While women leading industries should be a given at this point and not something particularly noteworthy, the reality is that it’s often still men at the helm in the corporate world.
When it comes to the food and beverage industry, it’s often still men in the executive chef role in the kitchen and in managerial positions across the restaurant — something that has certainly been changing over time but still is unbalanced.
In Charleston, the same rings true. But that doesn’t mean it’s across the board. There are some stellar women leaders in food and bev behind some of the peninsula’s best restaurants.
The Post and Courier caught up with three particular restaurants with women leaders in a variety of positions to share a little more about their passions, struggles, talents and goals.
Herd Provisions wine and events director Kellie Holmes and Tyler Martin, with McCarus Beverage Company, tastes one of the several Lorenza wines she is serving during a dinner March 21.
Herd Provisions
Over in the Wagener Terrace neighborhood, an executive chef and wine and events director are running the show.
At Herd Provisions, Jeanne Oleksiak is not only the executive chef, but she’s the butcher and the pastry chef, as well. She works with a team to put out creative plates made with fresh and sustainable local ingredients for dinner most nights a week and lunch and dinner on Fridays and Saturdays.
Oleksiak, who has been at the restaurant since 2020 after working as sous chef right down the street at Park & Grove (formerly Park Café), is dishing out whipped ricotta, ceviche, hand-pulled burrata, rigatoni ragu, brined pork chops and much more alongside an all-male kitchen team.
“On the back-of-house end especially, it’s a more male-dominated world,” Oleksiak told The Post and Courier. “It’s kind of been that way forever.”
Being a female line cook in the kitchen can come with “locker room talk” and inappropriate comments, said Oleksiak. And worse sometimes — sexual innuendos and harassment that is often not seen behind closed doors.
“You have to have thicker skin,” she said.
When you’re a woman leading a kitchen, there are added obstacles to overcome.
“Finding a male staff that’s willing to work for a woman or work with one as line cook can be hard,” Oleksiak said. “Women are still kind of generally seen as pastry chefs or front-of-the-house or lesser, though it seems to be a little bit better now, and Herd definitely does not have that mentality.”
For one, Herd Provisions has an open-air kitchen, which automatically exposes any actions or loud conversations to the dining room. Secondly, its mindset from the start has been on talent and not gender — a notion most restaurants would agree on but not all are creating the right environment for.
Kellie Holmes, Herd Provision’s wine and events director, has been general managing, consulting and implementing wine programs from Napa Valley to Atlanta to now Charleston for almost two decades. She’s part of the former McCrady’s team and also worked at Basic Kitchen.
As a former general manager, she’s had to field a lot of complaints as far as what’s happened in the kitchen and how coworkers are relating to one another.
“Certain dynamics might have been accepted in a kitchen before that for somebody, but when you work with a woman, you might have to change the way you communicate, all in addition to the nuts and bolts of working in this business,” said Holmes.
As far as the wine industry, it’s been slowly but surely opening the door for more women in leadership roles, said Holmes.
“I’d say 10 years ago, five years ago maybe even, things were different,” she said. “And now still not everything is equal. Some female beverage directors don’t make the same as a male would, and that’s just part of our conditioning in society as America.”
Oleksiak said there’s also different interpretations of women and men in leadership, the classic “she’s a shrew” or “she’s on her period” that’s thrown out when women are barking orders, while yelling men are simply seen as taking charge.
Executive chef Jeanne Oleksiak serves dishes during dinner service at Herd Provisions on Thursday, March 21, 2024.
Holmes said she’s seen more women in charge taking different approaches, as well, coming to the realization that the “Gordon Ramsey method” of screaming and degrading might not be in fact ideal for everyone’s productivity, and certainly not their mental health.
“I’ve worked with female chefs who manage like male managers in the past come to a moment of realization that maybe I can do it my way and maybe it’s a better way,” she said.
Oleksiak said she’s one of those chefs.
“I definitely came up that way, and when I started managing kitchens, I was one of those when you screwed up, I’d be yelling, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I was much harsher, and then I had children,” she said. “… Then I started thinking, ‘How can I change my attitude to take stress off me and make it a better place to be for everyone who works with me?’ “
Being part of a story like this during Women’s History Month is still incredibly frustrating for women like Oleksiak and Holmes, who want to receive recognition year-round, not for their gender, but their talents in the industry.
“I mean, here it is 2024 and we’re having this conversation, and I’m frustrated by it,” said Holmes. “I wish it wasn’t something we still had to fight to get heard … I’m always glad to highlight and champion women, but I don’t want to do it just one month a year. Doing that, it almost accentuates the fact we still aren’t in a place of equality.”
S.N.O.B.
