eG Foodblog: therese - So, you want to remodel your kitchen?

[therese]

these are so mouthwatering! 

you take great food pictures.

i desperatately wanted to claw that dosai

off my screen......

i can't seem to find a drooly emoticon,

which is a sad omssion for this site

thugh there's a " barfi" one

and julli is a totally new thing for me.

are the owners of this shop bangladeshi by any chance? 

is this a bangladeshi item? 

eastern part of subcontinent much has

much more of a milk products subculture,

especially sweets.  bangla sweets are legendary

especially seemingly endless variations on

the chena theme.

and do you have any indian background?

if not, you are one of the (apparently) few

non-desis who really enjoys indian sweets!

most who have not grown up with them find them

not that appealing, even if they like indian food overall....

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Thanks for compliments on the photos. Doing this blog is giving me an appreciation for food stylists everywhere. Shadows, reflections, color balance, unexpected extraneous objects in the shot. And all the time I'm taking the photo there's likely some hungry person (possibly myself) waiting to eat the food.

I don't know the background of the owners. The family name is, I believe, Desai, a pretty common name it seems.

As for me having an Indian background, no, not even remotely. I have possibly the least interesting ethnic background in the world, frankly. But I like to think that it means I'm a bit of a blank slate, willing to try all sorts of different things. Most non-Indians' exposure to Indian sweets occurs in restaurants. The choice is typically limited to gulab jamun (often not the freshest gulab jamun) and some sort of mysterious grain-based pudding, often flavored with rosewater (not popular with Americans, and even I find it off-putting if too intense---Pakola ice cream soda makes me feel like I've been drinking soap). So they think they don't like Indian sweets, when in fact they've just not had really good Indian sweets.

The really really sweet things like jalebi don't appeal to me as much. But my kids love them, so occasionally I'll let them have one if we're in the shop. We go frequently enough that if it's more than a month since our last visit the owners express concern that we've perhaps met with some misfortune in the interim. We've never seen another non-Indian person in the shop, and the Indian customers almost always end up chatting with us about the odd fact that we like Indian sweets.

[therese]

Remember my dining room? A while back somebody started a thread that asked how often we used our dining rooms, and I answered not too often, only formal dinner parties and buffet service for cocktail parties (which I do frequently enough that I own plates and forks and glasses sufficient for a whole lot of people). It's basically just too formal for anything else.

This is a view from the kitchen (I'm standing beside the microwave/toaster, to my right), showing the arched doorway into the family room, the family room itself (extra point trivia question: can you figure out what cartoon is on the TV?), and arched opening into the dining room. A matching arched opening between the dining room and family room is on the other side of the TV, again matching up with windows front and back. Each opening contains a can light which is cool for parties, and illuminates a step down into the dining room.

The present family room used to be the dining room, and the present dining room used to be a library. We didn't need an enormous dining room, so we basically switched them such that the entire front half of downstairs is formal, the back half informal.

[Toliver]

(extra point trivia question: can you figure out what cartoon is on the TV?)

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At first it looked like a Road Runner cartoon. But I think it might be SpongeBob.

[therese]

(extra point trivia question: can you figure out what cartoon is on the TV?)

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At first it looked like a Road Runner cartoon. But I think it might be SpongeBob.

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SpongeBob it is. Kudos all 'round to Toliver!

[therese]

So we swapped the dining room and library for reasons of space, but we also did it so that the front of the house could remain tidy (you know, maybe I do have just a touch of OCD). This is the view into the dining room from the foyer, the view that guests to the house see. The surface in the foreground (that the camera's sitting on) is the stone top of the table in the foyer. Just inside the wide arch into the dining room you can see the edge of the door that looks into the kitchen. Farther along that wall you can see the second opening into the family room.

The ceiling medallion's the original---my contractor managed to move it intact from its original site.

Another view of the ceiling medallion:

View from the dining room into the foyer and beyond to the living room. All of those empty vases are supposed to have flower arrangements in them, but I've not managed to get the vases to the dried flower place to have it done (over Christmas it was all Christmas stuff, of course).

Wall with sideboard:

Closer view of sideboard:

[andiesenji]

Therese,

Thank you so very much for your lovely food and house blog.

The food photos are excellent, the photos of your home show that it is a lovely, welcoming place where anyone would love to be invited.

Your kitchen is as near perfect as one could wish and your remodel has been most successful.

Thanks again for giving us an all too brief window into your life.

[Susan in FL]

Thanks! You have a very nice home.

[Safran]

therese, thank you so much for this food blog. I had a blast! For someone who was put on the spot you certainly landed on your feet running! The food games were fun and of course seeing the end result of a reno project gone well is always a delight...there might be hope for the rest of us. By the way, you are one organized woman! Merci encore!

[therese]

Therese's installment will remain open for the remainder of tonight and part of tomorrow should anyone wish to follow-up with questions and comments.

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Hey, not so fast there, blog boy---I've got an entire meal still to post...

And if I manage to get up at a decent hour tomorrow AM I'll try and post some parts of the kitchen that I've not yet shown (bar, office, pantry). Gotta date with some ibuprofen at the moment...

[SobaAddict70]

Sure, no worries.

Soba

[snowangel]

Your dining room is beautiful! Is the furniture new?

And, I would love to see the parts of your kitchen that you haven't shown yet.

Is there anything you don't like about your New Space?

[therese]

Ethnic dining's all well and good, of course, but Atlanta's also got lots of very cool restaurants that manage to be reasonably cutting edge and mainstream at the same time.

One of these is Iris, located in the up and coming East Atlanta neighborhood (up and coming meaning there's a very interesting mix of people that OTP folks tend to characterize as very scary indeed). Like many groovy Atlanta restaurants it's a renovation of a old gas station. The front wall is still comprised of glass garage doors which can be opened to the patio in nice weather. Chilly tonight, though, so I'll just show you the convivial crowd:

This is a cool poster that includes the restaurant's name across the bottom:

A great Friday night in Atlanta with family and friends.

