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Most of us spend a lot of time in our kitchens, whether we’re cooking for the week, doing the dishes or just getting some work done at the kitchen table. But we’d guess that not many of us spend as much time in our kitchens as Ina Garten, the Food Network personality and cookbook author who goes to work in her kitchen year-round.
Several years ago, Garten built a second kitchen in a barn on her property so she could have a place to film episodes of Barefoot Contessa (she told Oprah Daily all about it in 2021). But Garten’s home kitchen, where she still cooks for friends and family, has remained untouched for 25 years — at least until now. Ina revealed her kitchen’s major facelift on Instagram this week, and we’re a little obsessed with it.
“During the pandemic, I gave myself a project to renovate my kitchen, which I hadn’t actually done in 25 years!!,” Garten wrote on Instagram. “I built my dream pantry and bought my favorite stove from Lacanche plus lots of food photography and a great view of the garden. So much fun testing recipes in my new kitchen!”
Early episodes of Barefoot Contessa reveal that Garten’s home kitchen used to have green-striped wallpaper, black countertops, white cabinetry with silver fixtures, an elegant shelf above the stove, and not much decor on the walls. Her new digs have a refined quality with light gray cabinets, brass fixtures and beautiful marble countertops. For those looking to borrow the look for themselves, Garten revealed in the comments that the countertop material is Calacatta Gold marble.
Garten kept around the large glass milk jug (which you can buy a dupe of from Ikea!) that you can see in the background of the very first episode of her Food Network show, and she uses it as a temporary bookend for her display of cookbooks – all her books are featured, plus some others, e.g Buvette: The pleasure of good food, which features recipes from the New York restaurant Buvette, where Garten recently had a dreamy lunch. She also has a copy of The missing kitchenwhich some fans may recognize as a cookbook from the Maine restaurant of the same name that has its own show on the Magnolia Network.
Above this display, Ina has a simple gallery wall of food prints that include everything from trimmed asparagus to sandwiches. Garten said she bought the prints from the Staley-Wise Gallery in New York, but you could probably find similar fun pieces from a local gallery. If you’re determined to find something specific, browse the catalogs at AllPosters or Society6—you just might find the perfect piece.
As for Ina’s new stove, the Lacanche has eight burners spanning two generous ovens. In the comments, Ina revealed that the burners and one of the ovens are gas, while the other oven is electric. The cherry on top is Ina’s beautiful dutch oven on one of the back burners – it looks like a Le Creuset oval dutch oven in meringue. She also added some hooks above the area for storing pots and pans. In the comments, Ina wrote that all her stainless steel pans are All-Clad. You can grab two of these All-Clad pans in a set for $200 from Williams Sonoma, or hang your own pans with an easy-to-install rack, like this $48 option from Wayfair.
No kitchen is complete without plenty of storage, and Garten showed off some of her stocked shelves in the post. Her open shelves hold plenty of baking dishes for all kinds of projects, plus serving trays, pedestals and vases. There’s also a wide range of plates for all occasions – we’re particularly fans of plates and bowls with fluted edges, like this set from Roman and Williams Guild.
The remodel was so successful that it won the approval of Nancy Meyers, the queen of curating enviable movie kitchens. “Love every picture! Beautiful! That view!!” wrote the director in the comments. While we may not be able to steal Ina’s garden view—or even mimic her taste in ovens—we can certainly copy some of these ideas. We just have to figure out which of her recipes we want to make first to break in our new kitchen look.