A personal note on why I love kitchens 

(1 1/2 minute read)

My kitchen is small. I have breakfast bowls in the sink still, and the frying pan remains on the induction. It’s the moment when the morning sun shines into my lazy kitchen, that I feel total tranquility. Our kitchen is the literally the soul of our home, designed in the centre of our house, it can be seen everywhere you go. It is about the size of my spread arms. That’s it. This little space, however, is my favourite place. Here, I cook ingredients carefully. In front of the food, in the kitchen, I become more mindful, agile and elegant in this tiny space.

The time I spend in the kitchen is so joyful that at one point, I only chose to watch movies that feature kitchens in their plot.

In the movie Kamome Diner, more than half of the movie is occupied by the restaurant kitchen screen. In this clean but neat kitchen, two women, and sometimes three or four, are cooking delicious food. When they first baked cinnamon, the sweet cinnamon scent felt like it permeated through the screen and stimulated my nose. I sat and watched the film over and over, revising the colour of the bowl, the food, the layout of the kitchen. In the end, the characters cure themselves and the people around them who were hurt, through the simple and beautiful kitchen space.

How do I explain this overwhelming obsession with the kitchen? Many of us spend a tremendous amount of time in the kitchen, studying and thinking about kitchens. In the RAWPRESS publishing house in Seoul for example, they publish a magazine titled: Bouk (which means kitchen in Korean). The story of the world related to the kitchen is full to the brim.

Imagine the kitchens of countless people. Imagine the stories that bloom in them, the food that is created there, the parties and celebrations. Let’s decide to organize the kitchen today and spend a little quality time in there. If it’s a space that has been somewhat neglected, let’s fix that. You might just feel the atmosphere of the whole house has change. Maybe after cleaning, you’ll sip a cup of coffee and enjoy the kitchen of Kamome Diner. What a perfect day.