P i s t a c h i o

Written for Company of Woman Quarterly, Fall 2008

“We all have an opportunity to do great things,” writes Gillian Clark in her memoir, Out of the Frying Pan. “I do mine with food,” she says, and she does it exceptionally well. Clark is the chef-owner of Colorado Kitchen, a Washington, D.C. restaurant ranked in the city’s top 50. She is the only Afro-American woman with that distinction.

Out of the Frying Pan is the tale of a marketing communications professional with two young children and an engineer husband knee-deep in his drink. To follow her dream of becoming a chef, she saves enough money for both cooking school and day care, and files for divorce when it looks like her husband is unable to save himself.

Right out of the gate, Clark makes an auspicious start. She apprentices at the elbow of a French chef with a couple of Michelin stars to his name, but during the next four years she takes just as many jobs, each following the same pattern. They begin with great promise and then slowly deteriorate, usually due to poor staffing, unsteady cash flow, nervous owners, and in one case, treachery by her staff.

Her story unravels humbly and beautifully, but matter-of-factly, too. And when it comes to the grueling demands of the business, she puts in her time without a whisper of complaint. Professional kitchens can produce hardened souls. Clark’s remains firm and tender.

From her relationship with her father comes a declaration: “There is power in food.” As the youngest in the family, with two working parents, Clark came home for lunch every day. The large dining table, where her family noisily took their meals, would be lovingly set for one, by her father, who always left her a note: “It’s tuna today. Pour yourself a glass of milk. There’s fruit in the refrigerator. Love, Daddy.”

In her own family, Clark’s food-power comes into play when her oldest daughter gets sick and loses her way academically. Clark nurses her back to life with seared salmon, lemon butter, wilted greens and olive oil. Recipes for this dish, as well as one for her father’s tuna salad, are included in the book, along with a smattering of other recipes leaden with meaningful connection to her story. After all, the subtitle of her book is “A Chef’s Memoir of Hot Kitchens, Single Motherhood and the Family Meal.”

To a woman running her own business, Out of the Frying Pan provides an interesting case study of an entrepreneur with a classic problem: she knows intellectually that the value of her work is sacrosanct, but she sells herself short all the same. Luckily, her lesson was not too long in the learning.

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