Great Kitchens

by: Wendy A. Jordan Ellen Whitaker Colleen Mahoney

Topics include: cleanup sink, prep sink, trough sink, cooking options, cleanup area, pot rack, two ovens, kitchen features, six burners, polished concrete

CLICK HERE for more information and price

At home with America's top chefs: If the kitchen is your favorite room, if cooking is your favorite pastime, or if eating well is your most unregrettable vice, let Great Kitchens take you to paradise. From the home kitchen of Chez Panisse's Alice Waters to The Inn at Little Washington's Patrick O'Connell, each chef's kitchen is a unique jewel of culinary understanding and design. The 26 chefs in this book share the secrets that make a kitchen a great place to cook, to relax, and to enjoy the best of food and company. The 300 color photographs in Great Kitchens map out an intimate tour of the home kitchens of America's top restaurant chefs. Inside you'll see a remarkable range of styles, each expressed in the cabinets, fixtures, appliances, counters, storage, and finishes of these mouth-watering kitchens. Look inside, meet the chefs, hear their stories, and learn the secrets of first-rate kitchen design -- and be sure to check out the favorite home recipes from each of these 26 world-class chefs in the back of the book. "This is a warm and wonderful opportunity to move behind all the public relations and commercial glitz and explore the places where some truly real people do their very personal, creative cooking. A truly wonderful idea that makes celebrity a celebration." -- Graham Kerr, International Culinary Consultant "Great Kitchens offers an inside look into the home kitchens of some of the most successful chefs in America. Whether at work or at home, today's great chefs know that the kitchen is a nurturing place -- one that should be as inspiring and inviting as it is efficiently designed." -- Ferdinand E. Metz, President, The Culinary Institute of America "Great Kitchens is a must for anyone setting out to redo a kitchen or even for those who just want to sit back and gawk enviously. With beautiful photography, floor plans, and explanations, it shows you the best possible kitchens and introduces you to the chefs who own them." -- James Peterson, author of Essentials of Cooking and Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making

TOC: Introduction 1 Ken Hom Imperial City: LONDON 2 Anthony Ambrose Ambrosia on Huntington: BOSTON 3 Nora Pouillon Restaurant Nora * Asia Nora: WASHINGTON, D.C. 4 Mark Miller Coyote Café: SANTA FE AND LAS VEGAS Red Sage: WASHINGTON, D.C. 5 Patrick O'Connell The Inn at Little Washington: WASHINGTON, VIRGINIA 6 Hubert Keller Fleur de Lys: SAN FRANCISCO 7 Mary Sue Milliken Border Grill: SANTA MONICA Ciudad: LOS ANGELES 8 Charles Dale Renaissance: ASPEN 9 Rick Bayless Frontera Grill * Topolobampo: CHICAGO 10 Alice Waters Chez Panisse * Café Fanny: BERKELEY 11 Georges Perrier Le Bec-Fin * Brasserie Perrier: PHILADELPHIA 12 Jean-Pierre Moullé Chez Panisse: BERKELEY 13 Anne Quatrano and Clifford Harrison Bacchanalia * Floataway Café: ATLANTA 14 Michael McCarty Michael's: SANTA MONICA AND NEW YORK 15 Frank McClelland L'Espalier: BOSTON 16 Tom Douglas Dahlia Lounge * Etta's Seafood: SEATTLE 17 Terrance Brennan Picholine: NEW YORK 18 Nancy Oakes and Bruce Aidells Boulevard * Aidells' Sausage Co.: SAN FRANCISCO 19 Cecilia Chiang Betelnut: SAN FRANCISCO 20 Robert Del Grande Café Annie * Café Express: HOUSTON 21 Paul Bertolli Oliveto: OAKLAND 22 Lidia Matticchio Bastianich Felidia: NEW YORK Lidia's: KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI 23 Joachim Splichal Patina: LOS ANGELES Pinot Restaurants: CALIFORNIA 24 Lydia Shire Biba * Pignoli: BOSTON 25 Mark Peel and Nancy Silverton Campanile * LaBrea Bakery: LOS ANGELES 26 John Folse Lafitte's Landing: DONALDSONVILLE, LOUISIANA 27 Favorite Home Recipes Sources

