Restaurant kitchens have long been defined by male dominance, operating under an archaic spell that women can’t handle the heat. They are also notorious for low pay, long hours and lack of benefits, like paid vacation or health insurance. These hazards have long affected women, especially mothers, in more implacable ways.

A majority of students at the Culinary Institute of America are women, but three-quarters of head chef positions are filled by men, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — and they earn 22 percent more on average. In 2014, Bloomberg discovered that among 15 high-profile restaurant groups, fewer than 7 percent of executive chefs were women. Reasons cited by companies that agreed to an interview included lifestyle choices, desires to have children, and professional goals focused not on management but self-improvement.

Emerging from the mess and melancholy of the past two years, Tacoma restaurants — at the center of a growing, changing region — have an opportunity. Leaders of the local industry are out to prove it can be both exciting and equitable, competitive and compassionate, determined and delicious.

The six young women featured here have already accepted this challenge.

We asked them to share their perspective on being a woman in the kitchen today, on respect and on being a leader. How has the industry changed, and where is it going?

Each chef was selected for their passion and their talent, and their commitment to the future of Tacoma’s culinary evolution. They are all under 45. Four are mothers and four own their own businesses.

Jan Parker, 44

Owner/Chef, Jan Parkery Cookery

In just five years, Jan Parker has built a viable restaurant without the confines of four walls. Propping portable grills and vinyl tents on the street at farmers markets and select pop-up events, she draws long lines for her seasonal Filipino food, cooked with local ingredients: adobo with pork shoulder, coconut chicken, red wine beef chuck; vegan mushroom fried rice; ube pancakes; Chinese sausage pancit.

The greater Seattle area is home to more than 100,000 Filipinos; nationwide, the population exceeds 4 million, yet their storied cuisine has long hidden in the shadows. That’s changing, and in Tacoma, Parker — who credits the women behind established Filipino businesses, including Lumpia Love and Northwest Lumpia — has catalyzed this movement.

“It’s more about continuing the history of our people and just being more supportive of each other, and making sure that we shine,” said Parker.

Outside of the kitchen, she works tirelessly to connect with the Filipinx community and with people of color in food. “People are interested because they know that I do the work.”

Parker moved to Tacoma in 2017, following her husband’s 20 years in the military. Her Instagram presence is fierce, especially as she re-centered on inequities that many in the industry already knew but neglected to truly change.

“The culinary landscape of Tacoma can use some work,” she said. “To build within our community we have to provide access, and we have to make it easier not only to get into the business but also sustain business.”

Visit her booth — most Saturdays at the Proctor Farmers Market and the Tacoma Sunday Market — to see these values in action, and of course, break bread.

“I like to be a leader who considers the humanity within all of us when we’re working together in a space and sharing energy,” she said. “As a leader, if you feel like you’ve learned it all, then that’s when you’ve stopped being a leader.”

▪ Various locations, including Proctor Farmers Market, Tacoma Sunday Market and Tacoma Night Market

▪ follow instagram.com/janparkercookery for upcoming events, janparkercookery.com

Kylee Nelson, 32

Executive Pastry Chef, Farm 12

For a few hours every week, the kitchen at Farm 12, an events center and full-service restaurant, is staffed solely by women.

“The whole line, the prep staff, the dishwashers even, the bakery team,” said executive pastry chef Kylee Nelson. “I walk through the door and there’s nothing but girl power. There’s been a lot of places where I felt a little outnumbered … but to be able to see women thriving — and mothers thriving — in this industry, and supported in this industry, that moment every weekend, that always lights me up.”

Situated on the old Van Lierop farm in Puyallup, Farm 12 opened in late 2019, the fruition of five-year journey for Step by Step, itself a 20-year-old nonprofit that supports at-risk mothers and pregnant women. Nelson first applied for a staff pastry position and will lead the new, bigger, standalone bakery being built next door. For the 32-year-old mother of two, working here means more than making the best morning buns, infused with cardamom and orange.

“I definitely felt like there wasn’t a place left after I had children,” she said. “That experience really put the light out in me for a long time.”

