The kitchen engages all of our senses. We touch the smooth, cool countertops and feel the soothing heat from the stove. We know the sounds of a whistling kettle and sizzling bacon. We relish the smell of roasting chile or baking cinnamon rolls. We taste the sweet batter from a spoon or sample the hearty soup from the stove.

We do much more than cook in our kitchens. It is a place memories are made. In days past, the kitchen played the role of the winter nursery and infirmary, as it was always the warmest room in the house. Today, we spend many of our everyday waking hours between the stove and the refrigerator. Whether we’re having a party or just the evening meal, our family and our friends invariably congregate in the kitchen.

On the following pages, you’ll find a delicious sampling of fine New Mexico kitchens. As different as the cooks who work in them, they range from lavish gourmet with a sophisticated blend of design inspiration (both local and European) to eclectic contemporary jewels. One kitchen achieves a near-museum quality replication of a late 19th century Mexican ranch cocina. A few celebrate the whimsical, colorful, and busy; others maintain a stark and quiet aesthetic. Others artfully mix the two. Some uniquely combine various sources of inspiration. Where but in New Mexico does one find soft adobe earth plaster juxtaposed against stainless steel?

Though quite different from one another, each kitchen here is unmistakably New Mexican. While no one knows a single magic formula for creating a New Mexican kitchen, all of the following share subtle design elements that celebrate local architectural traditions and immediately recognizable influences, both historical and contemporary.

 

 

 

Had you stepped into a New Mexico kitchen 200 years ago, you would have found a cramped, primitive, windowless room with a mud floor. It was used to prepare and store food. Heat, and a lot of cooking, came from an adobe fireplace—often with a shepherd’s hearth, the warmest bed in the house, above the firebox. Likewise, the bathroom was minimalist, at best—a simple, weathered outdoor privy. Unheated.

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