Browse randomly slideshow in Architectural Digest, and you’re likely to see a kitchen with a huge range as the centerpiece. They typically have at least six gas burners, ideally two or more ovens, and enough cooking grates to look like a dead family of arachnids on top of a 19th-century bank safe.
Over the last decade, “on-trend” kitchens have become a fixture of high-end kitchens. They are archaic enough in appearance to evoke a kind of nostalgia, and their scale is overwhelming enough to play into people’s fantasies that they have the time and energy to cook elaborate multi-course meals, the kind where they would actually You would need to use more than four burners at a time.
They are sold as professional-style kitchens, but the irony is that many high-end restaurants have already relegated open flames to a corner of their kitchens.
Instead of a long row of blue-flame gas burners, they’re turning to portable induction hobs that chefs can move around workstations at will.
The trend arguably began in the mid-2000s. Grant Achatz was an early adopter and influenced the kitchen design of Alinea, his then-new restaurant in Chicago.
