
She said her ambition now was to become the first British woman to land a second Michelin star. “That would be fantastic,” she said.
Reader views (3)
Make a fuss about her being a woman and you are reinforcing the idea that this makes a difference. How about lauding her qualities rather than her sex.
- Rogan, Irving
In 2004 Angela Hartnett netted her first Michelin star and was awarded an MBE in early 2007 for her services to the hospitality industry
- Donald Smith, London
Why is she am MBE?
Whose life has she saved or people has she helped. Honours system is a joke
- Ge, Kernow
