Less than 100 years ago, it was considered inappropriate for women to dine in restaurants — let alone run them. But much has changed. This series is a tribute to the women who dedicate their time, energy and talents to making the food world a better – and more delicious – place.

Dana Spandet, chef and owner of Flour Girl & Flame, says the best advice she’s ever received is: “Stop waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“I put my parents through hell,” she says. “They never knew when they’d get a phone call telling them that I was in trouble or dead on the side of the road. And they were always waiting for the ‘other shoe’ to drop. That’s a really terrible place to be.

“Years later, I realized that I was doing the same thing in my own life, and with my own business. I was always expecting the worst. One day my therapist asked me: ‘What if you stopped waiting for it to drop?’ I’m still working on it, but I realized I needed to adjust how I looked at things. Inevitably, things are going to happen. But living in a state of fear just isn’t the way to go.” 

The lost years

Spandet was a senior in high school when she found herself drawn into the gritty world of hospitality.

“I grew up in the Northern Suburbs of Illinois,” she tells me. “And I did great in school until my senior year in high school when I kind of checked out. I hadn’t put in any college applications, so I didn’t really have a plan.  But the Food Network was big and tattooed chefs were coming onto the scene. There was fire and knives and they were all smoking…

“I was angry. I thought I’d get into cooking because it would allow me to smoke, do drugs and drink… it would be the pirate life for me, a way to escape into this void of chaos.”

At the time, she lived near Gurney Mills, so she worked at numerous chain restaurants in the area including Ruby Tuesdays, TGI Fridays and Olive Garden.

“I got fired from every single one. And that just kept going for years. I came to Milwaukee in 2009 for Pride Fest. While I was there, I met a girl and decided to move here.”

She got a job at Rumpus Room, a new highly anticipated restaurant operated by the Bartolotta Restaurants.

“Even through my drug-addled state, I listened when Joe [Bartolotta] talked, and he said things that – for the first time – began to make sense to me. From the time I was 20 until I was 31, I worked in restaurants, and everything that I learned, I learned despite myself. When I stopped doing drugs, I started drinking… and blacking out. There’s so much I don’t remember from those years.

"While I was drinking, I worked in probably 30 restaurants including all the Bartolotta’s spots, Calderone Club… and I did so many dangerous things. So many careless things. I pissed a lot of people off, and I was really lucky I didn’t end up in jail. And yet, industry people gave me so much grace. People offered to send me to rehab. But rehab doesn’t work until it’s your choice. For years, I’d go, and then I’d go right back into the void.”

Then she hit rock bottom.

“I was at my absolute ass-bottom and I was done,” she says. “By that point, I’d met my wife, Pam, and I knew I wanted children, and everything just hit me like a bolt of lightning. I joined Alcoholics Anonymous and went to meetings twice a day.”

When she was 30 days sober, she took a job at the MSOE cafeteria where she knew she wouldn’t be anywhere near alcohol. Despite years of working in a drug and alcohol-filled haze, she says she’d learned enough that she was promoted quickly.

“We started working with local farmers in the cafeteria and for catering. And I realized how much I missed that. Over time, I started planting gardens of my own. Taking care of things and growing things became part of my recovery.

By the time 2015 rolled around, I started working part-time with Tall Guy & A Grill. I started as a bartender, and I was able to do it without being tempted to backslide. At the time, we were going through the process to have kids, and I was determined to make it work.”

Over the next few years, Spandet gave birth to two children via in vitro fertilization. In 2016 she took on the role of executive chef at Tall Guy & A Grill and she channeled her energy into gardening, beekeeping, raising chickens and vermicomposting. She dedicated herself to family and focused on work.

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Pizza, ice cream & a brain injury

In August of 2020, Spandet launched Flour Girl & Flame, selling wood-fired pizzas from a mobile trailer. It was a business born of her love for pizza and her desire to challenge herself with a new cooking technique. 

She intentionally created the business to fostered inclusion. She supported LGBTQ+ growers, woman producers and farmers of color. She also hired a crew of female employees, taking a chance on some and giving others the same chances she was given.  

“I received so much grace over the years…” says Spandet. “I’m not the type of leader who’s going to give up on people. Sometimes I think I’m too easy on people. And yet, one of the things that’s the most rewarding is watching people reach their full potential.” 

By 2021, Flour Girl & Flame had grown into a full-on brick and mortar restaurant with multiple wood-fired trailers and a catering arm. So Spandet began working on her next project, Everyone’s Ice Cream.

“It was 2022 and I was R&Ding ice cream,” Spandet recalls. “It was a week before the shop opened. Flour Girl was at the West Allis Market and we were behind. I was panic-balling dough. Then I ran to pick up a moped that I bought to drive while we were using my truck for the trailer. I paid the guy $1500 for the moped and drove off.  

“My wife and kids were behind me,” she says. “So they saw everything. I hit the median on a curve and I hit the ground. Hard. I was completely laid out.”

They took her to the emergency room, where they treated her for a traumatic brain injury. She came home with 11 staples in her head and a recovery that brought with it some unexpected side effects.

“A few days after coming home, I realized I couldn’t taste or smell,” she says. And, as the days passed, it didn’t get better. Three months later, she was still unable to identify common smells that chefs depend upon while they're cooking.

“I couldn’t taste to see if something was balanced. I couldn’t smell when things were done cooking. They say that, once it’s been a year, your senses may never come back. So, I had a hard time reconciling how I was going to carry on with my career without being able to taste or smell. 2023 was just really depressing. It shook my identity as a chef …and a person in the world.

“I went through a really angry phase,” she says. “I would look at different ingredients, lick them, put them into my mouth, into my throat. Not being able to identify flavors had completely shattered my confidence. I had to hide being gay for years. I hid my addiction for years. And then, the inability to smell… I needed to relearn everything, and it took a lot for me to admit that I was having a hard time doing my job.  

“So, I decided to be transparent about it. I started telling other chefs my story. And all these men… Greg Leon, Justin Aprahamian, Luke Zahm… they’ve rallied around me and given me so much support. It’s been crazy."

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Headlong into the fire

Spandet says that she’s used smell training kits with the hope of regaining the two senses that are vital to her work as a chef. She says it’s been helpful, but hasn’t helped 100 percent. 

“The first thing I could smell was onion. And then, one day I was walking through the kitchen and I realized I smelled something with true clarity. ‘Is someone cutting cilantro?’ I yelled. And sure enough, they were.  Needless to say, I now love anything with cilantro and onion.”

“Some days it’s just frustrating. Even with things I can identify, it’s kind of like I have a LaCroix filter on,” she says. “I get this vague whisp of a smell or a flavor, but it’s not quite there. Right now, I can decipher saltiness, sweetness, acidity… and the smell of a wood-burning fire.

“So, I’m embracing that,” she says, noting that about six months ago she took a master class on with Charly Prétet, the owner of Terra Firma Dining, a catering concept that features food cooked exclusively over an open flame. “I’ve decided that I’m going to lean into cooking over coal and wood. It’s intimate and immersive, and it’s a cool new challenge…” 

As her voice trails off, she looks at me with what I could only describe as a mischievous smile.

“So, a while back, I was picking up a U-Haul. And I found myself looking at these work gloves hanging on the wall. I wondered if they’d be good for handling embers. I pulled one down to see if it would fit on my hands, and this guy just randomly comes over to me and says: ‘Does that make you feel like a man?’”

“I bit my tongue,” she says. “You know we’ve always been about empowering women. So, yeah. This next step for us is going to be women in leather aprons and gloves, hanging primal cuts of meat over fire and coal and wood.”