Out kitchen
maestros have thrived on TV shows like Top Chef. But in the
real-life restaurant world? Not so much. Rebecca Marx looks
at why.
“I’m a big gay chef and I’m gonna
outcook your ass!” So declared Dale Levitski,
the memorably driven Chicago chef with the fauxhawk on
season 3 of Top Chef, the Bravo reality series
that has fueled many a foodie’s addiction.
Although he lost in the final round, Levitski was
certainly victorious in one regard: showing America
that gay chefs can take the heat in even the most
high-profile kitchens.
Levitski, 34,
who’s planning to open his first restaurant in
Chicago this spring, would be the first to admit that
as an out and proud cook, he’s something of a
rarity. “A lot of my reputation as a chef is being a
gay guy,” he says. “I’m a little
bit of an anomaly. There are not really very many out
chefs on the radar.”
Indeed, there
aren’t. As much as Top Chef has
showcased queer chefs -- season 3 winner Hung Huynh is
bisexual, as is season 1 finalist Tiffani Faison;
meanwhile, season 2 featured both Josie Smith-Malave,
an outspoken lesbian who once played in a national
women’s football league, and Carlos Fernandez, a
dashing Cuban who made no secret of his longtime
boyfriend -- the reality is that they are few and far
between in the upper ranks of top restaurants around the
country. The California-based Lesbian and Gay Chefs
Association doesn’t even have a functioning Web
site (and voice-mail messages went without a response).
Instead, being a
famous chef these days seems to be an either-or
proposition: Either you’re a macho, dick-swinging
dude who uses four-letter words as a form of
punctuation and views the kitchen as a boxing ring
(Anthony Bourdain, Gordon Ramsay, Marco Pierre White), or
you’re a domestic goddess who serves up a big smile
and perhaps a bit of cleavage alongside the
crudités (Rachael Ray, Giada De Laurentiis,
Nigella Lawson, Paula Deen).
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