An Iron Chef’s Farm Kitchen Gets Some Kick

At Luna Farm in Pennsylvania, Iron Chef Jose Garces had the whole organic farming thing down. The 40-acre property supplies Garces’ East Coast restaurants with organic ingredients, but Garces wasn’t able to cook at the scale he wanted to in its 1970s kitchen.

“The farm kitchen needed to serve a variety of purposes: everyday use for me and my family, recipe experimentation for me using our onsite produce and large-scale meals for personal and professional guests,” Garces says. “To say it was outdated would be an understatement,” says kitchen designer Gretchen Kubiak of Black & Poole.

Starting with adding gas to the kitchen for restaurant-quality appliances, Kubiak made the most of the space via the layout and warmed it with beautiful natural materials.

Photography of Luna Farm kitchen by Jason Varney

Chef Garces had a great kitchen in his Philadelphia apartment (pictured here) and wanted to bring that functionality and chef’s quality to his house in the country.


Garces is often cooking with someone else, whether it’s his wife, one of his kids or another chef during an event. “I wanted something relatively open — the kind of space where I can putter endlessly, but with plenty of room for my kids or my guests to join me,” he says. “Beyond that I wanted things to feel accessible, so the open shelving and clear glass refrigerator door were musts. I like to have my ingredients and tools readily available — it inspires me to see all of the cool things I have to play with.”

The ceilings are low, so a pot rack would have been oppressive; instead the pots and pans are neatly stacked and accessible on the island shelf. The farm’s bounty is also visually accessible, thanks to the clear door on the refrigerator, which “is crucial, because it allows me to monitor how much food is available in the kitchen at all times,” Garces says.

The island is on wheels so it can be moved wherever needed. Its countertop is made of wood reclaimed from an extra table from one of Garces’ restaurants, Tinto.

The farm and kitchen also serve a cause close to the chef’s heart: The Garces Foundation, which “approaches food as a means of educating underserved kids about how and why we eat what we do, and how to properly nourish their bodies in order to keep up with their growing minds,” Garces says. “We invite groups of urban children out to the farm to tour the property and prepare and share a meal together, which allows them to get close to their food in a way that is often totally new to them. Bringing them here and sharing this place with them is a real joy for me, and I hope a lasting lesson for them.”


Garces’ white appliances helped determine Kubiak’s color palette; she chose black cabinets for maximum contrast. “Chef Garces had white cabinets in here, and on the farm they got pretty banged up,” she says. Black is more resilient and stands up to fingerprints. It also provides a good transition between the white appliances and the brass backsplash.

The hardware is finished brass, while the backsplash is unlacquered. It will develop a patina over time; water splashes will only help enhance its look.

Tip: For brass on a backsplash, Kubiak recommends using a thick gauge so it won’t show wrinkles.


Metals mix with ease here. The vent hood is stainless steel, customized with unfinished blackened steel ribbing with unlacquered brass rivets that tie it to the hardware and backsplash. These details give the farmhouse look an industrial element.

36-Inch Wall Mounted Wrangler Hood: Prizer Hoods


The French doors on the wall ovens are often seen in commercial kitchens and are now making their way into homes; this was a top trend at the 2014 Kitchen and Bath Industry Show. They are a great pick for universal design, as they make the oven much easier to load and unload than pull-down doors.

48-Inch RNB Gas Range, 30-Inch Double Gas Wall Oven, both by BlueStar


Carrara countertops provide another beautiful transition between the white appliances and black cabinetry. They are 2 inches thick to stand up to all the black on the cabinets. The floors are black slate, which is durable and has an organic feel — great for a farmhouse kitchen.


There is also an extensive outdoor kitchen on the property; the sliding window on the right acts as a pass-through. The dresser-like cabinetry below it provides storage and a spot for items that come in or go out through the window.



The outdoor kitchen and decks connect the indoor kitchen to the farm landscape.

Garces and his children love to cook together. His daughter, Olivia, is a burgeoning baker, and his son, Andres, just likes to be a part of the action in the kitchen. “Some of my earliest and most treasured memories of my childhood took place in the kitchen with my mother and paternal grandmother, and I hope my kids will look back on these times with a similar sense of happiness and contentment,” the chef says. “Nothing compares to picking our own food and then preparing it together.”

More: Browse more ideas for modern farmhouses

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