"... a smaller room tucked behind the main one.... Adjacent to their main kitchen — an open-concept space with fumed oak cabinets, a Viking stove and Calacatta countertops — they built a smaller one with a set of cabinets, a sink, an induction stove, an oven, an ice-maker and a convection microwave. The back kitchen, in essence a pantry on overdrive, has become increasingly popular in recent years, according to architects, designers and homebuilders.... As the open-concept kitchen evolved into an extension of the living room... the pantry has been given an increasingly bigger role.... 'Once you start expanding and adding the dishwasher, then it’s like, "Well, what if I put a baking center back there?"... And then I can bring my beautiful warm cookies out of the oven into my serving kitchen'..."
From
"‘A Kitchen for the Kitchen’/The back kitchen, in essence a pantry on overdrive, has become increasingly popular in recent years, according to architects, designers and homebuilders" (NYT).
Other names for the "back kitchen" are: the messy kitchen, the prep kitchen, the working kitchen, the scullery kitchen, and the dirty kitchen. And if you feel dirty lusting after the amenities of the rich, I'm sure there are many other articles in the NYT today designed to elicit more glamorous emotions, such as empathy for the poor. Please withdraw into the back room of your soul until you are adequately cleansed, then emerge into the spotless main kitchen of your life and smile for the people who envy you.
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I hate open floor plans. After I sold my house in Omaha I watched in horror as the new buyer ripped out the wall between the kitchen and the dining room, along with the antique oak swinging door that separated them before. One good reason for a non-open floor plan is that everyone can watch whatever they want on TV without disturbing anyone else. So now "open kitchens" are actually fake kitchens?
I prefer “the scullery.” Good word.
Hannibal Lector had a back kitchen.
It's just another kitchen. Some wealthy people like to make their lives ultra-posh. I'd suggest they give more to reputable charities..
People won't be so enamored with "open concept" home features when the government coerces or forces homeowners to quarter refugees or homeless. Open concept assumes all occupants are communally doing the same thing, like entertaining - not even true for families.
Depending upon how much you entertain, a second kitchen can be very useful.
It is certainly a luxury, but I've been to catered events at the homes of friends in 'normal' houses and it can be distracting to have all the prep and cooking going on while people are trying to mingle and schmooze.
In very large houses it's not an issue.
First world problems...
My grandmothers' kitchens both had seating -- a permanent table and four chairs -- where less-formal family meals (breakfast and lunch for four or fewer) were eaten. And a cup of coffee with friends. The dining room was for dinner and guests.
As for a place to work, compact and well-designed is preferable to Grand -- as long as it is big enough for a chat while working.
A "baking center" for cookies? Get real.
When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich, preparing them in their own back kitchen and bringing warm, beautiful cuts of meat out of the oven and into the open-concept, serving kitchen.
Other names for the "back kitchen" are: the messy kitchen, the prep kitchen, the working kitchen, the scullery kitchen
Or, the ever popular: Maid's Kitchen
Open floor plans are a one-time savings over a few hundred square feet of construction expense, at the permanent homeowner cost of having a kitchen in your living room.
I've been to culinary school, and the first thing you learn is how to "work clean". Even in the middle of making a major meal, my kitchen is presentable. But I refuse to live in a house with an "open concept" floor plan. My kitchen belongs behind a wall. It's big enough to have a few people in it with me and a small table and a couple of chairs, but if you get invited to dine at my house, your view will not be of my refrigerator. A simple wall and if you're super messy, a door are all you need.
Ann appears to be getting tired of the NYT snootiness. With their readership being condensed to the upper east and west sides and Wall Street it's the only direction they can go. As we all have known forever NYT is the newspaper for the elite.
It seems like a kind of fantasy. The show kitchen is where slender, affluent women gather to drink wine, while the real kitchen is where the woman of the house prepared the hors d’oeuvres earlier in the day.
Is it so different from having a dining room used for Thanksgiving and more formal dinners, while the family routinely eats in the kitchen? Or a family room with a big TV and comfortable seating, while the parlor is reserved for, I don't know what, perhaps visits from the vicar.
At this point, perhaps it would makes sense to have a one floor dedicated to entertaining with an Italian kitchen, elegant dining room and an impractical living room. Probably add a tryst room with a rotating hot tub and big bed with dozens of pillows. Have another floor where the family actually lives.