Have you ever wondered what the home kitchens of great chefs look like or how they are organized and laid out? Have you ever thought about which kitchen equipment the chefs consider essential, and what these culinary trendsetters like to cook when they're not at work? Great Kitchens is the result of an inspiring year spent visiting with some of the nation's greatest chefs in their own homes to answer these and other questions. Each chef in the book has an expert, yet individual, approach to fine cooking. We suspected that each would offer different insights into how to design the perfect kitchen, and that's what we discovered. The home kitchens of the 26 chefs in this book run the gamut from a high-tech city townhouse kitchen to a colorful room filled with whimsical art pieces and a lipstick-red stove to a mellow space with a cook-in fireplace in an ancient limestone farmhouse. These kitchens are alike only in the richness of knowledge, experience, good sense, and enthusiasm put into their creation. Some of these kitchens are the result of new home construction; many are full-blown remodels; others show how to update and improve a kitchen with only minor construction or a few pieces of new equipment. All have features that can be incorporated into your own kitchen. We have also included a detailed Sources section to help you identify products that catch your eye. A few trends emerged from the design diversity and wealth of ideas presented in the chefs' kitchens. Most of them favor a combined kitchen and dining area that works for family life as well as for entertaining. They opt for higher-than-traditional counters, larger and deeper than usual sinks, generous counter space, a kitchen layout that enhances economy of movement and as much built-in flexibility as possible -- components, in other words, that make the kitchen comfortable and easy to use. They use quality cutlery and cookware and have top-of-the-line appliances, investing in equipment that will endure and perform to their high standards. But just as there were points of agreement, there were choices in which individual personality and lifestyle prevailed. Interestingly, our chefs were about equally split on the issue of cabinets vs. open storage. Members of each camp put forth convincing arguments for the systems they favor. You'll have the opportunity to consider all sides of this important kitchen organization issue and arrive at your own unique solutions. All 26 kitchens in this book are dazzling spaces designed to meet the needs of people who love to cook. Yet they also are highly personalized, individualistic spaces. These are not restaurant kitchens, designed and staffed to prepare hundreds of meals each week for the general public; they are kitchens meant for homes, family, and friends. These are kitchens where great chefs take off their white coats and relax; where they scramble eggs for breakfast or roast a chicken for the most fortunate of dinner guests. They are also kitchens where the kids roll out sugar cookies, where friends sip a glass of wine with their cheese, where people cook holiday dinners together, and where families gather at the end of the day. To give you a true taste of their personal cooking styles, the chefs contributed favorite at-home recipes to Great Kitchens. You'll find this sampling of great recipes in the back of the book. In Great Kitchens we share with you what we learned about the best kitchens. We hope you will see parallels to your own lives and homes, and that you will gather up many valuable design ideas to use sometime soon in your own kitchen.

Reviews:

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. Most over-the-top built-in appliance? Terrance Brennan's bread-warming drawer. But in this book, it makes perfect sense. --Schuyler Ingle

From Publishers Weekly Foodies will enjoy a voyeuristic thrill seeing, in this cookbook/home design hybrid, the kitchen of Cecilia Chang (founder of San Francisco's Mandarin restaurant as well as others) with its built-in wok, or the cooking oasis of Lidia Bastianich (Felidia, Becco and Frico Bar in New York City) with its etched-glass d?cor. The authors (food -aficionado Whitaker; architect Mahoney; and Jordan, editor of Professional Remodeler magazine) highlight 26 kitchens and include discussions with their owners on what they love about their homes and about cooking in general. The chef profiles tend to be predictable (it's no surprise, for example, that Alice Waters has a commitment to organic farming); the most interesting parts focus on what the chefs did to their kitchens and how they did itAand often what they wish they had done differently. When Anne Quatrano and Clifford Harrison (of Bacchanalia in Atlanta) moved from a tiny apartment in Manhattan to Atlanta, Ga., they reveled in the additional space and designed a 24-by-24-foot kitchen with a 22-foot ceiling, but they still regret not adding a second sink. On the other hand, the chefs' recipes, such as Crispy Vegetable Stir-Fry from Ken Hom and Smoked Chile Salsa from Mary Sue Milliken, feel tacked onAtheir contributors certainly expended more energy on their envy-inducing kitchens than on these recipes. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal Who would better know what should be in a great kitchen than a professional chef? Here are the home kitchens of 26 of the country's best-known cooks, including Alice Waters. Many of these could be best described as "kitchens on steroids" because of the predominance of restaurant equipment and other impressive quality supplies. For each, there are photos, floor plans, and the individual chef's ideas about kitchen design. A section listing the chefs' favorite home recipes rounds out this fascinating title. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to the Hardcover edition. From Booklist Having struggled all day and evening to satisfy the appetites of their paying customers, chefs retreat to their homes, only to retreat to their private kitchens and start cooking once again. Even at home they demand the best appliances and the most efficient working space, so they continue to seek out the best stoves, refrigerators, and countertops. This volume illustrates the kitchens of the country's top restaurant chefs, ranging from city kitchens to rambling farmhouses and majestic seaside mansions. Virtually all these kitchens are designed to double as classroom spaces, enough room for students to gather and learn from the master. Most unexpected are the kitchens designed to cook primarily Chinese foods, their built-in woks with giant burners the only way to reproduce restaurant quality in the home. A helpful inventory of resources concludes the book. Mark Knoblauch--This text refers to the Hardcover edition. Graham Kerr, International Culinary Consultant and host of PBS's Graham Kerr's Kitchen This is a warm and wonderful opportunity to move behind all the public relations and commercial glitz and explore the places where some truly real people do their very personal, creative cooking. A truly wonderful idea that makes celebrity a celebration. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. Ferdinand E. Metz, President, The Culinary Institute of America GREAT KITCHENS offers an inside look into the home kitchens of some of the most successful chefs in America. Whether at work or at home, today's great chefs kn ow that the kitchen is a nurturing place ? one that should be as inspiring and inviting as it is efficiently designed. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. James Peterson, Award-winning cookbook author, including Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making, Splendid Soups, Fish & Shellfish, and the forthcoming Essentials of Cooking GREAT KITCHENS is a must for anyone setting out to re-do a kitchen or even for those who just want to sit back and gawk enviously. With beautiful photography, floor plans, and explanations, it shows you the best possible kitchens and introduces you to the chefs who own them. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. From the inside flap If the kitchen is your favorite room, if cooking is your favorite pastime, or if eating well is your most unregrettable vice, let Great Kitchens take you to paradise. From the home kitchen of Chez Panisse's Alice Waters to The Inn at Little Washington's Patrick O'Connell, each chef's kitchen is a unique jewel of culinary understanding and design. The 26 chefs in this book share the secrets that make a kitchen a great place to cook, to relax, and to enjoy the best of food and company. The 300 color photographs in Great Kitchens map out an intimate tour of the home kitchens of America's top restaurant chefs. Inside you'll see a remarkable range of styles, each expressed in the cabinets, fixtures, appliances, counters, storage, and finishes of these mouth-watering kitchens. Look inside, meet the chefs, hear their stories, and learn the secrets of first-rate kitchen design--and be sure to check out the favorite home recipes from each of these 26 world-class chefs in the back of the book.

