"I'm a big gay chef and I'm gonna outcook your ass!" So declared Dale Levitski, the memorably driven Chicago chef with the fauxhawk on season 3 of Top Chef, the Bravo reality series that has fueled many a foodie's addiction. Although he lost in the final round, Levitski was certainly victorious in one regard: showing America that gay chefs can take the heat in even the most high-profile kitchens.
Levitski, 34, who's planning to open his first restaurant in Chicago this spring, would be the first to admit that as an out and proud cook, he's something of a rarity. "A lot of my reputation as a chef is being a gay guy," he says. "I'm a little bit of an anomaly. There are not really very many out chefs on the radar."
Indeed, there aren't. As much as Top Chef has showcased queer chefs -- season 3 winner Hung Huynh is bisexual, as is season 1 finalist Tiffani Faison; meanwhile, season 2 featured both Josie Smith-Malave, an outspoken lesbian who once played in a national women's football league, and Carlos Fernandez, a dashing Cuban who made no secret of his longtime boyfriend -- the reality is that they are few and far between in the upper ranks of top restaurants around the country. The California-based Lesbian and Gay Chefs Association doesn't even have a functioning Web site (and voice-mail messages went without a response).
Instead, being a famous chef these days seems to be an either-or proposition: Either you're a macho, dick-swinging dude who uses four-letter words as a form of punctuation and views the kitchen as a boxing ring (Anthony Bourdain, Gordon Ramsay, Marco Pierre White), or you're a domestic goddess who serves up a big smile and perhaps a bit of cleavage alongside the crudites (Rachael Ray, Giada De Laurentiis, Nigella Lawson, Paula Deen).
"In my experience, there have been very few gay chefs, meaning people at the top," says Pichet Ong, a renowned pastry chef who recently opened his own restaurant, P*ong, in New York City's West Village. "Especially in restaurant kitchens, which are dominated by men and are very macho and militant." Ong, who doesn't "advertise myself as gay, but if it comes up, I'm gay," adds that he makes a distinction between restaurant chefs and those who work at home, in catering, or on TV, where the intensity of the work differs from that in a typical restaurant kitchen.
Ong observes that lesbians seem more successful in top kitchens -- and a casual survey of well-known out female chefs would appear to bear this out. There's Cat Cora, the former Iron Chef whose latest cookbook is dedicated to her partner, Jennifer, and their son; Traci Des Jardins, the celebrated San Francisco chef who presides over her own restaurant empire; Susan Feniger of the Food Network's Too Hot Tamales fame; and Elizabeth Falkner, the pastry powerhouse behind San Francisco's Citizen Cake.
"With women at the top of this profession, it's a lot more than 10% who are gay," says Anita Lo with a laugh. Lo, the chef and co-owner of New York City's award-winning Annisa -- and also a member of Iron Chef America's first all-female team, which defeated the formidable Mario Batali -- recalls taking part in a recent panel of female chefs. "There were six of us," she says, "and two of us were straight. They're always asking why women aren't making it to the top, but it's interesting why there are so many lesbian chefs out there. No one asks that question."
Lo herself doesn't have an answer -- and prefers not to speculate. Are lesbians simply more tolerant of excess kitchen testosterone? "I'm not a plate-thrower, but you do need to be tough in this business," she says, though she adds that the issue of sexuality -- gay or straight -- tends to be a moot point because, "as chefs, we have so little time for our personal lives."
For his part, Levitski started challenging perceptions about gay chefs back in the early 1990s when he began cooking at a chain restaurant in Iowa City: "I definitely had to prove myself. There was a preconceived notion that the gay guy is not going to be able to stand up to the team. But I was a college athlete, a big muscular guy, and that kind of took them aback." By the time Levitski got to Chicago in 1998, Ellen was out and Will & Grace had hit prime time. In high-end kitchens like Trio and Blackbird, "no one cared" about his sexuality, he says -- a studied, intellectual approach to cooking was what mattered. Nevertheless, he still found that both "women and gay men in the kitchen have an extra step to go through," even if it's "more a matter of self-perception than people thinking you're not good enough."
On Top Chef, Levitski's sexuality was a nonissue among his fellow contestants. But that wasn't the case for viewers, who debated whether he was too out or not out enough. Levitski says he just tried to be himself. "I got lots of messages thanking me for being a good gay role model," he recalls. "It was the most bizarre thing. I was flattered and happy but never thought I'd be a very social, visible gay person. I'm not Paul Lynde or anything."
