At My Kitchen Table: Why No Table
Now you know why there is no kitchen table in my kitchen. There is, in fact, no kitchen. What we have here is a walk-in closet with appliances. All that shelving in the distance took me years to dream up, and who knows when it’s going to fall down (not that I had anything to do with putting it up!). Seriously, there are nineteen-foot sailboats with larger galleys.
Okay, maybe not.
In 1963, when our building was put up, kitchens were a thing of the past, especially in Manhattan, where there were (and are) coffee shops on every corner, and caterers were affordable. Nobody knew that kitchens were also a thing of the future, the central room, in fact, of today’s better flats. Correction: this room here is a pantry with appliances. That’s why I paid so much to have the swinging door installed. (The apartments in this building come with cute louvered half-doors that are beyond useless.) It’s not the heat of the kitchen that I wanted to hide, but the scullery.
Kathleen’s Aunt Marcia said after one of my very ambitious dinner parties of the Eighties, “I don’t know how all that marvelous food came out of that tiny kitchen!” Yes, and you wouldn’t want to, either. The sad fact is that most food preparation on our island home occurs within truly remarkable proximity to live human beings. At least you don’t have to wonder how many of them there are in my kitchen. There’s only room for me!