FOOD: Julia Child's Cambridge Kitchen [Boston]

[Photo via gourmet.com]

Thanks in no small part to Meryl Streep, I think we'd be hard-pressed to find an American today who doesn't recognize Julia Child. The voice, the hair, the height. To many, her kitchen is just as recognizable as her person from years of watching TV cooking with Child. From 1963 to 1973, she made hoity-toity French cuisine accessible to the American home cook with "The French Chef" on PBS and she followed that success with several more cooking shows, many filmed in her own home. This was a woman who advocated for butter long before Paula Deen was on the cooking scene and her no-nonsense style and good sense of humor made her a hit.

With her 102nd birthday coming up August 15th, I got curious about Child's kitchen. For 40 years, she resided just outside Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA and cooked in a specially outfitted kitchen that accommodated her over-6-foot height with custom-made counter tops. When she moved back to California in 2001, Child donated her kitchen to the Smithsonian and the whole thing, including a pegboard that "mapped" her pots and pans with outlines, was transferred to DC. The Smithsonian National Museum of American History offers a virtual tour of the kitchen in addition to their exhibit and it's great design inspiration from a chef who was on her ninth kitchen.

This Friday, since I can't make it to the Smithsonian, I'll be commemorating the ground-breaking chef and her Cambridge kitchen with an omelette, Julia-style. Bon Appetit.