Women Chefs: A Collection of Portraits and Recipes from California's Culinary Pioneers

Someone gave me this book when it was first published in 1987, probably with the comment that I should open my own restaurant someday, a not-unusual thought from my well-meaning and well-fed friends back then. In 1989 when I did start a gourmet food products company I evidently failed to read or maybe to understand the stories of the women chefs profiled here or perhaps I might have had second thoughts before I committed myself to years of working around the clock and more than a decade without a vacation. On the whole I have no regrets, but this should be required reading for any woman thinking to open a restaurant or a catering company or any variant of a food business. And for young women at culinary school it should be required reading so they understand what it was like in the bad old days, before so many women of talent blew open the doors and made it impossible ever after to keep women out of the profession.