When people started to tell Sally Abé that she was brave for writing a memoir, she was perplexed. “I was like, why? And they said, well, what if everyone hates you?” Her book, A Woman’s Place Is in the Kitchen, is about to be published. “Basically, I’ve had a week of panicking that everyone is going to hate me.” For those of us who aren’t well acquainted with fine-dining kitchens, or commercial kitchens at all, she doesn’t so much pull back the curtains as yank them away, revealing the plain truth of what it takes to get dinner on to your plate.
Now 37, Abé isn’t in the thick of it like she once was, and the long hours punctuated by quick cigarette breaks are behind her. We meet in London, around the corner from Westminster Abbey, in the private dining room of her restaurant, the Pem (a family nickname for the suffragette Emily Wilding Davison). Abé is chef consultant, overseeing a kitchen that is largely staffed by women. In hospitality, this is not a typical state of affairs. According to ONS data gathered between 2009 and 2017, less than 20% of cheffing positions in the UK were held by women. Only 8% of the UK’s Michelin-starred restaurants were led by women, according to a 2023 survey, slightly higher than the international average of 6%.
