Sally Abé’s kitchen at The Pem restaurant in London is immaculate, with a marked absence of shouting, swearing chefs. There’s no bullying, no name-calling, no spit-storming dressing downs, no threats of violence or firings. Calm industriousness prevails.
That hasn’t been the case at every kitchen Abé has worked in. Since 2007, she has cooked at some of the UK’s most renowned and high-pressure restaurants, first at the Savoy Grill working under Gordon Ramsay, then at Ramsay’s Claridge’s restaurant. That was followed by five years as sous chef at two-Michelin-starred restaurant the Ledbury, before she took charge as head chef at the Harwood Arms, where she retained the gastropub’s Michelin stars for four years.
One restaurant, which she won’t name, had a “hypermasculine environment” and made her life a misery. Male staff nicknamed her Tit Rat (“I didn’t have a voice to say otherwise”), and the head chef bullied her and seemingly every other staff member. “It was awful. Tears filled my eyes every morning at the thought of going in there,” she says. “It was a very dark point in my life. There was a constant reminder that you were shit. That’s why I only managed four months.”
Television series such as The Bear and Boiling Point have given the public an idea of what goes on. But the intensity of some fine dining kitchens, as detailed in Abé’s book A Woman’s Place is in the Kitchen, is still shocking. The unnamed restaurant made staff work from 6.30am to 2am (“Gruelling—you’re constantly exhausted”). Drug and alcohol abuse is rife in restaurants, Abé says. There’s also backstabbing, bullying and sexual harassment. “At the time, I was of the mindset I had to brush [sexual harassment] off and get on with it,” she says.
Only 17 per cent of chefs at fine dining restaurants are female. Abé puts the often “toxic” environments down to the male-dominated culture. “The brigade structure of the kitchen was based on the army,” she says. “There’s a lot of screaming and shouting historically in the army too. Maybe it’s a case of people not standing up and saying, ‘This isn’t right—we shouldn’t work like this.’”
There has also been camaraderie, friendship, and food—glorious food, a world away from the reheated pizzas Abé grew up eating in Nottingham. She had no idea who Gordon Ramsay was when her tutor on her hospitality degree at Sheffield Hallam University sent her on a placement at the Savoy Grill, but she loved London’s bright lights.
At the Harwood Arms, Abé created a menu of “refined British elegance, nostalgic flavours and food from the British Isles, with my own twist on it”—and it kept the Michelin stars coming. “I don’t cook for Michelin,” she says. “But I certainly worked very hard and put a lot of thought into everything. Being a chef is a lifestyle, not a job.”
The Pem, named after the nickname of the suffragette Emily Wilding Davison, opened in July 2021 at the Conrad London St James hotel in Westminster. As chef consultant, Abé sets both the menu and the tone. “It’s based on a culture of respect rather than fear,” she says. “Every single person in the kitchen has a voice. People want to be there. It’s about being approachable as a boss. It’s not all hugs and high fives—mistakes still happen. But we move on.”
“I’d love a Michelin star,” she says. “But it’s not why I get out of bed in the morning.” But The Pem is proof that “you don’t have to shout at someone to have a successful business.”
Part of the solution is stopping the wrong people coming into the kitchen to start with. “If someone has an attitude or arrogance about them, I won’t hire them,” says Abé. “You can teach someone how to chop a carrot but you can’t teach someone how not to be a prick.”
