Ina Garten, known to millions of foodies as “The Barefoot Contessa,” has an apartment in Manhattan featured in House Beautiful. I love this quote of hers from the article:
When people come to your house, you don’t ever want them to feel that you’ve been cooking for three days. You want them to feel like this is just something you whipped up and come on, we’re having a party. And decorating is like that, too. You don’t want people to feel, Oh, don’t touch that. You want them to feel, Oh, just sit anywhere and put your feet up.
Aren’t these pumpkin-colored silk velvet curtains sumptuous?
Despite the bold color on the windows, the rest of the apartment remains mostly neutral.
The kitchen in her East Hampton “barn” is the one most of us recognize (featured in Verandamagazine):
Garten’s barn was built as a multi-purpose office where she creates recipes, write cookbooks, and films her television shows.
Did you know that Garten worked at the White House in the 1970s on nuclear energy policy? Determined to change course, she bought a small, specialty food store in the Hamptons called “The Barefoot Contessa.” She told The New York Times, “My job in Washington was intellectually exciting and stimulating but it wasn’t me at all.”
The original store’s owner named it after a 1954 film starring Ava Gardner and Humphrey Bogart. Garten felt the name suited her “elegant but earthy lifestyle.”
In Something’s Gotta Give, Garten’s Hamptons store was the one that Diane Keaton’s character shops in (but it has since closed):
(You can see my post about the fabulous Something’s Gotta Give house here.)
Her first book, The Barefoot Contessa’s Cookbook, became a bestseller when it was published in 1999. Today she continues to write books and hosts “The Barefoot Contessa,” a popular show on The Food Network. (Do you watch?)
According to TFN’s website, her most-requested recipe at the moment is Tequila-Lime Chicken.
Read the interview with Garten and see the slideshow of her Manhattan apartment at House Beautiful. (Photos by Simon Upton.)
Visit my Celebrity Houses page for links to all the others I’ve featured, fromPaula Deen’s Home in Savannah to Julia Child’s in Cambridge.
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