Ashley Christensen, of Poole’s Downtown Diner in Raleigh, at her latest venture, Joule Coffee & Table.”
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Back in the 1970s, when Nathalie Dupree and Shirley Corriher were cooking together in Atlanta, they wanted to avoid the kind of relationship in which competition slides into rancor.
So the two women, who went on to build national reputations, developed the pork chop theory. The idea is that one pork chop in a pan cooks up dry. But two produce enough fat to feed each other, and the results are much better.
The pork chop theory is as good an explanation as any for what’s happening in North Carolina, where women dominate the best professional kitchens.
The North Carolina food sisterhood stretches out beyond restaurants, too, into pig farming, flour milling and pickling. Women run the state’s pre-eminent pasture-raised meat and organic produce distribution businesses and preside over its farmers’ markets. They influence food policy and lead the state’s academic food studies. And each fall, the state hosts the nation’s only retreat for women in the meat business.
“Really, the women own every single link in the food chain in North Carolina,” said Margaret Gifford, a brand consultant in New York City who spent 16 years in the state and started Farmer Foodshare, which connects North Carolina farmers with dozens of hunger relief agencies.
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At Carolina Ground, a tiny mill in Asheville, Jennifer Lapidus has had to soften her approach with old-school wheat farmers who don’t immediately buy into her all-female operation. “I have never wanted to punch a man in the face more than when they say, ‘Oh, I want to watch this girlie work that forklift,’ ”she said.
Her miller, Kim Thompson, is a former Marine who shrugs it off. “I was used to working in the biggest boys club in the world,” she said, “so for me it’s strange to be working with mostly women.”
While she and others appreciate the North Carolina sisterhood, they don’t really like talking about it.
“I’m excited for a time when it’s not a woman doing something,” she said, “but it’s just somebody doing something.”
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A version of this article appears in print on January 28, 2015, on page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: The North Carolina Way. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
