Women leading luxury hotels and kitchens

The women in the book run properties and kitchens at the top of their fields: Susanne Hatje at Mandarin Oriental, New York; Anneke Brown at COMO The Treasury in Perth; Pinar Kartal Timer at Pera Palace in Istanbul; Ana Roš at Hiša Franko in Slovenia; Emma Bengtsson at Aquavit in New York; Cristina Bowerman at Glass Hostaria in Rome; Niki Nakayama at n/naka in Los Angeles; Martha Ortiz in Mexico City; and Georgianna Hiliadaki, with Nikos Roussos, at Funky Gourmet in Athens.

I have grouped them here because readers ask, and because their answers are worth reading side by side. They were asked the same questions as everyone else, and their answers belong to the same arguments: Hatje on the general manager who must be part of every facet of the business; Brown on hiring for personality and on compensating a guest without question; Timer on the perfectionist who must also give the team time to improve; Roš on dance, improvisation and the kitchen; Bengtsson on the feeling of achieving something on your own as the greatest motivator; Bowerman on working twenty hours a day to become a good cook first.

Several of them speak directly about the industry’s culture. Bowerman says that food has given women a way to reach equality. Nakayama, who runs a kaiseki kitchen in a tradition that had few women at its head, speaks of the guest’s opinion deserving a voice even in a creative kitchen. The profiles below give each woman’s role, the idea she carries in the book, and her own words from the earlier books.