As Head Chef and Head Recipe Designer of the HelloFresh food kit industry leader, Claudia Sidoti leads the team in producing fast, tasty meals that home cooks can prepare in 30 minutes or less. Each day she tries and gives positive input to the producers, procures ingredients, prepares her own recipes, and checks the input of the consumer.
The Journey Begins
Before joining HelloFresh, Sidoti became the youngest female chef and restaurant owner in New York City, beginning at the age of 19 at Onini Restaurant. She also started Beauty & the Feast, a catering service that ultimately sold ready meals to coffee bars and cafés. She helped Cosi and Panera Bread to expand their catering divisions. Furthermore, she launched Food Network Magazine and served as a test kitchen director for eight years, creating over 3,000 recipes.
Sidoti says that her life goal “was like a gravitational force, something that kept me going back to the kitchen.” It is where she feels most relaxed, appreciated, happy, and imaginative. “I knew in my heart, when I was about 17 years old, that food, cooking, and all the culinary stuff was the career path I wanted to peruse.
The inspiration came from several sources, but without a doubt from my grandma and my mom, all of whom were great home cooks. They ‘re still in my heart and hands.
As a successful female chef in the male-dominated culinary world, Sidoti offers this advice to other women.
- Don’t allow yourself to get put in a box.
Some of the greatest challenges chefs face in general are that they can be put in boxes and cooking trends, so it’s hard to crack them when you’re trying to progress in your profession. Women, in particular, are associated with being pastry chefs, not executive chefs, and it can be quite challenging for them to break the mold and transition. It was important for me to face up to the challenges and extend my potential in the field. With every success, not only do you learn, but you also establish confidence.
- Trust your female intuition.
The intuition of women is very strong. We should tap deeper into our own instincts and support ourselves as experts and leaders. The strength of women can be significant. “Particularly in male-dominated kitchens and organizations, I have found that trusting my instincts and following my intuition has been the key to success”. It allowed me to take risks, to realize when to remain in the course, and to guide me day after day, like when I’m conceiving a dish or a recipe or looking for a thrilling culinary trend.
- Focus on the advantages of being a woman.
Being a woman will come with a lot of advantages — if you’re able to tackle new territories and not just believe that being in food means running a restaurant. Working in consumer-based food categories and e-commerce can be an exciting way to learn. Women obviously have more experience in when, how, and why families cook, as many of us seem to have families of our own and face real-life problems such as getting food on the table.
While I would love to see a bigger shift and more men running the kitchens at home, women still dominate and thus have a better deal on how to fix the issue. I think that’s a big advantage as creators of recipes and food practitioners.
