Copper & Heat - A Podcast About Restaurant Culture: Recent Episodes
Copper & Heat
Copper and Heat explores the unspoken rules and traditions of restaurant kitchens.
Host Katy Osuna has conversations with coworkers, family and friends, line cooks, prep cooks, and other kitchen employees that have worked in some of the country’s most elite Michelin-star restaurants including Manresa, Alinea, Grace, WD50, and Plumed Horse. We tackle topics like gender, race, and the wage gap, to get a more realistic picture of what it’s like to work in a fine dining restaurant kitchen.
Katy et al talk about what makes a Chef, why cooking at home is seen as work for women and cooking professionally is seen as work for men, and how media and awards reinforce these stereotypes.
Katy and friends talk about the nonexistent work-life balance in the restaurant industry, the effect it has on their personal life, and how the women in the industry have to battle against the “motherhood trap” and people’s perceptions.
In this episode, Katy and her friends explore the kind of strength it takes to make it in a kitchen, why weakness is gendered (what a pussy, stop being a little girl), and why cooks and chefs choose to stay in the industry or, in many cases, get out.
Episode 2. Katy talks about being the odd-one-out in the kitchen, what it means to “not be like other girls,” and has some challenging conversations with her coworkers about sexism in the kitchen.
Episode 1. Host Katy Osuna talks with coworkers and friends about what it takes to work your way up in the kitchen, the pressures of the kitchen brigade system, and how women navigate a system built on competition and hierarchy.
Copper & Heat explores the unspoken rules and traditions of the kitchen. Our first season, Be A Girl, follows host Katy Osuna's experience as a woman working in kitchens of fine dining, Michelin-star, restaurants.