From her first job as a baker for Fisher Scones at the Washington State Fair, she trained in pastry and in her early 20s accepted management roles, always in the kitchen. Employees won’t trust you unless you trust them, she learned, and they need space to create.

As a young chef, she doubted herself, her skill and her work ethic. As a young mother, she didn’t see a future in the industry, despite carrying an impressive resume and obvious knack for the craft. In the pastry case at Farm 12: classic, pink-frosted sugar cookies; white chocolate, lemon meringue tarts; Fruity Pebbles cereal milk ice cream; anything with berries, when in season. Nostalgia and nourishment, she said, “Those little memories and the pieces of your heart — that’s what I like to see in food.”

▪ 3303 #B, 8th Ave. SE, Puyallup, farm12.org

Hailey Hernandez, 27

Executive Chef, Sig Brewing Co.

At 25 years old, Hailey Hernandez opened the kitchen at Sig Brewing Co. She quickly garnered a reputation for her irreverent comfort food — rotating deviled eggs, al pastor pizza, housemade saltines, bubblegum-pink cheesecakes — and seats became tough to snag, especially on weekends. No matter how many big buttermilk biscuits her team makes for brunch, they sell out by noon.

You might not expect to find tteokbokki on a brewpub menu, but Hernandez treats the Korean rice cake like gnocchi, browning butter with sage and thyme, tossing in a house gochugaru sauce with a whisper of MSG — “stop hating, it just adds the umami that you want” — and so much parmesan.

“Until you think it’s a little too much, then put on some more,” she tells her cooks.

Grinding through the late kitchens of Marrow and Wilder, among others, Hernandez entered the industry as soon as she could work. Women, she said, “have to come in and work twice as hard to prove that we’re the same as our male counterparts.”

Early on, said Hernandez, she wasn’t real with herself. “I was trying to be something I wasn’t.” She obsessed over traditional techniques, internalized external pressures, until she “realized no one had that expectation for me besides myself. What do you wanna do? What do you wanna eat?”

That passion, and her personality, reveals itself in her food. As she prepares to open her own business with husband and beer master Dante Hernandez, she sees Tacoma and Pierce County nurturing even more creative restaurants.

“It takes these people who are innovators, and the fact that these people are comfortable coming into this space — it shows that it’s a proven concept already,” she said, pointing to places like Field Bar, en Rama and Odin Brewing. “It’s this driving force of passion that Tacoma has in the food scene right now, that I think is why this train isn’t slowing down.”

▪ 2534 Tacoma Ave. S., Tacoma, 253-503-6446, sigbrewingco.com

Nicole de la Paz, 38

Owner/Chef, The Church Cantina

“What we’re doing is not fitting into a cookie-cutter,” said Nicole de la Paz, chef and co-owner with her husband, Adam Jones, of The Church Cantina in South Tacoma. “I just wanted people to experience my chaos and my weirdness, and it comes out in my food.”

She began her restaurant career as a prep cook at HG Bistro in Puyallup; she left for Dirty Oscar’s Annex seven years later as executive chef. After stints at Marrow and 3uilt, she had a daughter, and The Church was born.

“I was scared,” she said. “I didn’t know if there was anything going on down here. We would definitely kind of be outcasts, but we’re used to that.”

The menu leans into her father’s Cuban heritage, with chimichurri steak rice bowls, a surf-and-turf burrito, chilaquiles in a ghost pepper-cheddar-chorizo gravy, and an nontraditional but seductive Cubano. It’s also a haven for vegans, prime-time flavor never omitted. The evolving decor leans into horror film homages accompanied by prayer candles and caskets, the latter randomly donated by patrons who presumed they would accept.

De la Paz runs a kitchen of mostly women. She doesn’t advertise job postings as such. “Some men just can’t handle it. They just don’t like the estrogen, and cleanliness!” she laughed. “It’s just too much. You know what I’m sayin’.”

South Tacoma Way is much livelier these days than when The Church opened in 2018. Credit in large part de la Paz, who has forged a truly genuine space.

