So what is your kitchen equipped with? Equipment wise, we have two rice cookers, two electric flattops, one electric convection oven, and that’s it. And a small lowboy refrigerator and freezer, both under the counter. You can only fit two or three people in the kitchen at once.
What unique workaround have you devised to cope with the limited space? The main thing it just being organized. Every kitchen requires organization, but in some places, you have more space to do it. Here, you have no choice. So you just have to make sure everything is in the right spot—if you put your hand in the right side of the fridge, you WILL find your mesclun, if you go a little to the left, you WILL find your fish. We’ve been open about five years, and we haven’t changed a single container that we’ve put whatever ingredient in. The fish is always in a square box, if something’s in a round container, it’s always in that round container. We don’t even need to see it, we just have to feel it. You just want to bend and grab it. When something is made difficult for you in life, you just want to make it easier. Either you have to do 500 situps every time you go down to the fridge, or you just keep it organized so you know where everything is and can just grab it.
What are the biggest challenges cooking in a kitchen so small? A lot of restaurants dictate their menu by the seasons. We have to dictate by the equipment. If I’m making a dish I always made in the rice cooker, or a dish I always made on the flattop, I would only replace it with something that gets cooked in that equipment. It just wouldn’t work in terms of timing. We purposely have broken down our menu in terms of what works in this device and that device. You have the product, but you have to think of how you make it in this equipment. Most chefs don’t have to think that way, they just think of the dish and that’s the end of it. Here, we have a bit of challenge. But we’ve done it very successfully.
What are your favorite dishes and how do you make them? We have two signature dishes. On the savory side, we sear a scallop and cook it with pickled ginger, and serve it with a chili jam. It’s sweet and spicy. The jam is made in advance, in large quantities, and that pretty much acts like a sauce. That’s important. In a small kitchen, you want to really double up—if you can make something into a jam, which can double as a sauce, and make it in advance, because it has a shelf life, that’s great. You want dishes like that. You have to come up with ways to make your life simpler, or maybe making it difficult initially to make it simpler later.
The sweet dish is the strawberry truffle, strawberries cooked with truffle, with black pepper ice cream. So it has this very savory note to it, though the ice cream is sweet, it has the sharp taste of pepper. And the strawberries are sweet but cut with the truffle. It’s been there since we’ve opened. We have a small basement storage area where we store the ice cream maker. We bring it up and down every single day. Then the strawberries and truffles are made on the flattop, just cooked in a saucepan.
Any memorable mishaps because of space? We have to be careful with the amount of electricity in the house. Even with one piece of extra equipment, the question is always, how do we make sure not to blow up the fuse? Sometimes we switch off the coffee machine to make the oven work. We do it to the best we can, and sometimes things don’t work out in terms of electrical supply. There’s never been a blackout, we have circuit breakers. It’s never a huge thing, it’s more of an annoyance.
What has become most invaluable kitchen tool? My chef, who has been with me for almost 14 years. He is the most invaluable kitchen tool. And the rest of my staff, a lot of them have been with me for a long time.
If you could have space for just one more thing, what would it be? Maybe another circuit breaker.
Any advice for home chefs with tiny kitchens? Come look at us, see how we do it, then you’ll never complain about your small kitchen again.
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