Those designer numbers you see on home reno shows? Great to look at, but not always about the cooking. So we got an insider’s tour of three food-centric home spaces to see what tips we could borrow for BA’s new test kitchen at 1 World Trade Center.
Alexandre Cammas founded the Le Fooding movement in 2000 to shake up the staid French restaurant scene. (Mission accomplished: It’s now a multimedia player in the international food world.) But most weeknights he eats with his wife, Nathalie Balland, a translator, and their two kids in their 1893 Paris apartment.
Cammas and Balland created a kitchen out of a bedroom, using a custom factory-style window as a wall and building doors on either side to separate the space. (That way, they don’t have to hear kitchen noises in the living room when the doors are closed.)
◀The Bright Idea: According to Balland, everyone in Paris has the same Ikea kitchen: “It’s just either white or red.” So they bought wood cabinets at Ikea and painted them glossy green (Valspar Luscious Green paint, $44/gal.), an idea they saw on a Danish Web site.
The couple found a 1970s Bumling fixture in Copenhagen. We also like Louis Poulsen’s pendants (from $548) for a similar look. ▶
◀If it’s a weeknight, chances are they’re puréeing something with this Kitchen Aid 5-Speed Diamond blender ($180)
This bread box is almost identical to the one they bought near London’s Columbia Road flower market ($50). ▶