A kitchen scar can be a badge of honor for professional chefs. They trade war stories about run-ins with the broiler and nasty cuts from the meat slicer. Some even get body art highlighting charred skin and sizable scrapes earned from busy nights on the line. But for many Black chefs, the permanent marks are less visible; they come from the mental anguish of trying to make their way to the top.
“Most people confronted with some of the stuff that people of color deal with would say, ‘You know what? I’m not doing this, because it’s difficult. It’s painful.’ I still got scars from, you know, pushing through the resistance,” says Kweisi Ausar, a professor in residence at UNLV’s William F. Harrah College of Hospitality. Ausar quit a high-paying, senior-level position after 23 years in the restaurant industry, because he could no longer put up with the discrimination he experienced.
Reminiscing about those decades in the industry, Ausar says he wouldn’t have made it as far as he did without some great mentors along the way. He says the key is to find advocates, adding, “I’m not talking about any particular ethnic group … because there were lots of white people that I ran into along the way that saw my value, that gave me information that I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten, that shared their experience and their process for moving through problems.”
According to 2024 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, Black chefs and head cooks represented 18 percent of positions at the helm, the lowest percentage of all demographics. By comparison, white chefs made up 57 percent of kitchen bosses, followed by Latino head chefs at 25 percent, and female top chefs at 22.
Antwan Ellis, executive chef of Emmitt’s Vegas, says he relied heavily on his patience and the progressive mindset of his upbringing in Barbados to cut through to the top. That’s because, in his experience, people in the restaurant industry — particularly in the United States — cling to stereotypes, causing them to question his ability, his competence, and his knowledge. This happens “even when I’ve proven to be knowledgeable, even when I’ve proven to do the job, even when I’ve proven that my educational background is stronger,” Ellis says. “Our mistakes are weighed higher and heavier than others. If I messed up a cream sauce, it was as if I caused World War III. Others may have messed up a cream sauce, and it was like, ‘Okay, let’s remake it and get it right.’ I’ve learned to make mistakes only once.”
Chef Marquita Duren, executive chef of Tailgate Social Sports Bar & Grill, shares a similar experience working her way up in professional kitchens. She saw first-hand how much harder it can be to achieve and maintain the top back-of-house position as a person of color and a woman. “I feel like I’m always underneath the microscope.”
What’s more, Duren says, her superiors wouldn’t give her the tools she needed to succeed, forcing her to teach herself. “But I saw other people receiving what they needed to move forward,” she adds. “I felt like they didn’t really care if I moved up or not.”
Having heard and seen a lot of bad behavior by restaurant managers over the years, Duren vows to do the opposite in her kitchen. She recalls “being told I’m not good enough, being talked down to, being looked down on, always feeling like I’m beneath everybody else,” she says. “I try to give (my cooks) some type of positivity in this cruel world that we live in, in this industry we’re in.”
She advises them to build resilience: “No matter what brick is coming your way, just step on it. Use it as a stepping stool. That’s what I did. Everything that came my way, all the negativity, everything that was thrown at me, I just stepped on it. And I kept pushing.”
Duren fears that the current push to decrease diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in government and the corporate world could lead to more barriers for underrepresented communities. “It’s very scary in the times that we’re living in right now,” the chef says, “to be a witness of it and to not know what the future is going to hold for myself, my wife, or any minority or any woman moving forward.”
Elani Depke, the new general manager at Bardot Brasserie and former sous chef at Michelin-starred Joël Robuchon in LasVegas, says she gets it: “I graduated from CIA (Culinary Institute of America) in January 2014, and I’m just now getting to this GM position,” Depke says. “I’ve seen some of my male counterparts, Caucasian counterparts, have a similar trajectory, but it happens in half the time. And that can be very defeating for a lot of people.”
But she does question the success of DEI programs at present, and she’s concerned about the effect such programs can have on peer perception. “Their eyes take in what they take in, and they sum you up there,” Depke says. “And (they think) ‘It must be affirmative action, it must be DEI,’ and it’s like they don’t take the time to understand how qualified an individual may be.” Then, she adds, “But if we’re not going to have programs like that, we need to have something so that we don’t have to work twice as hard or worse.”
UNLV professor Ausar says the solution is complicated. “There’s racism throughout the fabric of the country that we live in. You know, anybody that says that there’s not has their head in the sand.”
He believes the solution may be a rebranding of sorts for DEI. “There’s so much backlash to DEI. (We need to) make this idea of inclusion and diversity clear that it’s not excluding anyone, because that’s the perception,” Ausar says. “It’s not just about diversity for the sake of diversity. It’s about representing … not just
in the people who work for you, but also the communities that you serve.”
Another thing that would help increase the number of people of color choosing to persevere in the hospitality industry, Ausar says, would be to remove the stigma that it won’t amount to much. “It’s really hard to break through those perceptions to get them to understand that there’s tremendous opportunity in hospitality for upward career progression,” he says.
Universities also need to offer more hospitality scholarships to people of color and do more outreach in those communities, he adds. And people who’ve progressed should share their stories. Ausar tells hospitality students that have high hopes, “You’ve got to play the game. You’ve got to be willing to take the hits. You’ve got to be willing to weather through the storms. Because it’s not gonna be easy.”
Emmitt’s chef Ellis says it has been difficult, but the quest to create delicious food and bring others up with him still fuels him. “People like me who have my mentality, we tend to band together. And we will open the doors for others who come behind us,” Ellis says. “If it is truly merit-based, there will be a total shift of the employment paradigm in America. DEI will drive your workforce. Your workforce will be very diverse, because diversity is educational progress. Diversity is knowledge-based. We all bring different things to the table.”
He thinks that table will be more delectable and more efficient with varied flavors and voices. “The advice that I could say to anyone at the top who wants to see a proper moving organization is, listen to your people. Listen to those who don’t look like you, because if they don’t look like you, it probably means they know something that you don’t.”
