Chefs have a lot to watch from the kitchen. The stove. The clock. The maître d', the quiet gestures, the important guests, the deliveries, the clock again, the fourth saucepan, the oven, the sharp-shouted hand signals, the flames, the first sauce, the grill, the seventh sauce, the clock. Anne-Sophie Pic remembers all this. And the eyes. She also remembers watching the eyes. 'Always the eyes, with men in the kitchen. Yes, I knew they were looking at me. I knew they were talking about me, later, together, or behind my back. And, if not talking, just looking at me. You can say a lot, in France, with your eyes.' She doesn't have to watch the eyes any more. Just a few weeks ago, at the tail end of February, she took a call in her office, just before the supper rush. It was, she remembers with only a little effort, precisely 6.36pm. It was also, she remembers with absolutely no effort at all, the directeur of the Michelin Guide. Pic, 37, had just become the first woman in over 50 years to be awarded a third Michelin star in France. Half a momentous century had passed since the 'Lyon grandmothers' - Eugénie Brazier, Marie Bourgeois and Marguerite Bise - had begun doing such fine things with the hard-caught game of the wild Ardèche, in a part of the land where two world wars had significantly reduced the number of male chefs, that they were accorded such status.
From the Fifties on, French cuisine sank back into a stew brimming with machismo. Women rolled up brusque sleeves and washed slopping pots, or dressed beautifully and ate the stuff daintily out front, but within the world of French chefs de cuisine, the so-called 'perpetually moustached' kitchens, four unprecedented decades of growing emancipation were brushed aside while the real men sweated with the heavy knives, and the brimming stock-pans; and the rosettes, the headlines. It was an anachronism even within Mediterranean Europe. In Italy, in Spain, women were able to make their names and reputations with the steady revival of a traditional culture of 'a woman in the kitchen, a man pressing flesh in the salon', and the fact that these countries now feature five three-star women is a cause for quiet satisfaction rather than headlines.
Here, in Valence, Anne-Sophie Pic's triumph is all the more remarkable for the fact it has been achieved so far from the hothouse gossip of even Paris, let alone 'Newyorklondonparis'. Valence is a quiet, friendly, sprawling market town, set amid wild hills and close to the abundance of the sea, but otherwise fairly unremarkable apart from its site halfway between Lyon and Marseilles: traditionally (in the last century at least), this was where Parisians would break their road trip to Nice and the south coast. Here, at the side of Route 7, once sat a two-room auberge run by Pic's grandfather, André, the fame of whose crayfish gratin spread south to the Riviera and north to Normandy.
André achieved three Michelin stars, as did his son Jacques, Pic's father. They look down on her now, their etchings on glass, as we talk in the minimalist comfort of the now sprawling Maison Pic. The road outside may have changed, being no longer a stylish highway but a cramped concrete boulevard; and the auberge has become an award-winning hotel, but the food, as recently attested, is the magnet it has always been. There's André in the Thirties, comfortably chunky in his high chef's hat, moustached, arms folded like hams; Jacques, sensitive, quizzical, stylish, a folded napkin in his hand; and then Pic herself, also in black and white, demure, elfin, yet the one gazing most directly, most unafraid, at the camera; and also here, in front of me, nodding seriously, concentrating always as she tries to find the right word. 'Yes, my grandfather was different: big, strong, male. But more than that: big-hearted too. So many friends. And, of course, none of them paid. And my father, while he was more shy indeed, he had a great inner strength, a quiet reserve: he was very respectful towards other people.'
She grew up here, in a room above the kitchen, and learned to chat with the tradesmen, and to taste, fresh and raw fish or truffles, and to eat, and to listen to the talk about food. She grew up steeped in food and, in her late teens, did what was expected of everyone in their late teens, and got the hell out.
'I was right to have gone,' she says now, leaning across the coffee table towards me, her big eyes intense, intent, careful. 'Living here can be like living in a cocoon. I felt I needed more experience. Needed more something.' She went into management training, studied and worked in Paris and Japan, 'but I realised, finally, that there was still something inside me that really wanted to create, somehow, not just make cold money. Clothes or jewellery or perfume or something. And then I realised what I did have. Cooking. I could create through cooking. It took me five years to acknowledge it, but it was a ... necessary five years.'
