Women's History Month Exclusive Interviews: ICE Hosts Award-Winning Chefs at 2025 Parabere Forum
For Women's History Month, the ĢƵ hosted Parabere Forum events centered on women in food. In addition to cooking demonstrations and panel discussions designed for visiting guests, ICE students enjoyed exclusive access to several of the Forum's prestigious chef attendees. Among these were Chefs Apollonia ʴǾâԱ, Hélène Darroze, and Jess Murphy, all of whom sat down with ICE for exclusive talkbacks and Q&As focused on insights for aspiring chefs. Here's what they had to say.
Earlier this month — March 2, to be exact — ICE hosted events presented by the , an independent and international non-profit that connects and supports female chefs and women in hospitality.
Founded in 2015, Parabere now comprises a global cadre of 6,000 chefs, sommeliers, food producers, scientists, anthropologists and innovators deploying their expertise across generations and geographies to advance women in food via business and social networks.
As part of its annual two-day forum, Parabere employed ICE New York's classrooms and kitchens for cooking demonstrations, practical discussions, and in-depth debates on how to increase local and global opportunities for improving the state of gastronomy, food, nutrition and agriculture.
Several of the world’s biggest female chefs were among the forum’s board members, presenters and attendees. ICE students studying Culinary Arts and Pastry & Baking Arts, among other ICE programs, received exclusive access to three of them — Apollonia ʴǾâԱ, Hélène Darroze, and Jess Murphy — via videos and discussions led by ICE’s marketing and special events teams.
Below are the women’s impressive biographies followed by their thoughts on everything from women in kitchens and overcoming adversity, to mentorship and advice for aspiring chefs. Happy Women’s History Month!
*The following has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Apollonia ʴǾâԱ is a third generation baker and the CEO of the renowned 93-year-old Parisian bakery . She has authored and contributed to over a dozen cookbooks, including her most recent release, "ʴǾâԱ: The Secrets of the World-Famous Bread Bakery", and has an economics degree from Harvard.
Hélène Darroze has six Michelin stars across three restaurants: Hélène Darroze at in London, in Paris, and in Provence. She holds a business degree from L’École Supérieure de Commerce de Bordeaux and was named one of the Best Female Chefs by World's 50 Best Restaurants.
Jess Murphy is a New Zealand-born, award-winning chef and the co-owner of , the only restaurant in Ireland to receive a Michelin Green Star. via events, interviews and field visits since 2017, and she is a longtime Parabere Forum associate.
On the subjects of tradition and cooking your heritage…
Chef Hélène: You are what you eat, you know. It’s a mentality and values… [To share your food with others], you have to be proud of what you are and where you are from, which means working with local products.
Chef Jess: My restaurant [Kai] is a relationship restaurant, so it's based on how we interact with the farmers. Every January, I give them a grow list, and if they’re finding stuff expensive, then we can cut that out and maybe, you know, not use purple carrots or whatever — or we can get a cheaper carrot variety… I'm constantly on the phone to farmers and suppliers.
Chef Apollonia: Our family philosophy [“Contemporary by tradition”] is the baseline for our company, and it’s about taking the best of past techniques and contemporary techniques to feed the future… [and following my father’s phrase], which is “retro innovation.” This means that you build a future by understanding where you come from, being rich in what our ancestors have learned and perfected, but also staying tuned to our times. That conversation is what guides our choices and production [at ʴǾâԱ].
Chef Jess: My grandmother taught me to make delicious food from nothing.… In Ireland crubeens used to be such a staple, especially in the famine when all the food was getting sent away from Ireland. So every now and then I cook them just as a reminder — especially if we have loads of food — of how it used to be. You know, to give back to get back…Instead of having the world your oyster, have the pig's feet. It’s really important for me to teach young Irish chefs how to cook their heritage. You might not make it all the time, but to know how to make it is really important.
Chef Hélène: Food is a way to get people together and to share the culture…it's something which could be a revolution, in fact.
On teamwork (and enabling your success by enabling others)...
Chef Apollonia: I cannot make all the bread by myself, so we train our bakers, and we have our smaller cookies and pastry team. Around 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. our delivery teams come and pick up the bread that has been baked in the hours prior and prepared for orders for clients — and it's our trucks and cargo bikes from Paris, and so forth. Then we have our stores that open up in the morning and sell our bread… And during office hours, we have our support sales and accounting and so forth. And then, around the clock, our bakers work in the big house at producing our breads, pastries and cookies… [So there are] a lot of teams. A lot of relying on and trusting my teams.
