Galetti was born Monica Fa’afiti in Samoa in 1975, and moved to New Zealand when she was 8. Monica Galetti in a shot from her latest cookbook, At Home.īut when the misogyny inevitably does arise, she adds, “It’s having the balls yourself to speak up for yourself if you’re unhappy with a situation… I came from a household and a culture where you did speak up for yourself and I was taught to speak up for others as well, so I’ve never taken any bulls… from anyone.” So it could be any industry, it’s how you cope with it.”įor Galetti, the way to cope with it was to roll up her sleeves and show that she could do anything the guys could do - she recalls hauling whole animal carcasses, or two or three 25kg bags of flour at a time. “Policemen are going to be like that, firemen are going to be like that, so a roomful of male chefs is going to be like that. “Any industry with lots of men is going to be a pissing contest, isn’t it,” Galetti muses. Around the world, female chefs hold less than 5 per cent of Michelin stars. Even within an already male-dominated industry - only about 20 per cent of chefs in the UK are female - Galetti is in a category, haute cuisine, that is especially teeming with testosterone. It would, in fact, be impossible to have established the kind of career Galetti has without them. These traits - the directness, the attention to detail, the determination and single mindedness - are ones that befit a top chef.
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