Men seem to dominate the field of chefs in today’s restaurant scene.
Marianne Banes, the corporate pastry chef for Kingfisher and Bluefin Seafood Bistro in Tucson, recalls that there seemed to be more women when she was starting out in the late 1970s, but they fell by the wayside.
“It’s a tough business as far as hours and commitment. I made a decision early on to concentrate on my career and have loved every minute of it!” Marianne says.
Marianne is unusual in that she is a pastry chef as well as a traditional chef. “It’s somewhat unusual to be able to do both,” she explains. “Cooking is science but baking is chemistry – there’s very little wiggle room to make an error.” While she can do line cook work, and she does everything when she caters, she confides that she loves baking more than almost anything in the world.
Regulars at Kingfisher often ask for Marianne or contract with her on the side for a special wedding cake or holiday pie. “And every Jewish organization in town calls me for a donation when there’s an event,” she laughs. Marianne’s family is from Cincinnati and moved to Arizona when she was 9. Her father was Orthodox and had dreams of her marrying a “nice Jewish doctor.” She explained to him that in her line of business, she basically met line chefs and truck drivers. With her crazy work hours she wasn’t sure that marriage was even in the cards for her.
However, at age 38 Marianne married Gregory McNamee, a local author with 37 books to his credit. “He writes mostly history and biographies, but he’s got a couple of food books coming up soon,” she says, adding “Guess my work has influenced him a bit!”They’ve always lived in Tucson where Marianne has been with the Kingfisher restaurants for an unprecedented 18 years. Besides baking and Gregory, one of Marianne’s other loves is her horse, Bandit the Wonderhorse, who she rescued nearly four years ago and trained herself.
Another point of pride with Marianne is that she is a cousin to the Patinkin family: that’s the famous actor/singer Mandy as well as lesser-known Sheldon, who was instrumental in the early days of Second City Improvisational Theatre in Chicago. “My grandmother’s sister wrote lyrics for Irving Berlin, and many of my Polish ancestors were involved in Yiddish theater, visual arts and even poetry,” she says. “Baking is also an art, especially when you decorate. I like to think of myself as an artist with buttercream as my medium.”
Marianne has taught cooking classes at a variety of venues including Pima Community College. She still teaches occasionally at Tucson Originals, and she writes for the Harris’ Farmer’s Almanac on both food and gardening. While she loves her life in Tucson, she thinks about the future and dreams of retiring to an old farm in Virginia, where her husband’s roots are. “I’m also a gardener,” she explains. “I envision an organic garden, about two football fields in size, and maybe a little cooking school in my old farmhouse. After having lived in the desert most of my life, I do love the green back there – and the rivers actually have water in them!”
