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Great
Kitchens : At Home With America's Top Chefs
by Ellen Whitaker, et al. Hardcover (October 1999)
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If
envy is an issue with which you struggle daily,
you may want to avoid Great Kitchens, a lavishly
illustrated walk-through of 26 fabulous kitchens
in the homes of some of America's best chefs. This
is a Taunton Press publication--the same people
who bring us Fine Woodworking, Fine Homebuilding,
and Wooden Boat, among others--so rest assured the
production values are high enough to raise the stakes
for everyone else in the business.
The one thing all of these kitchens have in common
is that they didn't start out this way. There are
kitchens put into Victorian houses, 1920s farm houses,
swim schools (no kidding: Mary Sue Milliken of Border
Grill in Los Angeles, and her architect husband,
Josh Schweitzer, bought a small swim school and
put home and kitchen where locker rooms and showers
could once be found), old bars, upscale apartments,
ancient stone houses. These are kitchens, then,
that have been thought about by people who work
with food, and know what they want at home.
Built-in wood-burning ovens and hearths seem to
be a big deal. So, too, are custom wok stoves. Seattle
chef Tom Douglas put his enormous prep island on
industrial casters. He also put his herbs and spices
into cans that attach to bar magnets on what would
be wasted wall space. He chose the domestic version
of an industrial stove because it is better insulated
and doesn't heat up the kitchen. And like several
chefs in the book, he swears by his commercial Hobart
dishwasher with its 90-second cycle.
Great Kitchens is a multifunction book. You can
leave it open on a coffee table as a piece of publishing
art. You can use it to launch your daydreams. But
most of all, you can use it to learn from the mistakes
and successes of others, and gain insight from a
lot of very practical information. |
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877-963-2050