As a kid, Nina Hullinger had her own rolling pin and loved to help her mom cook.

“I was always tugging on her apron strings in the kitchen,” she says.

In high school, Hullinger worked at Pizza Hut and learned the basics. When she found herself skipping class at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne to make gourmet pizzas at Casa Grille, she knew she had found her calling.

Now she’s a sous chef in charge of lunch at Columbia Street Café (the daytime version of Columbia Street West). And she helps out, when needed, at Bourbon Street Hideaway, a Cajun-inspired restaurant downstairs.

Hullinger, 24, is part of a new generation of female chefs who are still a rarity in most restaurant kitchens – a trend that is changing slowly.

“They say a woman’s place is in the kitchen – unless you’re getting paid for it,” she says.

Apparently, even the professional kitchen has a glass ceiling.

“It’s such a male-dominated field. It’s really hard to break in,” agrees Jennifer “Blu” Sonner, a sous chef at Bourbon Street Hideaway.

In contrast to the “shimmer on cooking” that Food Network celebrity chefs have created, it’s not a glamorous job, these women say. That glossy sheen is sweat. And a chef might cut, burn or bruise herself as she hustles to create the next culinary masterpiece.

But they have been well-prepared.

Both local women have worked at Three Rivers Co-op Natural Foods & Deli, where they learned the ropes under former cook Jain Young, “the mad food scientist.”

“That was just where I bloomed. I worked with produce I’d never seen before. I was making egg replacer from flax seed,” Hullinger says.

“It was almost like an intro to fine dining, in a deli atmosphere,” says Sonner, 26.

Her father traveled the country helping restaurants address business challenges (sort of a “Kitchen Nightmares” concept), which is how Sonner learned to cook.

While Hullinger was learning to make marshmallows from scratch at Joseph Decuis in Roanoke, Sonner was on the Gulf Coast running two post-Hurricane Katrina kitchens as part of her AmeriCorps service. She returned to Fort Wayne after helping her father run his restaurant in Florida.

Meanwhile, their friend, Martha Fisher, was studying in the culinary arts program at Anthis Career Center and then Ivy Tech Community College. “I immersed myself in it. It turned into being something I really enjoyed doing,” says Fisher, 22.

She was intrigued by the scientific and artistic sides of cooking, both of which a cook must consider to achieve the perfect balance of flavor and texture.

At Ivy Tech, she worked with a diverse group that included students of all ages and nearly equal numbers of men and women.

Jeff Bunting, chairman of Ivy Tech Community College’s hospitality management program, says women make up about half of the students in culinary-arts classes, a marked change from a decade ago when he was a student there and men were the majority. And in today’s pastry arts and event-management concentrations, female students clearly outnumber men.

Outside the classroom, it’s often a different story.

Fisher was denied a job because she is a woman. She was told that hiring a woman would upset the kitchen dynamics, she says.

Sonner has witnessed “chauvinistic, patriarchal nonsense” in various kitchens where she’s worked.

It seems that female cooks have to work twice as hard to get noticed for a job well done, she says.

“You learn not to ask for help,” she says.

One boss told Sonner he was hard on her because he recognized her talent, and said “you’ll thank me later.”

“They push you because they see something in you. You have to have a tough skin,” Hullinger says.

The women wonder whether male competition has brought out the worst in some of their former co-workers. But for themselves, it just made them work harder, they say, and now they’re reaping the rewards.

Ultimately, the job has been more satisfying than not. That’s why they’re still doing it.

“Your result is in front of you (each day). You’re in the business of making people happy,” Sonner says.

Each of them would love to run their own restaurant someday, where everything would be made from scratch using fresh, locally grown produce – maybe from the kitchen’s garden.

“It’s nice to know where your food comes from,” Fisher says. “I’m glad that’s becoming a trend.”

Hullinger agrees, saying her ideal restaurant would be one that makes “comfort food in a fresh and pure form.”

sscarlett@jg.net