"All right, Suze?" says Angela Hartnett as she greets Suzanna Kean with an affectionate, matey hello. The 25-year-old, now sous chef at London's Maze, worked with Hartnett on the opening of her Mayfair restaurant Murano. She stayed two-and-a-half years, starting as chef de partie before quickly progressing. "I had implicit trust in Suzanna," declares Hartnett. Having cut her teeth under the Ramsay regime, it's safe to assume such trust would not be easy to gain. "She naturally understood about consistency, which is so important."
Kean has always been reliable, even as a teenager, when she would peel "mountains" of vegetables for her mother, who worked in a care home. "I actually really enjoyed it," she confesses. She studied catering at Glenrothes college before coming to London six-and-a-half years ago, landing a job at Scott's before joining Hartnett at Murano. In Scotland, Kean was the only girl in the kitchen "nine times out of 10" but says that there are "far more" in London. Not that it bothers her. "You get no special treatment being a woman. Graft is part of the job, but you know that from the first day at college."
She does, however, feel like some men of a certain generation in the industry don't take younger female chefs seriously. "Sometimes those men don't listen to women," she says. "So you have to just be that little bit stronger, really believe in yourself." Hartnett believes "the male-female thing" is the same in any industry. "It's just about whether you can hack it or not," she says. "Plenty of blokes can't. Women who succeed in our industry are women who want to do well for themselves, full stop. If you want to do well, and have the passion, you just get on with it, nothing stands in your way."
It must be nice having other girls around, though? "It is," says Kean. "The guys don't swear as much but I'm worse than them to be honest."
Hartnett says she can "talk shite" and "have a gossip" with Kean, and you can definitely imagine seeing the two of them together. But would she trust a woman more than a man? "I don't know, is the honest answer. But I know I'd want to go out for a drink with her after work."