She came home. She went into the kitchen to learn, finally, under her father and his colleagues. Three months after she began, her father died. 'The timing was very bad. It was very difficult for me to accept.' She continued her tutelage despite the sneers; she wasn't only a woman, but was the former boss's daughter, tied to the family; the backstabbing was all but physical.
'But I learned, I stuck with it. There were a couple of the chefs who were very good to me. Just a couple. I knew a good bit about food, knew how to taste, which is very important. I had got that from very early, from my father, tasting food as it arrived at the door, encouraged to lift and touch and eat things and get to know what I loved. The way I learned the rest is the same way, I think, everyone good has to learn: you reach a stage with the basics where you stop thinking. You have to reach that before you can go anywhere. You can then throw new life into what you are doing with cooking, because all your brain is taken up with where it's going, not with the details you know blind.
'So I learned, and then, one day, I walked in and said, OK, that's it, I'm taking over.' She smiles modestly, making it sound like nothing. Her voice darkens a little as she begins to describe how much of a nothing it wasn't. 'Not very easy, no. I would see them speaking among themselves. See the eyes. Not only was I a woman but I was the daughter! Of the owner! And suddenly I am in the kitchen, in a French kitchen, full of men, telling them what to do ... oomf.
'I had to learn a different way to be strong, the way women have to be strong. It wasn't just about the physical side, because that has been changing a little down the years, getting easier. My main difficulty, the thing I had to find strength for, was to impose upon myself the idea that I didn't care what people said. I told myself I didn't care what they were saying, every day, behind my back.'
Did she, I ask carefully, find herself in tears often? Her eager, easy chatter slows for once while she ponders whether to answer. 'Yes. I cried.' You mean ... at work, in the kitchen? 'No. No! Never in the kitchen.
'And after a while, I truly didn't care. I had the mental strength. And I knew that what I was doing, what I was trying to create, was right.'
What she was trying to create was a slightly more feminised, creative version of what the men had achieved before her. There are emulsions, sweetness, along with the game tendered to perfection: truffles not fat on the plate but mixed with ice cream. When I ate, as I did with her smiling encouragement, each mouthful was sublime. Lollipop of duck liver and pear marmalade, chestnut and cheese confections, eight kinds of breadstick, just to start, while we sit near the bar: then brûlée with foie gras, and marinated scallops, with smoked eel, celery and Tricastin black truffle, and sea bass meunière with sweet Cevennes onion preserve, runny walnut caramel sauce, vin jaune. Rex rabbit from Poitou, pan-roasted with tiny root vegetables, spiced red cabbage and eucalyptus emulsion. And mustard bread, and tiny purple and yellow buttercup thingies in the truffled ice cream, and it is no surprise at all, the stars, nor the fact that the place is stuffed with Parisians who have come down on the swift TGV to toast her success. She smiles and waves as they gaze in awe at her, happy fed couples nudging each other on the way past.
Would this ultimate success mean she could finally ease off? It is hard to imagine her doing so: there is, of course, a fierce steel underneath; there could hardly not be.
'Yes, there is this strength. But it is a woman's strength. Being strong in the head. I run the kitchen the way I feel right, which is to be quietly strong, not to shout, and I think finally I have the respect.
'Yes, I see the way male chefs shout, the macho thing. Fine. But it's just not the way I want to run it. I think it's an odd way of getting through to people. Not a good way. If you shout it gives out the impression that there's something wrong. But I don't mean there's some kind of peace. We are very tense. People are very, very concentrated in the kitchen. More women chefs - quieter kitchens! And better food.'
She continues: 'I understand why chefs do it, some chefs, why they push their characters, woo the media. You work so long, so hard, in hard kitchens, and so when you get the chance of maybe quick fame you take it. I think it's different with me. It's for the cuisine, more and more the cuisine, and the part it plays in the minds of people.
