It is small: seven feet by seven feet. It's taller than it is wide.
Ridiculously tiny if it were in a house, but not unusual for a City apartment. We've made several meals in it, and it functions beautifully.
It's kind of nice that you don't have to walk back and forth: everything's within arm's reach. It's even romantic for two people bumping around together. But it's not so good for two if you are holding a knife or try to open the fridge door.
There is no room for staples that don't go in the fridge (like canned goods, rice, etc.). They have to go in a cupboard in the hall. There's only room for the food for the meal at hand, but that's fine. You lay out what you're going to use before you start.
Because of its size, it has, alas, no dishwasher or wall oven. There is only two of us, and I tend to wash as I go, so a dishwasher would only make a difference when we have company. But the wall oven... Once you've had one, you are spoiled for life. But what was I to do? Put the fridge in the hall?
By choice, it has open shelves so that almost everything you need for cooking is at hand, in full view. The upper shelves are only 5 1/2 feet high so they are within easy reach.
I expect to have to wash everything periodically because of the lack of cabinets. So the jury is out -- if we don't like the open shelves, we will install cabinets later.
It looks cluttered in the pictures. This is no House Beautiful kitchen. But somehow it doesn't look cluttered when you are standing in front of the stove. I think maybe we are conditioned to seeing magazine photos of sterile kitchens without so much as a bulb of garlic on the counter, so photos of any real-life kitchen look like a mess.
To me, it feels like the galley in a submarine. A compact kitchen designed not by an architect, a decorator, or a cook, but by an engineer: a cooking machine.
When you look in from the hall you see the gas stove. It's only 24" wide, yet it has a triple-ring burner for a wok or a pot of spaghetti water. I've had three 10 1/2" pots going at the same time with one burner left over. It has a broiler built into the top of the oven.
That's a stainless-steel backsplash reflecting the camera's flash. And above that is an almost silent range hood hung from the upper shelf. Above the shelf is a recirculating chimney for the range hood made out of duct.
The range hood, in addition to taking grease out of the air, has lights for the stove. We are thinking about adding lights under the shelves on one or both sides of the stove.
The sink is to the left of the stove.
That's the garbage pail underneath the counter.
The pot lids are loose on the open shelf next to the garbage pail. Hardly elegant, but I can get the right lid with some clanging but little fuss. I'm not sure I like that but I haven't found a better place for the lids yet.
The floor is vinyl composition tile (just like Walley World).
The fridge is to the right of the stove. It has an underhung freezer
It's an apartment-sized fridge, only 23" wide. Don't try this at home with a family of four.
But it's fine for two: it's axiomatic that there is no room for leftovers in the fridge, but you can make them fit if you work at it.
The view from inside the kitchen shows the drainboard to the left of the sink.
The sink bowl is a generous 19 1/2" wide. Fits the wok.
The shelves hold glasses and some cups. Underneath the drainboard are drawers holding silverware, ladles, baggies, towels, etc..
There, behind the sink, that big blank wall, is where a pass-thru is supposed to go. The next picture shows what it might look like.
This is a Photoshop fantasy of the planned pass-through to the dining room. It will look out to the living room and its window. You should be able to see the Manhattan skyline from the kitchen.
The real pass-through is planned for the Spring. I didn't do it now because I wanted to minimize the amount of time that we had no kitchen (It took three weeks as it was).
The countertop between the sink and the stove is the main work area for cleaning, trimming, chopping, mixing, and generally preparing ingredients for cooking.
You can see the cutting boards and our trusty Waring blendor. I enjoy the hands-on part of cooking like slicing, grating, and chopping, so I opted for counter space over a food processor.
The large cutting board can slide back and forth over the sink/drainboard and, when needed, provides additional counter workspace. The cutting board, when placed half over the drainboard, lets you sweep trimmings into the sink or sweep chopped things into a bowl placed in the sink. Nice.
Above the bottles on the countertop is a spice rack. The shelves above hold dishes and bowls, some graters, a large mortise and pestle, and a spaghetti drainer.
The countertop between the stove and the fridge can be used as additional space for assembling or staging the ingredients to be used for the meal. This is where you put stuff when you take it out of the fridge.
It has the microwave, toaster-oven, and our Indian spice grinding stone called a "Sil-batta."
The sil-batta does grind spices better than anything you could imagine, but sometimes it gets in the way. It only gets used a couple of times a week. (Used it last night to grind pan-roasted cumin seeds for chili-con-carne.) But in a way it doesn't really take up space because it is flat and you can just put anything down on top of it like it wasn't there. Including a hot pan. I think it's a keeper.
A second spice rack is above the microwave. The shelves hold plates, bowls, cups, and tea and teapots.
Further right, the countertop next to the fridge holds the coffee-making equipment.
The shelves hold coffee and bowls. There wasn't room for the electric kettle on the countertop, so it's up on the shelf, pugged-in and ready to go.
The top of the fridge holds breakfast cereal and some bottles.
Here, next to the fridge, is where a wall oven might have gone. It would have eliminated the need for a toaster oven, but I would than have wanted to have a regular toaster. The wall oven would also have obliterated the countertop almost over to the corner of the stove. Imagine! This reduction in counterspace would have, in my opinion, made the kitchen really less functional; ergo, no wall oven. But if the kitchen were two feet longer, the wall oven would have been mine. The wall oven might then go to the right of the fridge. And maybe opposite the wall oven would have been room for some sort of cupboard. But the kitchen is just fine the way it is, thank you.
And lastly, underneath the countertop are open Metro shelves holding pots and pans.
The bottom shelf holds some more pots and containers for putting leftovers in the fridge.
The top shelf holds a pull-out wooden box with knives.
So that's the new kitchen in our Manhattan apartment. It's DIY, mostly from IKEA, Home Depot, and P.C. Richard.
After I wrote all that, I came across the following New York Times article in praise of small kitchens.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/weekinreview/14bittman.html?ref=weekinreview
The article has a hyperlink to the following New York Times article which has a must-see photo of the author's (and he is a cooking author) kitchen.
http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/anatomy-of-a-minimalist-column/
Questions? Comments? Links to other small kitchens?
bobbyedelman@hotmail.com
BTW, here is a wonderful photo of a real submarine galley from the Naviquan website: http://www.naviquan.com/page/baltimore/2
And another, from Bryan MacKinnon's website: http://www.mackinnon.org/gato-diagram.html
And one last one, from the San Franciso Maritime National Park Association's website http://www.maritime.org/tour/cm.php
