Chef Ouita Michel just got back from the 2022 Food & Wine Festival in Aspen, Co. While there, she participated in a panel discussion on sustainability in the restaurant industry and had her expectations upended in an eye-opening way.

When I was invited to be part of a panel on sustainability at the Aspen Food & Wine Festival, my mind immediately went to environmental sustainability. I thought about how our Holly Hill restaurants are invested in the local food economy; how we build menus based on seasonally available ingredients and employ a local foods aggregator; how we tend gardens and turn compost piles, and fill recycling dumpsters. In short – our entire approach to promoting, procuring, and producing locally sourced, seasonally grown food in a variety of restaurant concepts ranging from casual, counter-service venues to white tablecloth dining rooms.

What I found when I got to Aspen was a very different but equally important discussion. How do we, as restaurant industry leaders, model and implement sustainability of the human variety? How do we keep ourselves mentally and physically healthy for the long haul and how do we create work environments that showcase and support our staff who are on the front lines of food production and guest service?

With over 35 years at the stove (figuratively and literally), I’ve been in the business almost longer than my fellow panelists have been alive. As the only woman on the panel, apart from the moderator, my experiences have been different than theirs. But we all shared stories of perseverance and self-evaluation, both on a personal level and as employers running restaurant businesses.

Chefs JJ Johnson, Ray Garcia and Ravi Kapur represented New York City, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, and San Francisco; so that left me as the sole representative of everything in between, essentially all the “flyover country.” Kat Kinsman was our moderator.

Chef JJ is a brilliant guy, really interesting, and I felt like I’d known him forever. He owns a company in NYC called FIELDTRIP, with restaurants in Harlem and Rockefeller Center. One is right next to Columbia University so I’m already making plans to hightail it there in August when we move Willa into school.

His restaurants feature rice bowls made with rice from American producers. They express so much – the history of rice in America, Jollof cuisine, dynamic job creation, healthy eating options. Chef JJ told us how he gained weight during the Covid pandemic and has since embraced a lifestyle of pursuing fitness and practicing meditation. Now he’s modeling that for his community.

I was especially drawn to his story about working in the executive dining room at a large NYC brokerage house, where brokers would be working huge deals over lunch, while oblivious to the food in front of them. He described laboring over the creation of that food, and the time and care spent preparing it. Those exquisite feasts went unnoticed. I found it very poignant.

Chef Ray Garcia has restaurants in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Like myself, he majored in political science and considered becoming a lawyer before going to culinary school. Chef Ray, who started out as a sous chef, says he was deeply affected by what we call “economic racism” – the disparity in how cuisines are valued. That, for instance, no matter how exquisitely a taco is prepared, it will never be regarded in the same way as sushi, or command the same price.

He recounted working in kitchens where Spanish language speakers were discriminated against, and being told that Spanish was the language of ignorance. It reminded me of the first time I served a Latin American menu and was upbraided by a guest who said it was disgraceful to cook food like that in a house like Holly Hill Inn. Yet the cultures of Central and South America are ancient and majestic cultures, and we should revere them in every way.

There was a lot of talk about self-care, something I didn’t pay a lot of attention to during the pandemic. I was too busy working to practice much self-care but then, working was my way of coping. And we talked about reassessment, which I did engage in plenty of. It’s what led me to where I am today, with our restaurants finally united under the Holly Hill banner, a new website and docu-series, and a renewed commitment to building community.

Moderator Kat Kinsman is an amazing fellow Kentuckian whom I met several years ago in Atlanta. Before meeting Kat, I’d never heard anyone talk openly about mental health in the restaurant business. We had a staff member at the time who was dealing with some pretty serious stuff so Kat’s Atlanta workshop on mental health really resonated with me.

Kat’s been brutally honest about her own bouts with depression and the hidden struggles of restaurant workers. Her candor and advocacy have made issues like suicide, depression, and substance abuse more evident to all of us, and more urgently demanding of our attention.

As the Aspen panel reminded me, when we talk about sustainability, it’s really about taking care of one another. These are very stressful times; we’re willing to hire consultants for every other thing, we should be hiring them to help our teams maintain mental health.

We’ve lost two cherished team members to suicide in the last two years. And there are others who continue to struggle. So I want to provide resources and support to help everyone grow as individuals; to take our instincts about being good employers and put those instincts into an effective and meaningful structure.

We’re retaining a licensed clinical social worker soon, to provide guidance on effective communication, setting personal boundaries, and building healthy relationships on and off the job. We’re expanding our parental leave benefits and educational opportunities and looking for other ways to support our staff.

In the end, I want our employees to know that everyone is equally valued for who they are and what they bring to our table. I want our mutual working lives to be enriched with learning opportunities, creativity, good health, financial stability and just plain old happiness. Aspen was wonderful; I really enjoyed myself in that lap of luxury for a few days. But I’m glad to be back in this beautiful place we call home, with the incredible people who make it all worthwhile.

Resources:

National Suicide Prevention LIfeline 1-800-272-8255
Beginning July 16th — 988 has been designated as the new three-digit dialing code that will route callers to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

Crisis Text Line 741741

http://chefswithissues.com/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/chefswithissues

Sustaining One Another

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