Food Arts

“Of Chef Ed Brown’s Eighty One…The kitchen's placement was inevitable in what kitchen designer Jimi Yui of YuiDesign calls the ‘knuckle’ of the space, since it had to serve both à la carte and private customers. Its size of 1,800 square feet is the result of the usual compromise between wanting more tables and the requirements of cooking.

Two considerations determined its design. One was that it would be open for service, therefore visible to anyone in the corridor between the dining room and Library. An open kitchen, says Yui, works only if the kitchen is immaculate and the staff disciplined. 

He should know, having worked on Café Gray in the Time Warner Center, where the kitchen famously intrudes between the diners and the view.

The second consideration was the private dining room. When 40 meals have to go out at one time, you need a dedicated staff and space so as not to wreck the à la carte service. This was accomplished by dividing the kitchen into three zones.

Not an inch is wasted.

When it's time to reheat the chilled ribs, they go into one of Yui's innovations: an insulated sink with a cover in which you insert an immersion circulator, creating a built-in bain-marie.”