Les Dames d’Escoffier’s Legacy Awards
Les Dames d’Escoffier’s Legacy Awards, supported by The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts, were established in 2009 by Les Dames d’Escoffier International with one goal in mind: to provide targeted mentorship opportunities for professional women in the food, beverage, and hospitality industries. The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts generously supports our Legacy Awards program.
A Week with a Dame: Each Legacy Award winner earns an experience of approximately one week working alongside accomplished LDEI members. The competition is open to professional women from the U.S., Mexico, the U.K., Canada, France and Italy who are not current or past members of LDEI but have a minimum of four years’ experience working in their industry.
2025 Les Dames d’Escoffier’s Legacy Awards & Experiences
The Culinary Education Legacy Award: Culinary Medicine and Nutrition Hosted by the Dames of the Dallas Chapter
Join the Dallas Dames for an immersive, week-long mentorship program designed to empower you with the knowledge and skills to incorporate culinary medicine and nutrition into your professional practice and life. Throughout this transformative experience, you will explore the powerful intersection of food, health, and wellness, guided by a team of expert chefs and dietitians.
Your days will be filled with experiences throughout the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex with time spent with some of our Certified Culinary Medicine Specialist Dames including Dame Anne Vanbeber and Dame Milette Siler at places such as Texas Christian University, Dallas College, Collin College, the Moncrief Cancer Center. In addition, experiences with dietitians in private practice and other community venues will fill your days followed by Dame filled nights tasting your way through the area.
Whether you want to incorporate culinary medicine principles into your cooking, gain an understanding of intuitive eating, or see how nutrition and culinary medicine can impact health, this experience will take you on a journey to understand how food nourishes your body and soul.
What will the awardee come away:
– The experience will be tailored to the awardee and can focus on a single area or provide the spectrum of opportunities related to nutrition and culinary medicine.
This award is well suited for someone thinking about shifting their career or diversifying their skills and are currently in or thinking about culinary medicine and nutrition. This experience will take place between the months of June through October of 2025.
The Food Entrepreneurship Award: Tracing the New England Food System Hosted by the Dames of the New England Chapter
Join this amazing entrepreneurial group of New England Dames on a trip through the New England Food System for an exploration of their unique food landscape. The awardee will receive professional mentoring from Entrepreneurs whose work is impacting communities in the New England Food System.
The awardee of this experience will learn about the importance of finding meaning and purpose in the mission and vision of their business and how that serves their community. They will hear the value of accepting and learning from failures, of believing in your own strengths and abilities no matter what external expectations may exist along with the importance of networking, and servanthood leadership.
The New England Chapter Dames are in businesses with annual revenues ranging from $500,000 to $100 million. These businesses include an oyster farmer, fine beverage such as vintners, food makers, retailers, importers and manufacturers. Also, bakers, cheesemakers, chocolatiers, restaurant owners, lifestyle coaches, food writers, food stylists, cookbook authors, meat purveyors, cooking school owners, specialty food wholesalers, pastry chefs, food rescue hubs, event venue owners, and a kitchen designer. Dependent on the profession of the awardee, this entrepreneurial experience will be tailored to meet those attributes.
This experience would be most helpful for entrepreneur in mid stage functional at least 2 years in operation.
This experience will take place between the months of June through October 2025.
The Food Policy and Advocacy Legacy Award: “Turning the Tables: Making Change through Policy and Advocacy” Hosted by the Dames of the Washington, D.C. Chapter
Washington, D.C. is the nation’s center for policymaking, legislation, think tanks, and change agents. The Dames of the Washington, D.C. chapter have created a unique opportunity for a candidate interested in exploring a career in food policy, justice, or advocacy. In order to make sustainable change in society, one must explore all avenues from legislative to grassroots advocacy.
This week-long experience, mentored by local Dames, will expose the candidate to major players who are shifting the landscape through culinary activism, creative programing, new laws, education, and sustainable practices.
The awardee for this experience will leave with a broad introduction to the fields of policy and legislation related to food, as well as exposure to what it takes to shift systems and be an activist for change in the culinary eco-system.
The awardee will have an opportunity to tailor the experience to her location and/or particular interest meeting with her local legislators, government agencies, and local culinary leaders dealing directly with the policies the candidate is most interested in. Segments of the field that might be tailored to this candidate includes:
– Hunger and Food Equity
– Climate and Food
– Sustainable Practices in the Food Industry
– Food History and Justice
The candidate for this experience should have a minimum of two years experience as a culinary professional with demonstrated interested in policy or advocacy. This might include working with her local elected leadership in some capacity, including election campaigns; working on sustainability projects that exposed her to policy and regulation, working with leadership of a local food bank or food access agency; or working with an organization focused on climate justice. The work experience can be paid or as an active volunteer.
We will arrange a place for the awardee to stay that is convenient to her appointments and public transportation. She will have a “shepherd” with her each day to accompany her to meetings, visits, and appointments. Dinners will be hosted at homes and/or Dame Owned restaurants with Dames as dinner companions. We will build in free time for the awardee to visit major in D.C. if she desires.
This experience will take place in the months of June through October 2025.
