All-female chef team supervises Bristol Hard Rock Cafe kitchen (copy)
Hard Rock Café Head Chef Thunder Van Riper seasons fries inside the kitchen where she leads an all-female kitchen team of chefs and sous chefs.
Hard Rock Café Head Chef Thunder Van Riper talks about working in an women heavy kitchen staff.
BRISTOL, Va. – On Tuesday, Hard Café Head Chef Thunder Van Riper expertly tossed a bowl of French fries in a seasoning mix and tended to a steak on the grill.
Hard Rock Café sous chef Sarah Addison organizes food for the wait staff to deliver to guest.
On the other side of the counter, sous chef Sarah Addison checked a video screen listing to ensure the stream of plates of food included the correct entrée and side items -- returning one made incorrectly - and changing sanitary gloves each time she moved to the next order.
There are more than 30 Hard Rock Cafes operating in the U.S., and the Bristol location is the only one managed by an all-female team of chefs and sous chefs.
Van Riper said this is a unique opportunity in her lengthy career of working in food preparation.
“Our chef team is female and I have three sous chefs who are all female as well,” Van Riper said. “In addition to that, half of my cook team is female as well, which is pretty unusual.
Hard Rock Café Head Chef Thunder Van Riper talks about how inspiring it is the work with other women leadership at Hard Rock Bristol.
“In all my 27 years, I’ve never had a female sous chef. They’ve always been guys,” she said. “I’ve been a sous chef…It’s usually been me and one or two other women in a kitchen of 30 or 40 other people. It’s becoming more common these days but this is the first time I’ve had so many women on my team. It’s amazing.”
When she was getting started and along the way, all of her mentors were men.
“There are some great female chefs out there. April Bloomfield, Gabrielle Hamilton is one of my personal favorites,” she said. “It’s the grit of just staying the course and now being able to see myself being one of those women – who are younger than me – who are in my kitchen now.”
Hard Rock Café Head Chef Thunder Van Riper pulls freshly prepared meals out of the kitchen window to be taken to guests.
Van Riper said she strives to treat everyone the same.
“It’s really important to me that people are empowered to do their jobs. That they have the knowledge that I’m teaching…I try to give everyone attention and equal opportunity…There is a lot of female leadership on this property as well, which is inspiring to me and I’m really proud to work here at the Hard Rock Bristol because of that.”
Born in Huntsville, Alabama, Van Riper has more than 25 years of experience in food preparation. Since graduating from the California Culinary Academy in 2000, she has held a variety of positions in the kitchen: head chef, pastry chef, and chef de cuisine at various hotels, restaurants and private clubs.
Van Riper said most of the noted, celebrity chefs are men.
“When you look at the titans of the culinary world most people are going to think of men – Emeril Lagasse, Gordon Ramsey. It’s their representation,” she said. “I have one who is fantastic, and this is her first job, and she is going to make an amazing chef. I am so proud for her to have that experience and she can definitely can see herself and where she’s going.”
Hard Rock Café Sous Chef Sarah Addison talks about the environment while working in the kitchen at Hard Rock Cafe.
Addison, of Kingsport, is part of the team of sous chefs.
“This is the first time I’ve ever worked with an all-female team in a kitchen,” Addison said. “When you have a great group of people working together it makes things happen, regardless of the situation. When you have a group of females together, they’re constantly supporting you. Even when you’re having a bad day or you’re having a great day, they’re going to be your cheerleader…When you have a good group of people there to support you it really makes a huge difference.”
Addison called it “an absolute honor” to work for Van Riper.
“I’ve already learned so much…Things that she’s learned from other locations, things she’s implemented here have helped me. There is obviously more than one way to do everything,” she said.
Addison has worked in the food industry for 12 years and views it as a lifetime career and aspires being a head chef one day.
“I’ve been here on our property for four years,” she said. “It’s just grown from what we had. The standards that we have here help us keep our team dynamic as good as it is.”
She said Friday and Saturday nights are typically the busiest times.
“Busy to me is a Friday or Saturday night when we’ve got awesome events on our café stage. We have a live event going and its 8 o’clock and we’ve already seen 600 guests and we’re still rolling. It’s always something. I love that.
“That’s my favorite part of being here at the café is there is always something fun going on over here or in [Hard Rock] Live and we have guests that come…It’s always exciting.”
The café operates from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., except on Friday and Saturday when its open until 2 a.m.
dmcgee@bristolnews.com | Twitter: @DMcGeeBHC
