Celebrating leading women from the UK’s hospitality industry

Sally Abé

Chef Sally Abé has announced a line-up of superstar female talent spanning the breadth of hospitality as part of a panel and lunch event celebrating International Women’s Day, on Tuesday 8th March at The Pem. Alongside providing discounted tickets for under-25s, Sally and Conrad London St. James will also be gifting a number of tickets to hospitality and catering students at local Westminster Kingsway College.

Sally, recipient of the Ayala SquareMeal Female Chef of the Year Award, is a long-time advocate and voice for women in hospitality. She will be joined by award-winning TV Chef and Broadcaster Andi Oliver; Sommelier, Founder of Bubbleshop and Co-Founder of two Michelin-starred Kitchen Table, Sandia Chang; General Manager of Soho institution, The Coach & Horses, Ali Ross; and wine expert and Pol Roger Business Development Executive, Fikayo Ifaturoti. The stellar line-up of remarkable women will be taking part in a panel discussion on the issues that affect women in hospitality today – including workplace environments, motherhood, female empowerment, the importance of female role models and mentors, and media presence of women in hospitality, before the floor opens to the audience for a Q&A. The panel itself will be hosted by Emma Banks, Hilton’s Vice President, F&B Strategy & Development, Europe, Middle East and Africa.

The ticketed event will commence at 11.30am with an Ayala Champagne reception prior to the panel and Q&A. Following the discussion, guests will be invited to take their seats in The Pem at 1.00pm for a three-course lunch of ‘Smoked Chalk Stream Trout Mousse, watercress, trout roe, frisée’, ‘Roast Cumbrian Rose Veal, purple sprouting broccoli, almond praline, creamed potato’, and ‘Lemon Meringue, yoghurt sorbet, caramelised white chocolate, hazelnut’, with paired wines.

The event marks the first in a series of female-focused events being planned by Sally and Conrad London St. James’s General Manager, Beverly Payne. The Pem itself is inspired by suffragette Emily Wilding Davison, whose family used the pet name ‘Pem’ for her, and celebrates generations of pioneering women leading from the front which is reflected in Sally’s choice of senior team – Laetizia Keating as Head Chef and Emma Underwood as General Manager. Alongside being in the heart of Westminster, one of London’s most symbolic boroughs, the building itself has its own rich history – indeed, Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the Suffragettes, chained herself to the railings outside of the hotel in protest.

Tickets for the event, which starts at 11.30am, are £55pp (or £25pp for under-25s), and include the Champagne reception, a seat at the panel/Q&A, a three-course lunch with paired wines, and a goodie bag to take home.

Stosie Madi

A whirlwind of talent and skill in the kitchen (which she runs almost single-handedly), Stosie Madi has made rural inn The Parkers Arms one of the most beloved gastropubs in the country. Taking the best of local produce and adding a sprinkle of exciting international flavours into her recipes, her unbridled passion for everything culinary shines through in every single dish.

Born in Senegal, raised in The Gambia, of Lebanese heritage and incredibly well-travelled, the fact that Stosie decided to settle down in Clitheroe of all places is a story in itself. She decided to leave The Gambia when her daughter was around 10 years old, as the political landscape was becoming more and more fraught.

Stosie had always wanted to cook for a living, despite her parents wanting her to take over the family hospitality business in a more managerial role. After opening three very well-respected restaurants in Africa with Kathy her business partner, when her father died the pair sold them and used the funds to open a small restaurant in Clitheroe.

The search eventually led Stosie and Kathy to a pub in the tiny village of Newton-in-Bowland, which they opened in 2007 and called Parkers Arms. Being in the middle of a remote part of Lancashire also made it tough to find good staff members at the Parkers Arms, which meant Stosie had to do pretty much everything herself. These days, Stosie has an assistant in the kitchen to help with prep and starters, so she’s not completely alone, but the food is still very much her own

Harriet Mansell

Harriet grew up in Sidmouth, Devon and took an unconventional route into the industry. After studying Politics and History at university, she thereafter retrained to be a chef.

She took her first ‘proper’ kitchen job with fellow south west chef Mark Hix in London before going to culinary school and went on to intern at the prestigious Noma (2*) in Denmark, followed by a couple of Michelin kitchens in London and then into the super yacht industry where she worked as a private chef for high profile clients.

Harriet has opened a pop-up restaurant, Robin Wylde, in Lyme Regis where her cuisine is based around the seasons, local produce and foraging. Harriet is out to showcase the South West’s finest produce in her unique style and bring out her passion for reading as a child in her dishes.

Clare Finney

Despite women traditionally being encouraged to cook at home, in 2018 only 17 per cent of professional chefs were women – five per cent less than in 2010, while less than a quarter of the world’s 50 best restaurants currently have women at their helm. It was stats like these along with conversations she had with her mother and grandmother during the first coronavirus lockdown that inspired food writer Clare Finney to put together The Female Chef – a collection of interviews and recipes from some of the women at the forefront of the UK’s food scene.

The use of gendered language in the kitchen, whether consciously or subconsciously, undeniably has played a large role in reinforcing stereotypes. And it was in fact a conversation with her grandmother about the distinction between the words ‘cook’ and ‘chef’ (which is discussed in depth at the start of the book) that fuelled Clare’s desire to look more deeply at the relationship between women and food.

Marwa Alkhalaf

Often someone’s passion for cooking a particular style of cuisine can be traced back to the food they grew up eating. For Saudi-Arabian-born Marwa Alkhalaf however, it wasn’t until her now-husband introduced her to Iranian food that she fell in love with the cuisine and began to learn more about it. Wanting to introduce this underrepresented cuisine to more people in the UK, she and her husband opened Nutshell in 2019, where she now serves her unique take on traditional Iranian dishes.

Growing up on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia surrounded by wonderful produce, Marwa gained an understanding of the importance of ingredients from an early age. Although this abundance of produce led to an interest in food, when Marwa became one of the first 50 women to be offered the chance to study geophysics in the UK, she quickly put any desire to go into the restaurant industry to one side.

It was when she moved to London in 2007 to begin university that Marwa started exploring other cuisines and experimenting with her own food. At the time Middle Eastern food still wasn’t particularly well represented in the capital, so it wasn’t until Marwa met her husband, who grew up in Iran and introduced her to Iranian food, that she fell in love with it.

After years of planning, Nutshell threw open its doors at the end of July 2019 and was instantly met with praise. Serving Marwa’s own take on Iranian food, inspired by both her time spent in the country and the produce-led style of cookery she grew up with, Nutshell offered something that hadn’t really been seen in London before.