On the main floor of their 23,000-square-foot Los Angeles house, Irene Kassorla and Norman Friedmann have a Titanic-sized kitchen with granite countertops, convection ovens, a wine refrigerator and a six-burner Wolf range.
But that’s not enough. Their second-floor bedroom suite includes a refrigerator, sink and a two-burner cooktop, while the pool house, guest house and tennis-court “pub” are outfitted with their own kitchens, too.
Not that Dr. Kassorla, a psychologist and author, or her husband, an investor, spend much time creating decadent meals.
“I’m not a great cook,” she says.
Yet, like others who live in vast houses, the couple (whose home, completed in 1990, is on the market for $20 million) have found that a single kitchen can seem pitifully inadequate.
“When the property is so big, you can’t be running to the kitchen all the time,” says Dr. Kassorla. “You’d be killing yourself.”
Hence, the latest innovation for property owners who take entertaining, or just eating, seriously: The second (or third, or fourth) kitchen.
For a growing number of wealthy pragmatists, having an extra kitchen where food can actually be prepared has a powerful appeal. Of course, the convenience doesn’t come cheaply: At minimum, a fully equipped second kitchen will add $10,000 to the cost of a new home; for a restaurant-style kitchen, the price tag can run into six figures.
But even the merely affluent are indulging in satellite “mini-kitchens,” an increasingly popular option in luxury production homes.
Jessica Fabricant, a spokeswoman for high-end residential builder Taylor Woodrow Homes Inc., Laguna Hills, Calif., says 10 to 15 percent of the company’s clients spend an extra $5,000 to $7,000 for a kitchen outpost that includes a microwave, sink and small refrigerator.
“Some people are requesting kitchen areas in lanai areas and nanny’s suites,” says Kira McCarron, a spokeswoman for luxury-home builder Toll Brothers Inc., Huntingdon Valley, Pa.
Cooking, after all, can be so unglamorous–particularly in open-plan family kitchens where chaos is difficult to conceal.
Says Barry Berkus, president of an architecture firm in Santa Barbara, Calif.: “If you entertain a multitude, you don’t want the caterer in the room with you.”
Or vice versa. Lynn Forester, president and chief executive officer of Firstmark Holdings Inc., a New York telecommunications company, says that a caterer once flew into a snit when her two sons wanted to eat supper in the kitchen while a formal dinner was in progress.
Forester’s new townhouse near Park Avenue has a kitchen next to the dining room, as well as a family kitchen and dining area on a separate floor. While she concedes that “it’s not one of life’s necessities,” she finds that an extra kitchen comes in handy: “It’s where I keep my sets of 30 of this and 40 of that.”
Caterers, of course, are all for the idea. Jackson Hicks, president of Jackson & Co., a Houston catering company, says he’s seen about 100 “very grand” homes with double kitchens.
A kitchen set aside for catering, he says, insures that “there’s not even the temptation to grab Mrs. Jones’s 17th Century silver spoon to stir a pot.”
Before breaking ground on the 27,500-square-foot Aspen, Colo., home, dubbed the Copper Palace, mobile-home park developer George Gradow and his wife, Playmate-turned-actress Barbi Benton, hired a restaurant consultant to help plan a second kitchen–a full-bore commercial version.
The chef at their home in Pasadena, Calif., it seems, had complained about the difficulty of staging dinners for 50 in the lone kitchen there.
That isn’t a problem at the new place, where chef Todd Evan Olson can orchestrate dinners for 220 in his 30-foot-by-50-foot work space.
“The first time I saw it, it was like, `Holy man, I can’t believe this,”‘ Olson says.
Relentlessly health-conscious, the Gradows consign tempting items like chocolate and fois gras to Olson’s domain.
“We keep a fat-free kitchen in the residential area,” Gradow says. “We keep the naughty food in the commercial kitchen.”
Others like the fact that having a commercial kitchen minimizes their contact with food preparation.
“We’re very much offended by cooking smells,” says real estate investor Dennis Pryor, who will have a catering kitchen in his 38,000-square-foot home under construction in Goochland County, Va.
With its commercial venting system, the 30-by-60-foot catering outpost will be connected to the home’s formal kitchen by an elevator and a staircase.
Slated for completion in 1999, Dover Hall, which also will be equipped with 38 bathrooms, a glassed-in conservatory and a ballroom, will accommodate about 300 for a sit-down dinner.
“The food will just appear,” says Todd Yoggy, who is the Pryors’ interior designer. “You’ll never know the caterers are there.”
Multiple kitchens have more mundane purposes too, some say.
“It’s a great convenience if you’re ill, for example,” says Colin Cowie, head of the event-planning, catering and design company Colin Cowie Lifestyle.
“If you want an ice pack or Evian, it’s right there.” And having a kitchen close at hand means never having to stumble down a dark, sweeping staircase when you’re craving a glass of milk.
“You have the ability to alarm the rest of the house,” says Cowie, “and remain in an isolated capsule.”
Fortunately, homeowners who would rather not be troubled with a second kitchen needn’t resign themselves to fetching and carrying.
Consider the mobile kitchen that will be installed in the house that developer Steven Skilkin is building for himself in Columbus, Ohio. The 10,000-square-foot house has multiple levels, and “he wanted a design where the kitchen comes to you,” says his architect, Bart Prince.