'Chefs can be too much entranced by the media, forget what they are doing, the timelessness of it all. When people come in here looking for good cuisine, I feel there is a ... a structure to time. More and more I feel this, as I think of my father and grandfather; and I've just had a son, Nathan, who's only one-and-a-half, and I think of this more.
'Recently, with getting the star, I have had a lot of letters, and there was one lovely one from a couple who remember coming here to eat when I was just a girl of nine, and now they are 70, and I am in the kitchen, cooking for them, and all that has changed is age, and a little of the food.
'For me, I suspect that the age between 40 and 60 will now be a good period. The battle is not over. I must keep the star! The Michelin has been criticised, in recent years, yes, but by a few people. But all of the chefs I know, all of the good ones, they genuinely still think that to get a star is ... oh, only the most beautiful thing in their life. So I must keep it, that is my next goal. I watched my father do it for 19 years, But I have showed I can do it, have taught those who sneered.
'And now, maybe, I can ask for a little help. Now, for instance, I think I will be more open to women chefs. Until now, I have been so concentrated, so focused on doing this, showing I could do this, that in an odd way I felt I couldn't ask for help. I didn't want to be seen to be ... reaching out to other women, as if I needed their help, as if I needed any help. Now I feel a lot stronger, I can talk to others.' Such as her Italian friend Nadia Santini, who runs the three-starred Dal Pescatore, an hour's drive from Verona. Or Flora Mikula, told at cooking school that she would make an 'excellent waitress', now the chef/owner of the stylish Flora which faces the hotel George V in Paris.
Paris may beckon. Her husband, David, who mainly looks after the financial side, yet defers to Pic over the restaurant and much of the long, ongoing process of renovation and redesign in which they both find themselves intrigued, is 'very serious' about her opening up in the capital, although stresses that there is no hurry; Pic nods when I mention it, but says little more. Paris, maybe. But, for the moment, and with this star, it's fairly obvious she's going to relish more Parisians making the fast trek south to find her, and the wealth of food to be found in her Drôme region, and the new ways of cooking it.
She turns to look at the glass etchings, to look beyond, where the Michelin 'red books' lie sacred beneath a long, long glass and wood trestle, their squat bound covers hinting at food's tale of the century in their changing typefaces. 'This, I realise now after the battles, is what it has been about, for me. To continue food, to continue cuisine. Yes, my battles have been with men. The worst aspects of France, the worst aspects of French men. But my inspirations have been men too.' She smiles as she talks of those who remember her grandfather's way with truffles, her father's bass with caviar, and her determination to keep them on the menu, and talks here with just the same quiet, lip-smacking eagerness she employs to expand on the latest flavour she was excited to 'find', abalone slow-cooked in sake. 'This is the way forward for us, to know the best from before, but know and find our own strengths.' She dedicated her award to her father and now turns to look at his picture, and that of his father before them. 'Thank you,' she says towards them; 'that is what I would say. They taught me the way. 'We can do that. We can be women. And still thank the men ...'
· Maison Pic, Valence. 0033 4 75 44 15 32; www.pic-valence.com
2. Elena Arzak, Spain
For Elena Arzak, who now jointly runs the family's three-Michelin-star Arzak restaurant in the Basque city of San Sebastian, there is nothing strange about a woman being in charge. 'My father won the three stars in 1989, but this restaurant has been in the family since 1897,' says the 37-year-old chef, described by one critic as "the most exciting woman chef on the planet". 'My grandmother was the chef here when I was small, and a very good one at that. We Basques also have a tradition of matriarchy.' Today, Arzak remains a women-led kitchen: six out of the nine senior chefs are women - in a kitchen of 22.
As a child, Arzak sat in the kitchen watching her father Juan Mari, her grandmother Francisca and her aunt Serafina at work. 'Later, during the school holidays, I earned pocket money doing menial work in the kitchen.' Her inspiration remains her father, now 64. 'We work as a tandem,' she says.
There was no family duty to follow in his footsteps, though. 'It was my choice.'
Arzak's two-year-old daughter is a frequent visitor, with the chefs trying out their concoctions on a surprisingly sophisticated palate. Will she continue the family tradition? 'If she wants,' answers Elena. 'But there is no pressure. Who knows? I may be the last of the line.'