Chef Jess: My basic advice is if you're not good at something, hire somebody that's really good at it. Spend the money on them, because what you're good at will override that and you'll end up making enough money to pay them. Like, I'm not good at books, so we pay [our bookkeeper] really well.
Chef Apollonia: For myself, I love to spend a Saturday morning in the big house and doing a little bit of R&D and also perfecting my gestures as a baker. It allows me to chat with my team and stay connected to them. I also really happen to love people and chatting and connecting and understanding what their motivations are… It's really important to me that I see the people I work with once a week, at least, so I can shake their hands.
Chef Hélène: I have a great team: a corporate chef and pastry chef and food & beverage corporate. And then I have the marketing team and a commercial team and a financial team… Because kitchens and restaurants are hard work. It's like going to war every day, and you are [all] best friends in the war. But it's also family, and I am proud that they are all family, you know.
On overcoming adversity…
Chef Apollonia: In the face of adversity, whatever that is, you just [pick yourself up] however you can. Like, the human ability and desire to pick yourself up… is incredible, and it's just one step and then another step forward. If you fall down the stairs at some point, you pick yourself up, and start again one step at a time. And yeah, your first steps will hurt because you've just landed on the floor, but I think the bigger journey is much more interesting than the physical reality of each moment – and both can work in parallel.
Advice for Aspiring Culinary Professionals….
Chef Hélène: Meet people! I have often been impressed by someone in front of me who is passionate and wants to be part of the team, wants to learn, wants to give a little bit of himself. That is much more important than a big CV. So go and meet people.
Chef Apollonia: Look at what other domains of knowledge are doing. I love the world of the arts and I've been inspired by visiting exhibits in galleries or museums and seeing a piece of art that triggered thoughts about color or [that] would make a great bread shape.
Chef Hélène: Also, we are selling happiness, so it's a big responsibility to people who come to eat at your table. You have to take that with humility… You, the chef, are not the star. It's all about the producer and the products that you have, and you just have to make them better.
On what they look for when hiring chefs and bakers…
Chef Jess: I love to see [young cooks] getting excited by a vegetable delivery. I don't expect anything else from them… You can teach them everything else.
Chef Apollonia: Passion. That's the first one that comes to mind. But it's also about attention, someone that has a sensory intelligence. Some [of the people we hire] have zero experience in baking, some people have only a little bit, and that's because what we're really looking for is that spark, that interest, that curiosity. It can come in different shapes or forms, but, at the end of the day, I look for intelligent human beings that care about what's going on.
Chef Jess: You know, we don't expect young chefs coming into the kitchen to be like Alice Waters. It takes a long time to get to that point. So, just the way that they carry themselves, if they take pride in themselves. But they also take pride in the way that they put away [vegetables] and the way they work. Like, “We're not gonna just throw things in a fridge on top of something else.” Getting excited about ingredients is the main thing, because that's where it all starts. Everyone can learn to cook. But you know, you have to really feel that what you’re doing is important, that there’s a reason you're putting it on a plate.
On mentorship…
Chef Jess: People talk a lot about mentorship, but I think that there’s reverse mentoring at the same time. Like, I'm 46 and my junior chefs teach me so much every day … You know, I can teach some traditional stuff, and they teach me texts and Instagram and chat GPT.
Chef Hélène: I think it's about giving the example, you know? Sharing a lot of time with [young cooks] and being an example… I'm still working in my kitchens because I have to be an example. I share with them and I speak with them. Communication is key, and you have to build a strong team and give them high value.
On why chefs and the food they make matters…
Chef Hélène: Guests are king and queen. Some guests will come once in their life in our restaurant so we always think of a guest first… what can we do better to please them? It's not about Michelin Stars. It’s not about 50 Best Restaurants. It's just about the people who [either] one time or every day are in your restaurant — and that’s the nicest compliment. I have an open kitchen, so when I see them leaving the restaurant with a smile like that — it’s just… it’s the most important thing.
Chef Apollonia: The act of feeding someone is a beautiful opportunity to share love, to build a community… [Our starter] has been around since 1932… [and there’s a saying in France] that 200 miles in the US is like 200 years in Europe.” I keep on smiling at this cute sentence because I was greeting an American visitor into the bakehouse recently and when I told her this quote she said, “Does that mean there’s a bit of 1932 in this batch?”
Chef Hélène: I'd say it's a difficult job [being a chef], but it’s also the most fabulous job in the world.
