Chefs At Home: Marja And Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Minimalist Kitchen
When you're the Vongerichten family (yes, of Jean-Georges Vongerichten, the celebrated New York City chef), it makes sense that your humble New York City abode is more like a glass aquarium on the seventh floor overlooking the Hudson River. So naturally, when Marja Vongerichten taught us how to make Korean chicken wraps in her kitchen, we had to ask how this beautifully minimalist apartment came to be.
Jean-Georges, Marja, and their daughter Chloe share the space with two dogs (Jojo and Candy), not to mention a pet rabbit. And while Chloe's room is all princess trinkets and teddy bear chairs, the shared living spaces reflect Jean-Georges' stripped down, modern aesthetic. "I'm the complete opposite, and our house upstate reflects that," Marja told The Daily Meal over the phone. "I did the design of the house upstate, which is contemporary mixed with antique and organic and it's very warm. Yeah, that's definitely my house."
In Manhattan, however, it's all open spaces, floor-to-ceiling windows, and hidden cabinetry and chairs in the kitchen. Designed by Danish designer Thomas Juul-Hansen, the space's clean and simple design was meant to reflect Jean-Georges' cooking style: precise, modern, and minimal. "The entire apartment was designed on an 8-inch grid, which means the level of precision was such that all joints, seams, and lines falls on this grid," Juul-Hansen told us in an email. "For example, all floor joints align with all door and cabinet joints, almost like a Swiss puzzle. Executed to perfection. Similar to how Jean-Georges handles food. All cooked to the ultimate level of precision."