Kelly Kawachi smiles when asked about the ceilings she has bumped into during her career.
“When I started getting interviewed, the first question was always: ‘Oh, you’re Asian and you’re a woman from Hawaii,’ expecting to hear about terrible things,” she says. “Personally, I really haven’t run into any of those barriers. They were thrown off because I didn’t go through any drama.”
Kawachi graduated from the culinary program at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction and worked as a sous chef at a Honolulu restaurant. In the past decade, she has risen from butcher to director of meats/executive butcher at Michelin-honored Blackbelly.
Kawachi is squeamish about being labelled an “expert.”
“Because I received the Michelin Young Professional Award, people assume I know everything about everything,” she says. “I’m still learning every day.” According to Kawachi, 36, there are plenty of women butchers, but most of us never notice them.
“They don’t associate women with butchery, but even at Costco there are a lot of women in the back working as meat cutters,” she says. “There always have been.
This is part of a larger story, "Portraits in great taste," profiling women who are shaping the way we eat, drink and buy food in Boulder. Read other profiles in the series here.