Food blogger and cookbook author David Lebovitz is an American renter in Paris who inherited a narrow kitchen with a motley assortment of appliances stuffed under the slanted roof of his 650-square-foot top-floor apartment near the Bastille. “In America, if you don’t like your kitchen, you bulldoze it,” he says in his kitchen on a recent afternoon. “But renters don’t really spend a lot of money to do that in France.”
David started his culinary training in the pastry kitchen of Chez Panisse in the 80s, left after 13 years to write cookbooks, and moved to Paris five years ago. Since he makes his living as a cookbook writer and the space functions as his test kitchen, David has dealt with his constraints by basically turning his whole apartment into a kitchen -- ice cream maker in the bedroom, casserole dishes nestled in the bookcase, improvised chocolate drying rack on the window ledge in the bathroom.
His long apartment is divided into a bedroom with a splendid view of the Eiffel Tower and the Pompidou Center in the distance, and a main space that includes a “cuisine américaine” (the French term for an open kitchen) where he spends most of his time. “In a small kitchen, you learn to go vertical,” he says, pointing to a high shelf where he stores often-used ingredients and an inherited Champagne bucket filled with utensils that sits on top of the refrigerator. He likes to leave things out where he can see them, and what he doesn’t leave on the counters he keeps at arm’s length, he says, opening up a drawer stuffed with favorite tools like his mini ice-cream scooper, smuggled back from the US.
His counter top is strewn with seaweed-infused sea salt from a stall at the Sunday market on Boulevard Richard Lenoir, bottles of olive oil, homemade croutons in a plastic bag, and prunes macerating in a Mason jar filled with Armagnac for his prune and Armagnac ice cream, which he promptly removes from the freezer, scooping some out for a mid-interview snack. Next to his dining room table, he has cooking supplies stacked on open wire shelving. “People are always saying ‘that’s horrible, put that stuff away,’” he says. “But I need to see everything. It inspires me, as queer as that sounds!”
Across the room, his bookshelf is crammed with cookbooks as well as gratin pans and his prized orange Raymond Loewy lidded casserole. On top of the shelf the word pâtissier is spelled out in three-dimensional letters from an old bakery that he bought secondhand in Paris. “I have a small apartment, so I don’t have 10,000 cookbooks, like I did in San Francisco,” he says. “I don’t really make a lot of recipes from other people’s books, but I use them for reference. I don’t really know about cooking meat, so I might look up how to cook a pork roast or something.”
He said he rarely has people over for dinner, since his table can really only seat four. But he enjoys cooking things like carnitas and barbecued ribs (done in the oven) followed by homemade ice cream for French people who don’t get that kind of fare at the corner bistro or cook it at home. And while he likes the open kitchen, he says he’s not the kind of cook who starts work when company arrives. “People start talking to me,” he says, “and they don’t understand that I need to concentrate! So that’s why I think advance planning is important.” He points to how an opened cupboard door can act as a de-facto gate in the narrow space, to keep the boyfriend out. “I dislike having people in my kitchen when I’m cooking,” he says.
David has recently finished the first draft of his fifth book, which will be out in spring of 2009. His last two books were about ice cream and chocolate. So what’s this one about? “It’s about Paris,” he says, “with recipes, of course.”
How would you define your cooking style?
Simple. Because in France cooking is really ingredient-driven. And since food is expensive here, if you buy radicchio, then you just make a radicchio salad. It’s super-cliché but when you have good food, you don’t need to do a lot to it.
Favorite appliance?
My KitchenAid mixer. I got the up-and-down kind, not the newer tilt-head kind, because I like it better.
Favorite cooking utensil?
Spatulas! I buy Le Creuset silicone spatulas on sale in the U.S. Because they’re made in China, it’s cheaper than buying them in France!
Biggest challenge in your kitchen?
The lack of space. When I make a cake, there’s no place to put the bowls!
Biggest indulgence?
My Cuisinart ice cream maker with a built-in freezer. I figured when I was writing my ice cream book, that it was worth it.
What are you cooking this week?
Ice cream! And crackers. A lot of ice cream and crackers.
Dream for your kitchen?
I’d like to buy this place and put in a whole new kitchen.
Originally published March 12, 2008
(All images by Kristin Hohenadel)
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
Oooh, I love David Lebovitz, so I'm all excited to see the tour...but the link's not working.
view as3087's profile
check now - should be working.
view faith's profile
Looks like the links are fixed now.
Thank you so so much for posting this! I was just reading his blog yesterday & marveling at his recipe for candied bacon ice cream. If he can do such great things in his little kitchen, certainly there's hope for the rest of us. No maple cabinets or black granite required!
view Nougat's profile
Pardon me for going off-topic, but I simply cannot fathom why renters would renovate anything, let alone a kitchen. it's just another checkmark on a list that proves we have a disposable society.
view alexia's profile
Oh this was fun! I love seeing how others arrange their kitchens, especially those who love to cook, be it as a pro or for a hobby or whatever.
It's nice to know that my theory seems largely right, that pro's don't always need a large expansive space to cook in, now for making pastries and such, yeah, but I'm sure most good imaginative cooks can figure out a way with the space they have. :-)
It's also fun to compare my kitchen with someone else' and in this case, mine seems a bit nicer in layout than this, but I know what he cooks in there will taste mighty good though. Just so you all know, I have an early 60's era double galley rental kitchen with a good sized pantry and a 20" electric stove and no dishwasher but with plenty of storage and no window anywhere near it but it's very useable however.
view ciddyguy's profile
yeah!