Giles Tremlett
· Restaurante Arzak, San Sebastian. 0034 943 278 465; www.arzak.es
3. Nadia Santini, Italy
'I think it is impossible for a woman to run a kitchen that serves 100 people. I can't give my heart to a dish if I am cooking for more than 30. And I think that may be true for most female chefs. Men want the wow factor in the kitchen, but for us women it is more important to give something of ourselves. That is why there are so many smaller restaurants these days. In Italy, half the Michelin stars belong to women running small restaurants. This has always been a woman's kitchen: when I married Antonio [33 years ago], my mother-in-law and Antonio's grandmother worked here. That set-up is not that rare in Italy.
In this region we have many dishes that have been passed down, and traditionally we eat as a family. I think of the restaurant as a place where I cook for a big family, and that is a beautiful way to eat and live.'
Rebecca Seal
· Dal Pescatore, Canneto. 0039 03 76 72 30 01
4. Carme Ruscadella, Spain
'Ferrán Adrià from El Bulli says that, in the kitchen, "there can be as many women as can jump in". I believe that there are only a few female chefs because too few have taken the risk. The requirements are simply organisation, ideas and drive. I learnt how to cook standing in a space between what we called the two queens, my mother and my grandmother, in the farmhouse where I was born and raised, with the sea just metres away.
I have never felt that being a woman is a disadvantage. My message to the girls that come here is always the same: "The first person who needs to be convinced is you; just transmit the passion you have for your work."
My husband and I have been working together for 19 years and I wouldn't have arrived at this point but for that partnership. How we divided our lives between home and restaurant proved right. Now we have inverted the roles: my son works with me in the kitchen and my daughter with my husband in the dining hall; one has to place the players in their ideal roles.'
Andres Schipani
· San Pau, Barcelona. 0034 937 600 662
5. Luisa Valazza, Italy
Two decades ago, a disaster struck the estimable but well-hidden restaurant Al Sorriso in the Alpine foothills north of Milan: the chef upped and went. Which left the owners Angelo and Luisa Valazza with a dilemma: whether to hire a new one, or - as Luisa Valazza puts it - 'to do it all myself. I could hardly cook beyond our own dinner at home. Anyway, as there was no one in the kitchen, I decided I had to try for myself."
Eleven years later, Valazza became the first Italian woman (there are now three) to win three Michelin stars for Al Sorriso - to which diners now flock from all over Europe. Despite Italy still being a country in which a woman's place is regarded as being very much in the kitchen, l'alta gastronomia is still - on the surface of things at least, cautions Valazza - the domain of men.
'I just went into the kitchen with a pile of recipes and books - all the Italian and French classics - and started to experiment, to see what happened'.
Valazza was inspired by the local ingredients and culinary customs of the pre-alpi foothills - particularly a certain type of ricotta cheese, flowers, such as violets, berries and nuts from the forests, and herbs and spinach that grow wild in the region: 'I started to find new forms, mutations and variations.'
She also combed the area to find the best producers. 'The most important thing to me is integrity - it is essential to find the best products nurtured in the best way by the right people. Everything that happens in the kitchen is dependent on that.'
On the subject of her three Michelin stars, Valazza says that 'high gastronomy is no less a commitment than all the other professions into which women are becoming accepted, but for which they have to make family sacrifices - like being a pilot, a tram-driver or a government minister. Of course it's good that women are doing all these things, but I'm not sure I am happy with a society in which women are obliged to work.'
As for the cliché of the woman's place being in the kitchen, Valazza comments quite briskly that 'this is not the same thing. Running a kitchen is no different from running a school. It's a full-time commitment. The boys help, but I'm always there in the kitchen - and if I'm not, I am out and about seeing a peasant about how he is growing something.
'But there is a twist to this: I may have three stars, but there are many, many women out there cooking in little trattorias all over Italy, making food as good as you will eat anywhere, in hidden places we do not know.'
