Well, dang that link for magically disappearing! Google to the rescue, I added it below. I'm off to go read it, thanks for posting it, Becky!

Here is a link that might be useful: NY Times:

What I find interesting is the Jade range. A lot of chef's have whatever POS came with the place because they don't make a lot of money, they mostly cook at the restaurant, and they can make any crappy tool (maybe excluding a dull knife) make wonderful music.

I'm fascinated that the chef with the bucks and the wife put in the gonzo range...with a cabinet shelf over it! NYC is definitely different. :)

I have never known a chef with a fancier kitchen like that. Most of the ones I know just have regular kitchens or small condo kitchens. Over the years I noticed that it seems unless he or she is working their way up the latter or trying to impress for possible monies toward their own restaurant, well they don't often cook full blow gourmet meals on their day off. I see things on TV where it shows chefs and how they cook at home all the time but I have never seen this in real life. Maybe it's just like that in my neck of the woods. Around here those making $125 a year and up work long hours in private golf and country clubs, during the season they have one day off a week usually. When they have days off cooking is mostly on the grill outside due to the fact that so much time is spent in an indoor work kitchen. The last "Chef" party I went to he got rather intoxicated and after watching him flip raw chicken on a cold unlit grill for over half an hour I went into his condo and whipped up some penne ala vodka because we were all starved. It was a fun party regardless even though we had to take turns making sure he didn't fall in the pool.
I'm alway curious of these TV and magazine chefs, they seem like something from another planet to me.

Jterrilynn, I was wondering if it wasn't really the wife's kitchen, and his service in it might be to please her. I think those fancy ones on the TV shows are more executives and stars than working chefs. Consulting, rather than turning out service for 80 or more per night. Making menus, not meals. The child of a restaurateur-chef used to come to my house to eat when we were young because there was never any food in their house. He was an amazing cook, but he didn't cook at home for the family at all except maybe holidays.

I live with a former chef (turned pastry chef toward the end of that career) who does intense cooking and baking in a 5 ish x 11 kitchen, and says it was about the amount of space allotted in the restaurant kitchen. (Exclusive of a rack system for storing and cooling the days production). The executive chefs in those restaurants didn't cook much (anymore) either: they were the ideas person.

Pullalog, Yeah I guess I'm just always amazed at how TV and magazines glorify chef's lives when a real working chefs live is anything but. They work long hours in a hot hot kitchen, their shoes smell, a percentage of the kitchen staff barely speak English, there is a lot of stress and unlike the front of the house where they get compliments on the dinning experience the kitchen staff gets little, hence the sometimes strained relationship between the front and back. A real chef can I guess still hold onto the art involved in their craft... I guess, but I still don't understand how they want that life day in and out. Most don't get to see their family that much and it's not glorious. The highlight is often a good write-up of the food where ever one is working.

I think Palimpsest's chef is more typical than the ones you see on TV. The one that always has me rolling is when they follow the chef (always on a sunny Summer morning with nary a cloud in sight) to the wholesale market where chef greets the vendors by name, is given tastes, and cheerfully picks a few items here and a few items there for the restaurant. No rain. No mud. No dark. No five cases of fish X and you'd better not short me. No where the heck are my tomatoes. Not a word about how mealy they've been and if the new delivery is mealy it'll be refused and they can eat it (the invoice, not the tomatoes). And none of the flopping exhausted back in bed to get some actual rest before it's time to get in to check the deliveries and the prep, and get the specials going.

My chef left the business after a couple years of going in at five to bake bread, going off the clock until 11:30 to make the deserts. Going off the clock until the dinner hour. Being forced to work off the clock when the hours added up to 8 and being told that "it gets around to other restaurants in the city when someone reports a restaurant for illegal business practices, if you know what we mean". That and the Two heroin users in more superior positions.

Did you ever read the book "Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain? The book is hilarious and very much true to life in the business. My husband has been in Private club, Golf and Country Club, and up scale restaurant management for over twenty years and we also owned a restaurant for a few years until the revitalization of the down town area took a bite out of profits.Oh if I didn't suck at writing so much the stories I could tell lol. It's a shame some TV writer hasn't taken up the true form of life in food service and the many colorful people within. We had a waiter who was so unbelievable nuts we caught him touring people around the restaurant telling them he was part owner and how he taught my husband everything he knew while they were in California. At that point my husband had never been to California, the guy was so convincing I almost believed him.

Thanks, Lisa, for adding the link. I have no idea what the heck happened to it -- I know it was there when I started, and it was in "preview message", but sometime after, who knows!

Becky

We have a neighbor who left the military as a retiree and has subsequently been Condon Bleu trained (your tax dollar at work) and has worked in local restaurants. He is thrilled to simply live in our affordable working class neighborhood but is chafed (no pun intended) by the minikitchen in his 1950s house, which ain't gonna change unless he has the money to hire the kind of work DH is putting into our remodel. He LOVES my kitchen. I can't emphasize this enough--he LOVES my new kitchen, my Formica and modest materials kitchen.

florantha of course he LOVES your kitchen, you have a great kitchen!

I think the difference is between "chefs" and "cooks". Chefs get treated like artists while cooks are the hired help. Most restaurants have cooks in them.
I don't think the kitchens pictured are that awful for NYC kitchens. I have had worse, lol....

From the article " 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."

Hellloooooo??? Has this reporter SEEN Julia's kitchen. If I recall correctly as it's been a couple of years since I saw it, she had TWO, that's right - TWO!! small counters and a table in the middle. Heck, I've seen ISLANDS bigger than her kitchen.

I love to cook and my kitchen was designed to have everything accessible within 5 small steps. The working floor space is a measly 8 square feet with the counters on the perimeter but it's a gorgeous, functional kitchen and it works.

When I learned to cook it was in a kitchen filled with 16 other people and all the space we each had was a 2x3' cart with storage underneath.

I cook or rather bake, because I have a passion for it. And what keeps me going, are the compliments. And they don't come from my family so I don't cook/bake for them. They just take it for granted.

I think TV and Food Networks sensationalize the life of top Chefs. Out in the real world, it's nothing like that.

OT jterrylynn: Thanks for praise. It's encouraging to hear it in context of cook's kitchens.--F

Here t'is in stretched wide angle.

I love that kitchen, although I did wonder at that peculiar reference in the article too. BTW, as I recall, Julia's kitchen also had a second little work room through the left wall with, I think, a stove.

The more I know about design and design history, the more I realize I Don't know, and the more I realize that people in media and other areas of "authority" REALLY don't know, but talk out of their --- with aplomb and assurance 8-/

Truly, every day I am amazed at the gullibility and frankly, stupidity of reporters. They are supposed to be "out there" every day, face to face with everything that is going on in the world. In reality, most retype press releases. The more famous reporters know nothing of the world outside their cocktail parties.

Chefs--and I mean chefs, not cooks--do not cook much on their days off, and rarely have fancy kitchens. Only celebrities do, the fake chefs that used to cook once, but are now simply the "brand" in front of their businesses. Yes, those people have 150K+ kitchens. There aren't many of them, and they just don't matter very much. They're entertainers.