Food & Wine mag­a­zine is run­ning #FOOD­WINEWOMEN, a se­ries that spot­lights top women in food and drink.

The T&T Guardian will be run­ning in­ter­views from the se­ries over the next few weeks in the hope of in­spir­ing women who hope to be­come chefs, cater­ers, som­me­liers or take up oth­er roles in the food and bev­er­age in­dus­tries. To­day we fea­ture Soul and com­fort food queen Tanya Hol­land who has per­fect­ed fried chick­en and slow-cooked meats at her Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia, restau­rants B-Side BBQ and Brown Sug­ar Kitchen. Here, she ex­plains why am­bi­tious women shouldn't fear mak­ing mis­takes.

"It all de­pends how you look at it. Some­times I think I should have got­ten that busi­ness de­gree when I thought about it, but I fo­cused on the cre­ativ­i­ty of the busi­ness, and that's be­come valu­able to me. Busi­ness mis­takes are hard." Tanya Hol­land.

1 Be­ing an over­achiev­er and tak­ing on too much at once

Es­pe­cial­ly when first open­ing the busi­ness and not re­al­is­ing how much help you need. You re­alise you can't cook, keep books, man­age fa­cil­i­ties or run HR. The first year I got burned out and let go of bal­ance, even ex­er­cis­ing. That's some­thing I con­tin­ue to tell peo­ple: Stretch now! When you're young, stretch. I'm so glad I was a gym rat in my 20s, or I wouldn't be able to walk now.

2 Leav­ing a po­si­tion too soon

You have to fol­low your in­tu­ition. I've been in places where there was still some­thing else I could have learned, but I was frus­trat­ed be­cause I wasn't get­ting pro­mot­ed. You can learn from every move.

3 And al­so, stay­ing in a job too long

There's a chef, Patrick Clark, who told me the best chefs are the ones who have worked for many peo­ple in­stead of stay­ing in one place, be­cause you de­vel­op your own style. He al­so told me to leave New York... He said, "As a woman, you will prob­a­bly have more suc­cess leav­ing the city." I think he was right, too.

This was in 1995-1996. I was look­ing for a sous chef po­si­tion. I wasn't be­ing em­pow­ered at Mesa Grill and want­ed a kitchen to work in where I could be seen as a po­ten­tial leader. I was de­ter­mined to make it in NYC. I re­al­ly didn't want to leave, but ul­ti­mate­ly I had no choice as I couldn't grow there work­ing for oth­er peo­ple who put lim­i­ta­tions on me and my work based on what they were com­fort­able with.

I have al­ways been pas­sion­ate with a great work eth­ic, and I love to learn as much as I can about this in­dus­try and have worked in so many ca­pac­i­ties, but this has proven to be threat­en­ing to many of my male coun­ter­parts. Es­pe­cial­ly on the East Coast, I think be­cause of Al­ice (Wal­ters), Mary Sue and Su­san, Judy Rodgers, Joyce Gold­stein, Bar­bara Tropp, Traci Des Jardins, Nan­cy Oakes, etc out here, women lead­ers in the kitchen were just more known and ac­cept­ed. Times have clear­ly changed. I think things are a bit more open now, but yes, then.

There were a num­ber of women chef own­ers in San Fran­cis­co, Boston, LA, Seat­tle, etc but still on­ly a hand­ful in NYC. But now, there are more. Al­though times have changed, I still think it's eas­i­er out­side of NYC...It's a re­al­ly ex­pen­sive mar­ket to get in­to. I don't think I could have been as suc­cess­ful had I stayed in New York–my ca­reer re­al­ly blos­somed when I left. I had some me­dia suc­cess and op­por­tu­ni­ties in Boston, but it was re­al­ly when I moved to the Bay Area that I found my lane.

In NYC, I was on the Food Net­work and no one re­al­ly cared...I wasn't able to get any in­vestor's at­ten­tion...Again, those were the ear­ly days. But in the Bay, I was a big fish in a small­er pond, and there's a his­to­ry of pi­o­neer­ing and en­tre­pre­neur­ship out here...Think Al­ice Wa­ters and Cal­i­for­nia cui­sine, where­as in NYC, there's in­no­va­tion, but there's a lot of im­port­ing of cuisines from oth­er places. Al­ice (and her con­tem­po­raries) cre­at­ed some­thing.

I know there are great pi­o­neers and en­tre­pre­neurs in NYC like Dan­ny Mey­er and Drew Nieporent, both of whom I great­ly ad­mired, but it's dif­fer­ent out here.

4 Be­ing un­der­cap­i­talised.

This was an un­for­tu­nate mis­take, but we made it through. Not hav­ing sys­tems in place–you can nev­er an­tic­i­pate (every­thing that could go wrong).

5 Get­ting bogged down by the un­ex­pect­ed.

It's not even a ques­tion of mak­ing mis­takes...You just don't know. You can ask as many peo­ple as you want, but not every duck will be lined up. You have to look at mis­takes as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn. (foodand­wine.com)

�2 Fol­low Food&Wine on Twit­ter: @foodand­wine

and Tanya Hol­land @tanya­hol­land