StarChefs just announced their New York Rising Star Awards and I’m one of the 16 winners. Yay! I’m one of the “specialized” nominees so technically I’m a recipient of the Sustainability Award, but still! Other folks in there are Jason Neroni from 10 Downing, Isao Yamada for Upstairs at Bouley, Harold Dieterle for Perilla, Brooks Headley from Del Posto and Claire Paparazzo from Blue Hill who gets a specialized award as a sommelier.

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There’s a big event on September 22 (you can get tickets here), and all us winners had to meet up to do a photo shoot last week at the Mandarin Oriental which was a little bit like the first day of school. Would everyone else already know each other? Would there be cliques? Who would talk to me? Would someone steal my bag and push me in a puddle?

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Photos and more on the next page.

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Awkward conversation while the cameras

are being set up. I am also hiding behind my camera.

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There was some minor clique-ery going on, but it turned out I knew a few people and there were a lot of us who’d never met before and so we all talked to each other and no one made fun of the lunch my mom packed for me. No one pushed me in a puddle either.

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Chefs like to stand very far apart while talking.

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So ultimately it was way better than what I feared.

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See, just like school. Here we all are

listening to a lecture.

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One thing that struck me as strange is that out of the 16 award recipients, only two were women, myself and the sommelier from Blue Hill. I haven’t gone out and done a survey, but that certainly doesn’t seem very representative. On the other hand, when I tried to come up with my own list of Rising Star female chefs I couldn’t think of many candidates. Magazines and blogs cover women working in restaurants as the exception rather than the rule, so it’s not like you read about their names on a regular basis, but maybe there really are less women working in this industry than I imagine.

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But enough pontificating, I’m just psyched to win. Winning isn’t everything, but it does feel nice!

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(There’s going to be a panel for all of us on Sept. 20 and the awards gala is on Sept. 22. Full details here.)