I love lebovitz and his "room for dessert" book
super fun to see he does his thing with an average cramped kitchen
: )
note to alexia: sometimes renters stay a long long time.
making your place awesome is *not* a defacto tic on the disposable nightmare list
view guido's profile
I hope he plans to enter the cure!
view PlanItGirl's profile
And, I will check out his cookbooks!
view PlanItGirl's profile
Agree with guido...sometimes it's just not possible to ever be able to buy in the city you live in. Sometimes you'll be renting for the rest of your life and you really want to make it your home.
Great kitchen tour--wonderful to see what a pro does with limited space.
view KidMoe's profile
Yummy. What is the print above the couch, next to the bookcase?
view peacelily's profile
I like it. It looks decorated by someone who does something in their home other than decorate.
view besimple's profile
Now, I am jealous ... your kitchen is smaller and cooler than ours and it is in PARIS!!!! We must get back there soon!
view Chez US's profile
I loove David, I read his blog often and he is hilarious. Now I can actually see how small his kitchen, and knowing the fantastic stuff he makes in it, there is ABSOLUTELY no excuse not to eat well.
view RJD's profile
Iâm really surprised he didnât set-up the kitchen the way he liked it when he moved in. This is really unusual for Paris. For the most part when one rents an apartment in Paris the kitchen will have a sink and maybe (if youâre lucky) a stove. Normally, you have to bring all your own appliances (refrigerator, oven, washing machine...). We had to install our own shelves, cupboards, and even light fixtures in our last Parisian rental apartment. All the same, it looks like a charming apartment!
view ml1003's profile
@ alexia
Pardon me for going off-topic, but I simply cannot fathom why renters would renovate anything, let alone a kitchen.
this is very culturally defined. where i live (the netherlands) it's considered very normal to renovate your rental dwelling, and you're given the freedom to do so. unlike the usa, rentals here don't come with fully equipped kitchens, it's a bring-your-own operation. you're also free to put up wallpaper, paint walls, take down walls, erect walls, whatever your inclination or taste. in this resepct there's not much difference between buying or renting an apartment, although in the bigger cities finding affordable rental places (heavily subsidized) is a lot easier than buying (free market prices) something.
so renovating a place makes perfect sense, since most people here don't move all that often. once you found yourself a decent house, you stick to it, and you have the right to stay there as long as you please.
view aad's profile
thanks all, for the clarifications. i guess i am fortunate enough to live in a city (philadelphia) where my new mortgage payment is only a little higher than my former rent.
view alexia's profile
Oh!!! I
Thanks Thanks Thanks!!!
view emily!'s profile
I wonder how David makes all those lovely desserts in this small Kitchen, but then space should not be an excuse to create anything lovely. This is an encouragement to do more in my small kitchen
view jaudre's profile
And I thought I have a small kitchen, that should be a lesson for me to learn reorganize my things and use the space in my kitchen more efficiently. For starters my kitchen sink is too big and I definitely need to replace it, I've already found some copper sinks and I think one of those pieces would fit just fine in my kitchen.
view gordman's profile
Ah, this so reminds me of the tiny little kitchen in my Parisian apt in the 20th where I lived for 6 years. Sloping roof, a chipped sink, barely enough room for a fridge. I only had a two ring camping gaz stove and a combination microwave. We used to do barbeques on the little fireplace and grow herbs in the window box in the terrible vis à vis view that we had. I knew everything about my neighbour opposite: when he was alone, the joyful moment when he found a girlfriend, the sadness when she left, his routine, the time he got up, when he shaved or bathed, when he got home from work. The veritable metro/boulot/dodo. Life in Paris is not all romance. And yet we never exchanged a word.
I cooked some pretty good meals in that kitchen nonetheless.
view marmitelover's profile
wow I love the curved ceiling he has. There is something very cosy about it but also very sexy at the same time. He has done a lot with the small space he has. I used to indulge myself with an ice cream maker too but then some appliance parts inside broke and I couldn’t find anyone who knew how to fix it that wasn’t expensive so I gave up. I look forward to trying one of his cookbooks.
view timada's profile
wow I love the curved ceiling he has. There is something very cosy about it but also very sexy at the same time. He has done a lot with the small space he has. I used to indulge myself with an ice cream maker too but then an appliance part inside it broke and I couldn’t find anyone who knew how to fix it that wasn’t expensive so I gave up. I look forward to trying one of his cookbooks.
view timada's profile
Please explain how David stays so thin when he's making crackers and ice cream all day long? What is he actually eating?
I'd gain weight just looking at the machine. Is it because he's eating full fat? ; )
And re: renovating, he says "I’d like to buy this place and put in a whole new kitchen."
view edava72's profile
Am I the only one grossed out by the fact that he keeps a chocolate drying rack in the bathroom?
view jooly's profile
I love that 50% of the usable counter space is taken up by the espresso machine... a man after my own heart. You've gotta have priorities!
view keltrue's profile
I love it! He is so real! He's also very practical. His kitchen is small, but it is cosy and the layout is sensible. This just shows that you don't need a grand kitchen to cook well. Actually, most restaurant kitchens are tiny and cluttered too.
view LauraEvrard 's profile
Yay! I love reading about keen cooks who manage to cook successfully in tiny kitchens.
view Madame Is's profile
I'm so glad I"m not the only one who can't take it when guests come into the kitchen to "keep me company" while I cook. It totally blows my concentration and then I feel like I'm being rude because I can't follow their conversation at the same time.
view ah-ha's profile