At Slightly North of Broad, sous chef Chelsea Christian and chef de cuisine Alyssa Mendez are both Art Institute of Charleston graduates who worked their way up in the restaurant world.
Mendez, who grew up watching her grandmother cook, has been at S.N.O.B. for seven years. Because there is almost an equal ratio of women to men in the kitchen, she said it’s been a very positive experience. But she doesn’t look at it that way — “I don’t really think about that kind of stuff,” she said.
“(I’ve learned) it doesn’t matter who you are — your color, gender, anything like that — as long as you work hard and try to improve every day,” she said.
Slightly North of Broad, or SNOB, has been a mainstay of the downtown Charleston dining scene for 30 years.
Christian, who worked at Mellow Mushroom in Summerville and before that at places like Little Caesars and Donatos Pizza, said when she started in the culinary world, it was almost all men.
There were certain kitchens where more disrespect was tolerated, but most kitchens these days aren’t putting up with the same attitudes and behaviors of the past, she said.
Plates prepared by executive chef Jeanne Oleksiak for a wine dinner.
“As long as we respect each other, and we don’t have a choice but to because that’s how we are here, then we can all get along, do our job and have fun,” said Mendez. “If one person fails, we all fail. We all want to help each other and look out for each other.”
The creative freedom at S.N.O.B. and ample opportunities to be a part of crafting the daily changing menu is one reason both love their jobs here.
“When we look at doing our menus, we just talk around a table, have conversation and write down ideas,” said Mendez. Everyone has a say.
Charleston Grill
Michelle Weaver, culinary ambassador for The Charleston Place and previous Charleston Grill executive chef, has been championing women in leadership in Lowcountry food and bev for decades now. And she’s been having this same conversation for decades, too — one attempting to break out of the box as a “leading woman chef” to just be known as a “leading chef.”
Lead bartender Melissa Cone, chef de cuisine Suzy Castelloe, general manager Julie Hennigan and assistant pastry chef Paige Sylvestre are all leaders at Charleston Grill under The Charleston Place umbrella. They also happen to be women.
Former Charleston Grill executive chef and now culinary ambassador for The Charleston Place Michelle Weaver holds a soft shell crab that had just arrived from Georgia in 2021.
“You know, I think this team of women has been a dream of mine for a long time,” said Weaver. “… But also I think that all of us really just want to be known as the best at what we do, no matter what sex you are, you know. I wouldn’t want to be looked at as female chefs or female general managers or bartenders — just a great chef, a great bartender, the right manager.”
That’s a battle she’s been fighting for 27 years since she started at Charleston Grill as executive chef.
“It was a big deal when I became executive chef because I was the first (woman) for, I guess, a fine dining restaurant here in the town,” said Weaver. “I know there’s a lot more women owners and chefs obviously in the city now.”
As one of the first, Weaver helped paved the way for all who came after her, including the team she’s now helping to run at Charleston Grill. Creating role models for other women to see they can do it has been integral in developing this trajectory.
“I’ve had a lot of female chefs that I can look up to and say, ‘Hey, I want to be that good’ or ‘I want to do that, and I can do that,’ “ said Sylvestre.
Women line cooks outnumber men five to three here, and that’s been inspirational to those like Castelloe, who has moved her way up to the chef de cuisine role. The dining room also has a mostly female makeup, but that’s not necessarily on purpose.
“That was not done intentionally, but we are really happy to support all of the female professionals that are coming up in this industry, as well,” said Hennigan.
Hennigan recalled tables asking for the sommelier when she used to work as one, expecting a man in the role. She said that is not as much the case anymore — “which is fantastic because I think we can focus more again on the craft and the profession, not so much on any kind of gender bias.”
But that doesn’t mean everyone else in society is catching on as fast.
“I get a lot of diners still saying, ‘Oh, what’s the chef’s name? What’s his name?’ Or if I go to a table, they say, ‘Does he make a good old fashioned?’ and I just proudly say, ‘Well, you know, he is she, and yes she does’,” said Cone. “So I think people just historically have kind of assumed that it is a man, and that’s kind of being reinvented as no longer such a thing.”
Weaver recalled it happening all the time when she first started out — people thinking she was the pastry chef.
So what still needs to change? Well, offered Sylvestre, “For me, it’s making sure as a leader that I am creating space for people to feel understood and feel like they belong.”
According to Castelloe, it’s about focusing on the craft and working hard.
“It’s not whether you’re male, female, what your preferences are, none of that really matters when it comes down to the food and the experience for the guest,” she said.
And it’s about creating opportunities for women in leadership roles.
“We just recently had a female join as our hotel manager for The Charleston Place, and to me that’s incredibly inspiring because I can see somebody who is really at the very top of this organization,” said Hennigan. “So just seeing more of that opportunity for growth I think would be fantastic.”
