THE APPRAISAL
Even for Chefs, Home Kitchen Can Be Tight Fit
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Jehangir Mehta, the owner of two restaurants and a contestant on “Iron Chef,” in his home kitchen in Murray Hill.
By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY
Published: January 10, 2011
While some New Yorkers eat out or order in so often that they have been known to use kitchen cabinets as shoe storage, real estate brokers continue to talk up the merits of apartments that feature “chef’s kitchens.” The term conjures up visions of professionals using acres of counter space and island stoves to perfect their braising and baking — like Julia Child’s kitchen memorialized in the Smithsonian.
Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times
The chef Anita Lo in her kitchen at her apartment on Charles Street. Her weekend house has a chef’s kitchen.
But just as New York’s finest art is found on the walls of the city’s bankers and not on the walls of its celebrated artists, most apartments with chef’s kitchens are not owned or rented by real chefs. In fact, most chefs, like most other New Yorkers, struggle to stretch every cranny of kitchen space.
Jehangir Mehta works from an 8-by-8-foot kitchen in Murray Hill that he and his wife renovated three years ago. While he loves his $5,000 Jade stove and his Bosch dishwasher, Mr. Mehta, the owner of Graffiti in the East Village and Mehtaphor in TriBeCa and a contestant on the television program “Iron Chef,” does not have room to do much but stand and turn around. His twins, Xaera and Xerxes, who turn 2 in February, often sit on the counters as he works. Most chefs he knows have modest kitchens.
“A lot of them who are here are living in a regular-size apartment,” Mr. Mehta said, “and you just have to make do with what you have.”
Anita Lo, the owner and chef at the West Village restaurant Annisa and a former contestant on the show “Top Chef Masters,” has a chef’s kitchen at her weekend house on Long Island. But on weekdays she lives in a walk-up on Charles Street. The dimly lighted kitchen has the counter space of two subway seats, and an outdated stove used to store pans. Her refrigerator, she said, is part Manhattan bachelor pad with “booze, water, condiments,” and part nutty professor with cheese cultures and “goose fat from 1980-something.”
Jo-Ann Makovitzky and her husband, Marco Moreira, are both chefs and owners of Tocqueville and 15 East in Union Square. Before they had their daughter, they so rarely used the 6-by-10-foot galley kitchen in their Upper West Side rental that Con Edison suggested they turn their stove’s gas off.
Just before the birth of their daughter, Francesca, they renovated their kitchen with a four-burner gas stove. Now their kitchen is large enough to entertain guests and for husband and wife to each have a cutting area.
But Ms. Makovitzky, who also caters dinner parties for wealthy clients, stressed that it still had its limits. She stores her beloved copper pots in the oven and has little space to bake. There is not enough room to roll out dough or to use her KitchenAid mixer. “It’s surely not like the kitchens when we go into my clients’ homes,” she said.
Literary License
A listing for a triplex town house at 323A East 50th Street ($2.295 million) begins with a tribute to Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Earth laughs in flowers.” It goes on: “Jolly jonquils could have you tiptoeing over the potted tulips which you personally planted.” In this home, buyers can “read the paper, sip some wine over dinner al fresco or simply lollygag after a long day on one outdoor level, while you muse on and mull over your planting schemes for your other outdoor level.”
One Can Dream
A full-floor penthouse once rented by Donny Deutsch at 502 Park Avenue, with five bedrooms, eight bathrooms (two in the master bedroom), a study and four terraces, can be yours for $25 million.
And That’s Not All
A $19 million maisonette at 998 Fifth Avenue, across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has not only wood-paneled walls and a climate control system for every room, but also a separate cooling room, “which you can use for your furs and your wine,” said Cornelia Eland, a Stribling broker.
No Ikea Here
A four-bedroom condo at 33 Vestry Street ($14.95 million) will give Google a workout with its “Basaltina stone tiles and Mafi wide plank wood flooring,” the “open-plan kitchen by Bulthaup B-3,” the master bathroom’s “Novelda limestone flooring with Gris de Sienna and Novelda crème micro line chiseled wall” and fireplaces with “Pompeii stone hearths.”
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