I, Ain't Gonna Cook in Drake's Kitchen

I can count on one hand the kitchens I have loved to cook in. There’s Lydia and Ben’s upstate New York place.: It has everything you need, the place is beautifully compact and spacious at the same time, and the natural light is amazing. My close college friend Ben, out in Placerville, California has an old outbuilding called the farmhouse, originally set aside for seasonal pear-pickers. Also very compact, this kitchen has a massive 70-year-old cast iron 6-burner stove and oven. The thing must weigh several tons and is a sheer delight, once you overcome the absolute terror of lighting the pilot light for fear of setting off a massive grease fire. And, of course, I love my tiny soul food kitchen in Tel Aviv. How I manage to walk 10,000 steps in that kitchen every day before lunch is a sheer mystery: 2 steps in any direction and I ‘m where I need to be.

It’s very rare to be in a kitchen set up for someone who really cooks. To the outside observer, such working kitchens aren’t sexy. They don’t approximate the eye-candy images promulgated in rags like Architectural Digest. But to me, the beauty of a working kitchen lies in its thoughtfulness, the careful understanding and visualization a priori of how meals are prepared, step by step. And, of course there is the careful effort to design with zero waste of motion. Finally, there’s the mindfulness of how the cook integrates activities with the surroundings. For instance, I don’t like cooking with my back to my guests, and so I prefer to have my primary work surfaces looking out to the folks I’m cooking for.

Thoughtfulness, Efficiency, Lack of Waste, Mindfulness, Natural Beauty: When I begin to think about these values a bit more deeply, they remind me of how much affinity a well-wrought kitchen has with fundamental principles of nature. I’m thinking back to Ian McHarg’s ground-breaking book Design With Nature (1995) or the perhaps even more profound studies of Biomimicry by Janine Benyus and her colleagues. I can imagine the stupefaction of an architect being instructed to design a kitchen “like a nautilus shell.” But that, to me anyway, is the goal. To enable the inherent essence of something seemingly as mundane as cooking shape its design.

But what the fuck do I know about this shit? I simply enjoy being at home in my kitchen. Apparently, I have too much time on my hands today and have found myself just babbling on. Blah, blah, blah.