Gabrielle Hamilton Wins Best Chef | Dr Peggy Drexler on Fathers & Daughters

Living

Big-Time Kitchens

Women Make Mark at 2011 James Beard Foundation Awards WSJ

Gabrielle Hamilton, chef and owner of Prune, a tiny East Village sensation, took the best New York City chef award, beating out big guys like Michael White of Marea and Wylie Dufresne of wd-50.

Other female winners scored in the testosterone heavy restaurant industry. They are Belinda Chang of Danny Meyer’s Modern for outstanding wine service, Andrea Reusing of Lantern in Chapel Hill, N.C. for best chef in the Southeast, Saipin Chutima of Lotus Siam in Las Vegas for best chef Southwest and Angela Pinkerton of Eleven Madison Park in New York City for outstanding pastry chef.

Gabrielle Hamilton’s Memoir

Gabrielle Hamilton wasn’t even in town for the awards. The chef/owner of Prune also earned an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Michigan and is putting it to good use.

Anthony Bourdain, who doesn’t lavish praise on anyone ever, calls Hamilton’s new book Blood, Bones & Butter “Magnificent. Simply the best memoir by a chef ever.”

BLOOD, BONES & BUTTER follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily wooden spoon in hand; the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality; the soulless catering factories that helped pay the rent; Hamilton’s own kitchen at Prune, with its many unexpected challenges; and the kitchen of her Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton’s idyllic past and her own future family—the result of a difficult and prickly marriage that nonetheless yields rich and lasting dividends.

Listen and/or read exercepts of ‘Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef’ online.

Sexual Politics

The Doctor is In

Peggy Drexler Stares Down Toemageddon WWD

Most design and fashion people know that Mickey Drexler, former CEO of The Gap, has created another retail miracle with J Crew. We don’t necessarily know Dr Peggy Drexler — gender scholar, research psychologist, mother of two children and Mickey’s wife.

Dr Drexler didn’t hesitate one minute telling WWD that she was ‘so annoyed and dispirited’ about the gender experts tagged to address the brouhaha that arose in America’s culture wars a couple weeks ago, when J Crew’s creative director Jenna Lyons was photographed with her son painting his toes pink.

Dr. Keith Ablow, writing on foxnews.com, referred to the image as “an attack on masculinity.” Erin Brown, of the conservative advocacy group Media Research Center, issued a statement, picked up by CNN, that declared the image as “blatant propaganda celebrating transgendered children.”

Dr Drexler’s first book Raising ‘Boys Without Men’ was published in 2005. Her new book ‘Our Fathers, Ourselves’ explores the father/daughter relationship.

“Every woman I spoke to yearned, longed for, desired her father’s approval,” she says. “No matter how much they had achieved, no matter how liberated they were, they had not liberated themselves from the need for Dad’s approval. No matter if the relationship is good, bad, nonexistent.”

Drexler insists the fear of strong women corrupting young boys and making them girly is completely outdated. Toemageddon is total poppyycock in her gender playbook. Read more from Dr Peggy Drexler on her website.

Buy her book at Amazon.