Outdoor Kitchens

The first question is never the grill. It is the table. Where do people sit, where does the light come from in the evening, how far will a plate of food travel from the fire, and what happens when it rains. We design the kitchen and its dining terrace as one room, with the cooking line placed so the cook faces the party instead of a wall.

The construction is masonry, not cabinetry pretending to be masonry. Counters are limestone or soapstone on concrete block cores, faced in the same stone as the garden's walls so the kitchen belongs to the landscape. Storage is real: dry drawers for tools, weathertight doors sized to the equipment you own, and a trash pull that keeps the raccoons out. Utilities are trenched and inspected: gas, water, and power run before the first stone is set.

Equipment follows the cooking, not the catalog. A 36-inch grill and a side burner covers most families. Add a wood-fired oven if you will actually feed it, a smoker cabinet if weekends smell like hickory at your house, refrigeration only where the run to the house is genuinely too far. We will talk you out of appliances you will not use; unused stainless is the most expensive mistake in this craft.

Every kitchen we build is drawn with its lighting, its herb bed, and its winter face. A good one looks like part of the garden in January with the covers on. That is the test.