I'm swimming upstream on this one -- To be perfectly honest with you, I was a little disappointed in the book. I expected to see kitchens that I could only dream of. Instead I saw utilitarian efforts by America's top chefs. Imagine looking into Mario Andretti's personal garage. Would it look like a dream shop, or more like a GM assembly plant? One kitchen in this book had tall, bare cinderblock walls, that were not even finished, right in the center of the kitchen. How do you prevent dust from accumulating in bare cinderblock, and inadvertently arriving in some of the food? Their were some kitchens that were nicer than that, but nothing that inspired me. Personally, I am interested in a kitchen that is as beautiful as it is practical. I found, the book, Kitchen's That Work, A Practical Guide to Creating a Great Kitchen, a much more informative, and inspiring book, no matter what your budget. If you want to throw your pinky in the air, and poo paa your neighbors, then leave Great Kitchens on your coffee table. Their is plenty of names to drop in there. But if you want to create a great-dream kitchen, then get Kitchen's that Work. From soup to nuts, that is the book to have for the practical to the particular. In all fairness, I am not sorry I bought Great Kitchens, as I am sure I can glean information from it. If you would like to hear about some of the considerations the top chefs like to see in their kitchens, then by all means buy the book. I guess I was expecting something awe inspiring, and that is not what this book is. I gave it four stars, because I never met a man, I couldn't learn something from.

A great "Go By" book on Kitchens, but watch for pot holes! Ken Hom's kitchen fascinated me. The 90 second Hobart sanitizing machine is De Rigueuer but you still have to wash all your dishes before you put them in the Hobart. Secondly, study his work triangles and read the text. There were sink plumbing restrictions during remodeling and design focus on teaching. Su cuccina, mi cuccina? Maybe not but a great collection of design ideas, just look closely. See waht ideas would work for you and why. Some of these kitchens (John Folse)were designed for TV Production with ample room to move cameras around. These chefs will tell you some of the mistakes they made and give you the reasons why they designed their kitchens the way they did. A great read and a great drool! Kitchen Kudos to you Miss Ellen Whitaker, et al!

Excellent Kitchen Planning Book -- This is hands-down the best kitchen planning and design book I have seen. I learned so many things from it about picking materials, lighting, fixtures, sinks, layouts, etc. that my remodeled kitchen will be better because of it. I paged through endless books and magazines filled with lovely photos, but that lacked information or substance. This book stands out because it discusses pros and cons, budget tradeoffs made, the good decisions and "if-I-had-it-to-do-over-again" mistakes. These are kitchens put together by demanding professionals who won't tolerate (bad)or lightweight materials that are hard to clean. I learned many lessons about flooring, countertops, backsplashes and so on that were never touched upon by other books. Sure there are appliances to drool over, but there are also chefs who ran out of money during the remodel, or bought factory seconds tile to save money. Real-life issues and lessons.

Absolutely the best book ever for planning a kitchen -- I bought this book thinking that it would be just a sort of celebrity tour of the home kitchens of some well-known chefs, a great idea in itself, but more style than substance. Boy was I wrong. There's more meat to this book than in Julia Child's beef bourguignon. My wife and I have been planning to completely overhaul our kitchen for years now, and we've gone through dozens of kitchen books without finding much really useful design information. Well here it is. On our first sitting with Great Kitchens, we identified at least five great kitchen design ideas we will definitely incorporate into our new kitchen. I'm sure there are more, but I just can't seem to get the book out of my wife's hands.