“I’ve been in situations before where I feel like I’m nothing, like I’m nobody, and like why am I here? That just showed me that situation wasn’t for me,” she said. “Working hard and pushing towards what you’re gonna do — as a woman, as a person, as anything — that’s all it takes. You can do this. I didn’t think I could do this, and I’m doing it.”

▪ 5240 South Tacoma Way, 253-292-0544, facebook.com/thechurchcantina

Nikki Nguyen, 31

Owner/Chef, Toast Mi

After earning a degree in marketing, Nikki Nguyen hopped on a plane, alone, to Vietnam, where she embraced that “the best way to connect with people is through food.” A year later, she returned to Tacoma, determined to share fresh Vietnamese dishes with her community.

With friend Liam Nguyen (no relation), she developed the concept for Toast Mi, a bánh mì, rice bowl and bubble tea shop. “It took us a long time,” she admitted. “Even little things, like how do we make it quick? We thought of every single detail. From the get-go, our goal was to provide quick-service, but affordable, and healthy — that’s really important to us.”

Curiously, there aren’t more such options in Tacoma. Nguyen recognized this void and set out to fill it. Her mother and aunt marinate chicken, pork, beef and meatballs with house recipes; they helped develop the restaurant’s secret sauce, an avocado aioli at its core. Packaged in a paper bag to catch the inevitable baguette crumbs, these sandwiches are highly customizable, flawless in flavor and, importantly, made directly in front of the customer.

At just 31 years old, the new mother discovered that the world continues to doubt women like her.

“I grew up in a family where my parents, specifically my mom, always taught me: Whatever a man can do, a woman can do even better,” she said. The idea of someone questioning her, her motives, her goals? “That never crossed my mind until running a business myself.”

She sees herself as an older sister to her staff, and has learned that, to be successful, you have to trust yourself and those around you.

“It’s impossible to do everything by yourself. In the beginning, it was just me and Liam and two employees — we had no idea what we were doing,” she said.

Now they are scouting second locations.

“I say just don’t wait around. Just get to work — hard work really does pay off. You gotta get started, because if you never get started, you’re never gonna get there.”

▪ 2602 N. Proctor St., Tacoma, 253-245-2246, instagram.com/toastmiplease

Anna Gonzales, 38

Owner/Chef, 3uilt Tacoma

Anna Gonzales had her first raw oyster at 3uilt, the restaurant inside the vast 7 Seas Brewing taproom. She visited the source farms along the Hood Canal of these gems, ridgebacks and wilds. A squeeze of lemon, a dash of housemade mignonette, and a story of sustainability lies within each one.

Oyster shucking is a fine art, requiring skill and focus to gently pry open the bivalve, scooping a knife between the hard shell until it lifts cleanly, brine intact. Gonzales tells her employees: “Treat every one like it’s somebody’s first oyster.”

She bought 3uilt in the spring of 2019 from founder Jaime Kay Jones (also the original Top of Tacoma owner).

“I think it’s really important to be compassionate,” she said, “because we’re all learning in this world.”

From her first job as a teenager at a Quizno’s sub shop, to the Metropolitan Market deli, the late Hilltop Kitchen and Marrow, as well as Antique Sandwich Co., Gonzales learned that communication, respect and compassion breeds success. Her father and business partner Edward told her when she was young, “‘You can be your own boss,’” she recalled. “I feel like society doesn’t tell you that; it doesn’t set you up for that. It’s as simple that, just planting that seed in somebody’s brain.”

They opened a second restaurant in late 2021, where local mushrooms meet chili oil and grits, and cocktails are on the docket.

When faced with negativity, misogyny or any semblance of disrespect, she says good riddance.

“What matters most is what I think about myself and how I treat others,” she said. “I don’t want it to affect my good attitude and image of myself. You can’t always control what other people think of you, but you can control how you treat others.”

▪ 2101 Jefferson Ave. (inside 7 Seas Brewing), Tacoma, 253-301-0262, 3uilt.com

▪ 1101 Tacoma Ave. S, Tacoma, 253-301-1730

Editor’s note: This project was reported, written, visually produced and edited by women at The News Tribune and McClatchy in honor of Women’s History Month.

This story was originally published March 29, 2022 at 5:00 AM.