One of the cool things about Iris is that they welcome children, even kids much younger than mine:

While perusing the menu we were asked for drink orders, and I asked for a sidecar. But we'd already been spotted (aside here to point out that we've been going to Iris for years, and know the chef/owner, Nicolas Bour), so oysters and champagne arrived pretty much instantly:

Our server had already put in an order for my sidecar, so I really couldn't refuse it:

It's dark as pitch in many groovy Atlanta restaurants, and Iris is no exception. So the remainder of the food shots are with a flash.

First courses (some of these are repeats, and we didn't photograph mushroom bisque, as some things taste better than they look):

Butternut squash soup. The dark bits are pumpkin seed. Soup is poured into bowls tableside, very pretty.

Kobe beef carpaccio with white truffle emulsion, every bit as great as it sounds:

Mains included...

Crispy flounder (for Boy):

Flatiron steak, presumably ordered rare (The Man):

Cedar planked salmon (for me, I never order salmon, but though it would be pretty):

Girl had carpaccio for her main.

Desserts were...

A hazelnut chocolate mousse tart:

Berry sorbet:

Pumpkin and maple syrup custard with a ginger bread cookie that was, quite literally, the bomb:

Desserts are the work of Tammy Harrison (also know as that really cute girl who works with Nic):

The kitchen's a cool place to visit...

The line:

Soup, please...

Could they be any cuter?

Nicolas Bour. Earlier in the evening Boy had remarked that he thought that Nic bears a striking resemblance to Tom Cruise. The young Tom Cruise he hastened to specify:

[therese]

Your dining room is beautiful!  Is the furniture new?

And, I would love to see the parts of your kitchen that you haven't shown yet.

Is there anything you don't like about your New Space?

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The furniture's all new, but obviously designed to look older. My mom has very nice antique dining room furniture, but she is (a) in pretty good health, and (b) unwilling to move into a small seaside condo that would not accomodate very nice antique dining room furniture. So I bit the bullet and bought this stuff. Which I love, so that's okay.

I'm going to make every effort to get up tomorrow AM and photograph the bits of the kitchen that I've not yet shown.

Post queries and comments in the interim:

How's that tapeworm working out?

Does going shoeless all winter really build character?

Are all chefs in Atlanta amazingly good-looking?

[Pan]

[...]

Pumpkin and maple syrup custard with a ginger bread cookie that was, quite literally, the bomb[...]

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Explosive food, eh?

But seriously, all that food looks excellent!

[TheFoodTutor]

Someone should point out that regular Atlantans don't usually eat at Iris, Woodfire, Madras Saravana Bhavan, Yong Soo San and Mary Mac's all in one week. We do eat in restaurants pretty frequently, but this has been quite a celebratory week.

So I guess we have to wait until it's my turn to foodblog for us to see a picture of you, huh?

[ludja]

Thanks for a great blog theresa (and for helping, Food Tutor). I enjoyed your trip to MaryMac's very much; thanks for posting the menu!

It was nice to see your lovely kitchen and dining areas as well; thanks for taking all the photos. You'v given lots of thoughtful ideas and inspiration for anyone considering a remodel.

[therese]

Someone should point out that regular Atlantans don't usually eat at Iris, Woodfire, Madras Saravana Bhavan, Yong Soo San and Mary Mac's all in one week.

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Yes, but they should. And we're headed out to Pura Vida tonight with a couple of friends from waaay OTP. This week qualified as a busy week for us restaurant-wise, but not an exceptional one. The lunch at Mary Mac's was the only one that I probably wouldn't otherwise have planned given the remainder of the week's schedule.

In my final official post to this blog I'm going to show the rest of the kitchen, the part that's on the other side of the island.

Speaking of the other side of the island, here it is. Note that the bar stools had to be custom made (though that didn't actually make them much more expensive than stock bar stools, it just meant we had to wait for them) because the bar is 6" higher than normal (raising my dishwasher a full 12" higher than usual and giving more storage in the island). You can also see the groovy pendant lights that hang over the island.

The pendant lights are actually on pulleys with counter balances so that they can be raised and lowered very easily (not that I do this too frequently, but it's convenient). Plus they look really cool, and guests always remark on them:

The other side of the island contains both a bar area and a desk. The bar area backs up to the screened porch. The cabinet at the far end contains pull waste baskets for storing recyclables like glass and plastic:

Here's the bar sink:

The French doors lead out onto the open deck (furniture, including a larger dining table for entertaining outside, on order). The granite-topped green piece of cabinetry actually rolls (so I store light paper goods in it), and is used at cocktails parties as the bartender's work surface (in front of the bar sink) and at other sorts of parties as a serving area. I can push it up to the opened French doors, for instance, and either serve from there or set up a bar.

The white door in the far corner is the pantry. It's a walk-in size with wire shelving.

The desk includes the computer, a place to store real (as opposed to junk) mail until it gets to the office upstairs, corkboard across the back for posting schedules and invitations, etc., the phone, phone book storage (Atlanta's phone books are not trivial in size), cell phone chargers, and photographs.

My final photo of the blog:

So I have included a picture of me, and in just few moments I'll be propping these bad boys up for a nice rest.

I've enjoyed doing this blog tremendously, and would like to thank everybody for their participation and kind words. I'd also like to thank eGullet for providing such a cool forum for us all.

Oh, and of course, there's a final trivia question....

In what way to my first and last posts reference the blogs (Chufi's and arbuclo's) that precede and follow this one? PM me if you think you know the answer, or if you want any specifics re suppliers or logistics of the remodel that wouldn't necessarily be of general interest.