The Journalism Legacy Award Hosted by the Dames of the Saint Louis Chapter
This experience is an opportunity to sharpen your writing skills and network with award-winning professional food writers. The winner will study several forms of food writing, including cultural journalism, blogging, literary food writing, scientific study, podcasting, and more. Once a winner is selected, the experience will be tailored to the recipient’s goals.
– The awardee will spend two days with Dame Nina Furstenau at the Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia, Missouri meeting and speaking with active media professionals chosen to fit the legacy winner’s interests. Stops may include attending a brainstorming session with KBIA, an NPR-affiliate station, and with the Mississippi Basin Ag and Water Desk (an independent environmental reporting network) discussing topics that intersect with food, and more. Dame Nina Furstenau is a journalist, M.F.K Fisher Prize winner, and Fulbright Scholar
– A day with Dame Roberta Duyff, bringing healthy eating, sound science, cultural sensitivity, ethics, and deliciousness into food writing … The day’s legacy experiences, shared with several communication experts, will focus on translating sound science and cultural sensitivity into practical, relevant food and nutrition communication for the public: the ins and outs of book publishing, sourcing reliable healthy eating resources, AI and the ethics of writing, as well as recipes as a communication tool. Dame Duyff is a nationally- recognized, award-winning author/editor, national speaker, media writer, and food industry/government consultant. Her work has focused on practical, science-based food and nutrition guidance
– A day with Dame Suzanne Corbett, award-winning writer, culinary teacher and food historian, member Board of Directors at the Historic Campbell House, bringing history into food writing. Dame Suzanne Corbett, award-winning writer, culinary teacher and food historian
– A meeting with Dame Catherine Neville to explore the connections in our food system, from farmer to maker to chef. Dame Catherine Neville, M.F.K Fisher Prize winners, vice president of Communications with Explore St. Louis, and host of Emmy-nominated tasteMAKERS, a program
The awardee will:
– Understand where the energy in food content is today by meeting with working professionals in several media platforms and focus areas
– Consider the linked fields of agriculture, nutrition, culture, science, and food identity to begin to develop critically needed stories for broader impacts
– Learn best practices to pitch their work
– Participate in a collaborative session with working journalists
– Network with a wide range of writing professionals for potential on-going collaboration and support
This Awardee should be early in their journalism/writing career.
This experience will take place between the first week of June 2025.
The Restaurant and Agriculture Legacy Award Hosted by the Dames of the Hawai’i Chapter
The Awardee for the Restaurant experience will spend time with Hawai’i Dames at two iconic Honolulu Restaurants as well as a day trip to Kauai where she will experience a remarkable cooking class and a food production/catering facility. We have multiple possibilities for farm tours including a Bean to Bar Chocolate Experience. Hawai’i is the only state that grows commercial cacao! She will also have the opportunity to attend the Honolulu Fish Auction, the only fish auction between Tokyo and Maine.
The awardee will experience how the relationship between culture and food can enhance diners’ experience as well as a restaurant’s bottom line. She will learn from one of the best on staffing and employee retention in a difficult labor market. She will experience the importance of community service and how that connection can support the success of her restaurant/business.
Two days will be spent with Dame Robynne Maii at her restaurant Fête. Robynne is a 2022 James Beard Award winner for Best Chef and is the first woman of Hawaiian Ancestry to win.
She will also spend time with 3rd generation restauranter, Dame Monica Toguchi Ryan of Highway Inn. Dame Ryan is the 2023 winner of the Hawai’i State Woman owned Business of the Year by the US Small Business Association.
On Kauai, she will attend a cooking class with Dame Aletha Thomas at her home kitchen classroom and spend time with Dame Gida Snyder who runs multiple businesses including catering, private jet catering, award winning food products from her Slow Island Food and Beverage and a chicken farm!
The experience for our awardee will be tailored to her interests based on her career. She can be at any stage of her career.
This experience will take place sometime in late August through September 2025.
The Culinary and Hospitality Legacy Award with Zingerman’s Bakehouse Hosted by Dame Amy Emberling and Zingerman’s Management/Team Members
Come to Ann Arbor and embed yourself in the world of the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses. Spend a week primarily at Zingerman’s Bakehouse, an artisan bakery specializing in bread, pastries, and cakes to see how this 32-year-old business bakes thousands of pieces of delicious baked goods everyday using traditional recipes and natural ingredients. Your experience can be personally shaped depending on your interests. If you’d like to spend a week baking bread, we can do that. If you want to learn about how to organize production on a large scale, we can do that. If you want to learn about how to use Zingerman’s leadership strategies and customer service, we can do that. It can be a mix and match adventure of anything we do as experienced through hands on learning, classroom learning, and through observation of the organization in action.
We’ll tour the entire Zingerman’s community, eat in its three restaurants and arrange for the awardee to be hosted by Zingerman’s staff with comparable interests. It will be a week of delicious food and learning.
This Awardee will come away with:
– An introduction to the leadership and management of an artisan wholesale bakery
– An introduction to an artisan bakery in an area of their choice: bread, pastry, cakes
– An introduction to the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses management recipes and approach to customer service
This Awardee should have a minimum of 3 years of daily hands-on experience in a culinary or baking environment.
This experience will take place between June – September of 2025.
