Kitchen Designer Caren Rideau’s Entertaining Tips
In the kitchen area of her 1920s Spanish bungalow, Caren Rideau revels in the Los Angeles sunshine, her fifty percent-open Dutch door getting the cook’s equal of driving a convertible. The refreshing air and dazzling light mirror the kitchen designer’s breezy strategy to entertaining—plus, they make the petite prepare dinner house come to feel a tad larger sized. Measurement, nonetheless, matters not in her do the job and gatherings alike, Rideau is significantly less involved with the volume of place than an abundance of spirit. Uplifting yellows and brilliant oranges and blues—the cheerful palette of the Mexican, Moroccan, and Portuguese pottery she collects on her travels—make her tables as radiant as she is. Apart from, who requirements a big dining area in Southern California, the place outside entertaining beckons yr-spherical? “Guests usually sense additional at simplicity outdoor,” says the writer of Caren Rideau: Kitchen area Designer, Vintner, Entertaining at Dwelling, her new book entire of kitchen area style knowledge and entertaining inspiration.
Caren Rideau’s Entertaining Necessities
Thanks to her Mexican and Louisiana Creole heritage, Rideau’s bons temps strategy and penchant for bold taste and shade arrive naturally. Making tamales with her mom and gumbo with her father as a boy or girl shaped her appreciate of all things culinary. “Our humble kitchen—always smelling of delicious, spicy aromas—was the correct heartbeat of property,” she suggests. Her existence and function, it appears, are lively extensions of those people traditions, even leading to the start of wine label Tierra y Vino a ten years ago with her partner, a winemaker.
Towering candles and grenache-hued florals allow the vineyard and Santa Ynez Mountains backdrop to get center stage.
No matter whether hosting attendees at home or at the winery, Rideau juxtaposes the difference of craft with the very simple bounty of character: Arrangements of fresh herbs and cuttings from her back garden mingle with a mélange of vivid flat-ware and dishes, together with pieces from Gorky Gonzalez, a Mexican ceramic artist regarded for his singular brushstrokes, with whom she’s collaborating on her own line—“a dream!” she suggests. Sunflowers and cacti will be Rideau’s signature themes for Gonzalez’s strokes of whimsy, an embrace of character as vivid and joyful as just about every table she sets.
Extra From Veranda
This report originally appeared in the March-April 2023 challenge of VERANDA. Pictures by Meghan Beierle-O’Brien styling by Char Hatch Langos created by Stephanie Hunt.