My younger brother builds large homes. 100% have large rec rooms with the usual counter tops, cabinets, frig, microwave and sinks. The homes built for 90% of Italians have that, plus a full kitchen somewhere in the basement. It's where the men cook for their friends.
I moved around a lot as a kid and most of our houses had a family room and a living room. The family room was where we lived and the living room was where we would receive the queen, should she ever do a pop in. Now I have a house with an open living/dining kitchen and a ‘back kitchen’. It’s a butler’s pantry really- storage for food, cookware used occasionally, a small appliance ranch on the countertop. The kitchen is where stuff gets done, and it’s useful but uncluttered…
Wake me when the stories of the golf simulator rooms start showing up…
Everything is open concept now, even the remuddled older houses.
Just what I want to live alone in, in my old age, a cold cavernous recreation of a hipster brewery or cattleman's steakhouse.
Die HGTV!
The homes built for 90% of Italians have that, plus a full kitchen somewhere in the basement. It's where the men cook for their friends.
Very true. Traditional set-up was a first floor kitchen where the immediate dinner was prepared, plus a basement kitchen for long-term cooking like spaghetti sauce (er, gravy) and the like were made.
‘The back kitchen, in essence a pantry on overdrive, has become increasingly popular in recent years…’
I’ll alert my kitchen staff.
Why have the front kitchen at all?
My kitchen has doors to close it off from the rest of the house.
My family is Italian, we had a second kitchen in the basement. Perfectly normal.
It really is the maid's kitchen. People in the NYT have to pretend they're inventing new concepts that aren't just recycled rich people things We have friends that bought an older house with one. She tore it out and made a bigger kitchen.
Some people have those blindingly white teeth. Maybe they have another set in there to handle the messy chewing.
Somewhere to keep the second refrigerator.
What was old is new again.
Here in flyover county the real poor had summer kitchens. Back in the wood stove days. Cooking had to be done, but not to turn the h
Whole house into a sauna.
So a summer kitchen evolved. Farms had lots of kids, plus a hired man or two. 3 to 5 meals a day. Lots of heat generated.
Hey... you got $8K+ for a Viking, these questions concern you.
My back kitchen is a Weber.
The real New York City status symbol is a kitchen that has never once been used.
I finally built a pantry. Wanted one all my life. It is a joy.
I bought my husband a Boos Block as a graduation present from law school because he chef-ed his way through graduate and law school.
That is a great joy too.
I like the open plan; bringing the kitchen into the social space of the house, which makes a lot of sense considering how much time the cook has to spend there. But this is dumb. These people have a real kitchen where they cook and a show kitchen for...why? What's the show kitchen for?
Earnest Prole said...The real New York City status symbol is a kitchen that has never once been used.
Pfft! Nearly every 20-something has one of those.
In my husband's grandmother's day it was the slave kitchen which was in a separate building out back or more politely the servant's kitchen. The indoor kitchen was for tea, small sandwiches and cookies. Out back is where you or more likely your minion might pluck and roast a chicken.
What I would love is a rough-and-tumble kitchen. Something in a back shed for frying anything messy, for baking on hot days, for boiling or simmering big pots of corn or crabs, for roasting the holiday turkey so that the oven can be used for the other four or five things I want to bake for a full holiday meal.
I enjoy our open concept kitchen because I can talk with my husband or guests in the family room or dining area while preparing a meal. A serving bar hides most of the mess, although I would like a different spot to put the dishes I have cleaned as I'm going. It seems like having a back kitchen isolates the cook, which defeats the point of an open kitchen.
We have a huge pantry that includes a chest freezer, and it is a joy. Our kitchen is big too - a center island 4' x 8' and plenty of room for people to walk around it. It's open-plan to the family room. The kitchen is the heart of the house, and having a big kitchen makes it easy to cook for people, the big island makes it easy to serve up the food with people just walking around it, loading their plates buffet style. Then we can either head to the big porch or the dining room to chow down. A second kitchen? Re-purposing the pantry? Phonies. Real people use their pantry for the goods and their kitchen for the victuals. If you want atmosphere, go to a restaurant.
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