Ed Vulliamy
· Al Sorriso, Soriso. 0039 03 22 98 32 28
6. Annie Feolde, Italy
Apart from the bleeding obvious - the small matter of both being women with three Michelin stars - Annie Feolde of Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence, and Anne-Sophie Pic of Maison Pic in the French town of Valence have one thing in common: both are self-taught cooks who never intended to be multi-starred chefs. 'I started to cook because of my husband's wine collection,' Feolde says. Giorgio Pinchiorri's wine house, which opened for business in a grand Florentine palazzo in 1972, was famed for the depth and breadth of its list and its 150,000-strong cellar. But Feolde, who is French, was convinced the drinkers should also have something to eat. She laid out little bites to go with wine tastings, which became a buffet, which in turn became a full restaurant menu.
'At the beginning I didn't mean to do anything important,' Feolde says. 'I liked exotic tastes. I did what I wanted.' But Feolde had a talent for it and, asked by a friend to cook something Tuscan on TV, she picked up her first Italian recipe book. 'The recipes were so heavy and so horrible I only wanted to pick up the most interesting elements.' She began to refine the culinary repertoire that was so common in the city beyond the Enoteca's doors. 'For me today it is vital that the restaurant is Tuscan. It's obvious that we have to represent the place where we are.' That means the famed herb-stuffed pork dish of porchetta but re-engineered with quail, or the Florentine pasta dish of hand-made rustic noodles with crisp breadcrumbs, anchovies and shards of pork crackling made with the utmost attention to detail.
This evolved, French-accented take on rustic Italian food won her a Michelin star, then another and, in 1992, the third. She was the first woman chef outside France to receive the award. Anne-Sophie Pic has suggested that being a woman in a male-dominated world, while setting up obvious problems, also has its advantages; that it gave her the status of outsider which allowed her the freedom to experiment. Feolde agrees. 'We have more freedom, that we can watch what others are doing and then develop our own food from that.'
Does it dismay her that so few of the three-star chefs in Europe are women? Not really, she says. 'This business is very, very tough. You cannot have a family and do the job unless you are the owner. If you want to rise to the top you have to make sacrifices.' So has she made sacrifices? 'Of course,' she says. Feolde is Giorgio Pinchiorri's second wife and, when they married, he already had two small children. 'I didn't have children of my own and I do regard that as a sacrifice, a very big one. But this is life. You have to make a decision to go one way or the other and then stick with it.' I wonder therefore, whether Feolde feels a responsibility to enable more women to get on in the profession?
While she says that, quite clearly, the restaurant business is finally catching up with the rest of the world and enabling more women to come through, she cannot claim to have made much of a contribution to that. 'I've had a few lady cooks in my kitchen,' she says, a little quaintly, 'but they always disturb the calm.' How does she mean? 'Well they end up starting a relationship with one of the other cooks and then they announce they are going off together and so now you have lost not just one chef, but two. This can be a big problem for a kitchen like mine. So now I prefer to stick only with men.' Sisters, it seems, are sometimes only doing it for themselves and not always for each other.
The day we speak Feolde is in the Japanese city of Nagoya, overseeing the launch of a new Enoteca Pinchiorri. This is an interesting development. Back in 1994 the chef lost her coveted third star, a professional setback she attributed to the distraction of having opened a second restaurant the year before in Tokyo. It took her until 2004 to get that third star back. And now, here she is again, opening another restaurant. Isn't she taking a risk? 'Not this time,' she says. 'For a start Michelin have modernised. They understand that not all chefs are in all their kitchens all the time and they look only at the quality of each place. Plus, when we lost our third star in the Nineties we learnt an awful lot from that experience.'
So, with all these years in the three-star business, does she have any advice for Anne-Sophie Pic, the newest recruit to the women's three-star club? Feolde laughs. 'She's a grown-up girl. She doesn't need any advice from me. She knows how to manage her business.' She pauses and then says, 'Except for this. Our job is to make people very happy and we have to love it ourselves to do that or it doesn't work. If you stop loving the business you have to stop immediately. That is the only way.' That's not a problem for Annie Feolde; it's clear she adores what she does.
· Enoteca Pinchiorri, Florence. 0039 055 242 757; www.enotecapinchiorri.com
