Who inspires you?
That’s the question I asked myself when I started this mission several weeks ago. Looking to connect with my own inspiration when my fairy magic was feeling low, I made a list of 12 women, six local and six national, who I look to as role models. To dive into why and how these women inspire me, I decided to write about it.
So far, the women I’ve written about have been persistent, courageous, and visionary. Today, I’m writing about women who inspire me with their passion. Interestingly, they’re both chefs. Maybe that’s because I love food, and this hunger feels like something that should be consumed.
Passion, that intense desire and boundless enthusiasm we experience when we’re excited about something, is intoxicating. Whether falling in love with someone, an idea, a situation, or a mission, the feeling of desire inspires us to keep moving forward. As anyone who has been married for a very long can tell you, the hard part about passion is keeping it going.
And appetites can change. One minute, your passion is being the wife of a career civil servant; the next, it’s bringing French cooking to the United States, like Julia Child. People with this emotion can be seen as impetuous and uncontrollable. Perhaps this is part of their charm because it takes strength not to care what people think or say about you to deter you from what you love.
But let’s take a pause on passion for a minute. Passion is a powerful driver, but it isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. I think the reason we say love is blind is that passion can sometimes stop us from seeing what’s right in front of us. In the nearly 27 years I’ve been consulting business owners, I become concerned when I see passion override common sense. Getting swept up in something new and exciting without considering what is feasible is easy. I’ve done it myself.
The two women I’m writing about this week are local chef and creator Tanya Tandoc and chef/cookbook author/TV personality Julia Child.
Julia Child
Some of my earliest memories are watching Julia Child’s cooking show with my grandma. She thought the show was hilarious and would imitate her “bon appetit” when serving dinner. I don’t remember if my grandma’s dishes were anywhere approaching French cooking, but she sure did love a cooking show. We watched Graham Kerr, the Galloping Gourmet, too.
Julia Child wasn’t always a chef. She grew up in a family with a cook and didn’t learn to boil water until she met her husband-to-be. Julia’s first foray into cooking came when she worked as a research assistant in the Secret Intelligence division of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and helped develop a recipe for shark repellent to keep the fish from setting off explosives meant for German U-boats.
Julia traveled the world working for the OSS and met her husband Paul in Sri Lanka while he was also working for the OSS. Not long after they were married, Paul was transferred to Paris with the State Department. It was in Paris that Julia had a culinary revelation that was “an opening up of the soul and spirit for me.”
Julia graduated from the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris and studied with many master chefs. She joined the women’s cooking club Le Cercle des Gourmettes, where she met Simone Beck. Beck was writing a French cookbook for Americans and asked Julia to join the team. For the next decade, Julia traveled around Europe, teaching American women about her passion for French cooking in her kitchen while testing and perfecting recipes for the best-selling cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
After appearing on a book review show at the PBS station in Boston and demonstrating how to make an omelet, Julia received such an enthusiastic audience response that she went on to do a summer pilot that turned into a series that ran for ten years. Here’s her first episode.
Julia’s delight in cooking is contagious. The show was unedited, so her hilarious mistakes made her seem more authentic and French cooking more accessible. Her passion to “advance the understanding, appreciation, and quality of wine and food” changed lives and our taste buds and taught us that cream and butter are an essential part of life. As Juia Childs said, “We should enjoy food and have fun. It is one of the simplest and nicest pleasures in life.”
Tanya Tandoc
When I remember Tanya, I think of her passion for creating. She lived to make things. Many people in Wichita knew of her from her restaurant, Tanya’s Soup Kitchen, but cooking was only one of her artistic obsessions. She was an accomplished chef, artist, cellist, belly dancer, costumer, and friend.
I first met Tanya not too long after she returned to Wichita from culinary school in 1992. She struck me right away as an interesting, colorful person who obviously didn’t crave anyone’s approval. She had a strong personality, always had great stories, and a way of crafting words, unlike anyone I’d met before.
After she moved back to Wichita from culinary school, Tanya worked with several restaurants and started a catering company before opening the first Soup Kitchen in 1997. It closed seven years later, in 2004, when the landlord repurposed her space. Tanya decided not to move to a new location then, saying she couldn’t find a location with character and that owning a restaurant eats your life. She wanted time to do other things she enjoyed.
In the spirit of doing something for herself, Tanya returned to school, this time at Wichita State University, to pursue an appetite for ceramics. She reasoned that it was a natural pairing to make her “culinary creations more personal and beautiful.”
After finishing her degree in art at Wichita State University, Tanya came to me to consult with her on what to do next. I had noticed in the results of a Wichita Business Journal questionnaire that Tanya’s Soup Kitchen was still in the top ten lunchtime favorite places more than five years after the restaurant had closed. When I told Tanya that, she said absolutely not. There was no way she was opening the restaurant back up again. Not long after that, Tanya called to say she was ready to start working on her business plan to reopen the Soup Kitchen in 2011.
I’ll never forget the first day when Tanya opened the door to the new restaurant. A long line snaked around the building, with people who couldn’t wait another minute to taste her food again. An older gentleman paused as soon as he got in the door, took a big sniff of the air, and shed tears as he told me, “It smells just like Tanya’s.”
Going out to restaurants with her was like dining with royalty. Every restauranteur and chef in town was dying to get her opinion on their latest dish, and plates of their specialties flew out of the kitchen faster than our stomachs could keep up. She gave advice generously to her would-be competitors and publicly recommended their restaurants which must have felt like a golden seal of approval.
She liked making trouble and stirring the pot in more than just her soup. Tanya was never afraid to let her freak flag fly or her opinion be known. I saw her perform solo belly dance numbers in front of big audiences, unafraid to let it all hang out, and stunning solo cello performances in unexpected situations. She did a commentary on KMUW, with sage food advice and brave restaurant reviews that can still be heard in her own voice here.
Tanya was a complicated person. She was an independent spirit and could be a bit obstinate. On her LinkedIn profile, under experience, it says, “I work for myself because I can’t be bossed,” which was true. She struggled with being a public figure and, at the same time, relished the attention. I admired her love for people and how she always remembered people’s names and took time to shower attention on everyone. She was passionate about making everyone feel beautiful and loved. Tanya used to say, “Soup is love.” It certainly was her expression of love to all of us, and it was obvious in how everything tasted.
Tanya would be so happy to know that love and soup are still pouring out of her restaurant. Tragically, her presence was stolen from us in 2015 when she was murdered by someone in our shared group of friends. Fortunately, Kelly Rae Leffel, Tanya’s beloved kitchen manager, fought to buy the restaurant and keep Tanya’s flavors and legacy alive. An inspirational woman in her own right, Kelly continues to lovingly lead this thriving business. I can still taste her love in every morsel.
While these women turned their passion into food, it was about much more than that. They nurtured people with delicious recipes, demonstrated what they loved, and made them happy by sharing the bounty. They continually created something new and ephemeral, starting again the next day to whip up a more delicious life.
Next week: Fierce Inspirational Women
Did you know I've published a book? Learn more about it here!
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I remember when you took us to Tanya's restaurant for lunch during an NFPW conference. It was only one of the highlights of your tour.