"I am a strong woman because a strong woman raised me."

The restaurant industry can be tough.

"It gave me some scars," said Jess Revels. "Literally."

Eighteen-hour days and back again the next morning. Your back aches, brain feels like mush and you can't remember the last time you slept eight hours, had sex or watched Netflix – just one episode – all the way through.

"It's so hard," Jess said. "Especially being a woman."

Toxic bosses who throw things and jokes that are never funny. Some 90% of women report sexual harassment in the restaurant industry, so you double-think everything, like the time you bent over to get something out of the cooler and a little bit of your underwear peeked out and everybody in the kitchen saw it and now, every shift, somebody jokes and crosses the line or hits on you but all the guys' boxers are showing plain as day and nobody says shit.

But, on God's whole green earth, there's nothing else you'd rather do than this work. So, how do you make it in a tough industry?

"I had to be tougher," said Jess.

When Jess was born, there were five generations of women alive and well in her family, all living on the same Rossville, Georgia, road.

All of them with one thing in common.

"Spitfires," said Linda Revels, Jess's mom.

Jessica Revels was born in 1992; just down the road, her great-great-grandmother, born in 1905.

"She was a character. She was a spitfire. Just like her daughter. And her daughter. And her daughter," Linda said.

"All of us here have that spitfire."

On Friday morning, three living generations of Revels-Pitts women gathered together at Mac's Kitchen & Bar on McFarland Ave, where Jess, 31, and partner Brian McDonald own one of our city's most genuine farm-to-table restaurants.

Jess, one of the city's most influential pastry chefs, stood next to her mother, Linda Revels and grandmother, Gail Kirk.

"It is why I think I am as tough. We all five lived on that road," Jess said. "Coming from the strong bones we all came from."

She and Brian opened Mac's just blocks away from the street where Jess grew up, drinking hot cocoa and reading the funnies on her granny's step-stool, the smell of bacon and eggs awakening something in her, saving every dollar, needing something done, you do it yourself.

Could young Jess have ever imagined ... this?

When she stops to consider it, the words get stuck in her throat. She drops her head, eyes welling.

Behind the spitfire, she's all tenderness.

In 1992, Jess was born to Linda Revels, a single, working-class mother in Rossville, Georgia. She and the other women down the road taught Jess independence and resilience.

"We have all measuring tapes," Linda said,. "We all have hammers. And tool boxes, If we can't reach something, we get a ladder."

She used that hammer to hang a small plaque in her house: I am a strong woman because a strong woman raised me.

When she was a girl, young Jess would stroll down to her grandmother's house, spending the night when Linda was working two jobs, waking up to a coffee cup of hot cocoa pressed into her small hands, and Granny passing her the comics.

"I’d get the funnies and my cup of hot cocoa," she said. "That way I felt the same with my coffee cup reading the paper."

And that's when she knew. The industry. Her future career.

"I knew as a kid. The smell of coffee and bacon at my granny's house," she said.

After writing her senior project on food deserts, she graduated from Chattanooga School for the Arts & Sciences, then Univ. of Tennessee-Chattanooga, where she was studying microeconomics, all the while wondering: what the hell is this for?

Don't even ask; yes, of course, she worked while she was studying, taking a job as a cashier in the university dining hall. Close to the kitchen, but also so far.

That's when the chef – a woman surrounded by men – came up to her and said: you want to get in the kitchen? Let's go. Follow me.

"Linda Davis," she said. "She taught me so much."

Once, Jess dumped a can of nearly empty pudding into the trash. Linda walked by, scooped it out: Jess, there's still pudding left. That's $1.25 worth of pudding. Don't waste things.

Culinary school at Virginia College, then an externship at St. John's and Alleia; she was 19. Then, back-of-house at Elemental followed by Terminal Brewhouse, Easy Bistro & Bar, The Bread Basket and Bread & Butter.

Once, a chef introduced her to the science of sweetness. "The pastries, the science of baking," Jess said. "That's where my love for pastry came from."

Today, Jess creates some of the city's most beguiling deserts.

Once, a chef unfairly fired her early in Jess's career; a decade later, that same chef texted an apology: I'm sorry. Was trying to make a name for myself. I see you now.

It taught Jess about forgiveness and community.

As she joined The Bread Basket, Jess learned speed and production. And how to create atmosphere where folks feel welcome and at ease.

"I felt safe," she said. "It was mostly women and family-owned."

In 2016, a friend told her to apply at the new bakery on Dayton Boulevard. They asked for a recipe for her stage.

"I brought my brownies," Jess said.

Jess became the pastry chef at the newly opened Bread and Butter; today, she's still there training, creating and baking one day a week.

Most of her time? It's spent at Mac's, the restaurant she and Brian opened in 2023 with a remarkable vision for nearly-complete farm-to-table sourcing.

"Our connection to food and those who grow it," Brian said. "We're trying to bridge the gap between you and your food and where it comes from."

Jess – formally the pastry chef+house manager+co-owner but honestly "we do everything" – began to learn a new form of toughness.

"Brian and his dad taught me a different way how to be strong," she said.

Watching Brian's unyielding vision. Watching his commitment to kindness balanced with a perfection that never cut corners.

"He has pushed me so hard in such a different way in my career," she said.

Watching his dad get sick and endure.

"Cancer," she said. "Seeing him drive himself to chemo and radiation and come home and mow the grass."

In the kitchen, they are partners focusing on service. "Yes, chef," she says to Brian. The only loud voices are MF Doom and Katy Perry on the kitchen speakers. Former servers say: you're the only ones I want to work for.

"We're trying," she said, "to be the change."

Mac's culture is equal parts precision and grace. Borrowing from a former colleague, Jess loves the motto: if you fuck it up once, just fuck it up a little less next time.

"You learn from the mistakes. You can still mess up in life and cooking as long as you are growing and learning from it," she said.

Her mom leans over.

"And it can lead to something unexpected," she said.

Both she and Brian came from working class family kitchens; everything was saved. Remember the $1.25 leftover pudding? Today, Jess asks others to save her the cheese rinds – yep, cheese rinds – that she'll grate onto the top of her cheese bagels.

A Veuve champagne top plugs a hole. She duct-tapes her car window. Uses a mixer from 1958. She collects ordinary things: a penny found on a special night, dried flowers, a pretty stone. Yes, they have money. It isn't about money.

It's about never wasting anyone or anything.

Because it all – the pudding in the trash and the strong women sign you hang in your kitchen and the little girl with hot cocoa on her upper lip reading the funnies – has value.

Once, friends asked her about the long days and hard nights. Why do this?

"That's for you guys," she told the room. "I'm here for ya'll. To see your faces and your souls and bellies happy. That's what it is about."

In one of the nation's toughest industries, Jess Revels is the happiest she's ever been in her life.

"You can feel it," Sarah said. "Everyone can feel it when they walk in Mac's Kitchen."

Once more, Rossville’s toughest pastry chef quietly cries.

"I had a lot of love," she said.

Story ideas, questions, feedback? Interested in sponsorship or advertising opportunities? Email us: david@foodasaverb.com and sarah@foodasaverb.com

This story is 100% human generated; no AI chatbot was used in the creation of this content.