Cookbook Queen - Bridget's Bittersweet Rise To The Top

She fought inequality and kilos!

- Cloe Willetts

Award-winning chef and author Bridget Foliaki-Davis has shocking memories of her first job in a hotel kitchen more than two decades ago as a young female apprentice. Like the time her male colleagues lit the peak of her chef’s hat on fire and patted it out just as the flames singed her hair.

The South Auckland-born mum also remembers taking a big sip through her straw during a busy lunch service, before realising it was filled with searing Tabasco sauce.

“I was a young female apprentice running the hotline and the boys didn’t like that, so they’d try and throw me all the time,” recalls Bridget, 44. “I don’t use straws to this day because I have such bad memories of lying on the ground, choking in the middle of service and they’re laughing.”

The accomplished foodie – who has cooked for Oprah Winfrey and Jacinda Ardern – says it was extremely hard for women to find their place in the male-dominated industry.

“I never thought of myself as female,” tells Bridget, who has published three cookbooks. “I thought of myself as a chef, as a human and I wasn’t going to let idiots put me off what I love. But I can count on one hand the number of females who held high positions in kitchens I’ve worked in.”