"You know when the kids start cooking together?" Julie Dalzell asks. "Well, you can get a lot of chopping boards happening along here." She moves from the kitchen proper to the servery side. "Here's where everyone stands as they enjoy a drink and watch the toil in the engine room."
This kitchen is Julie Dalzell's happy place. The founding editor of Cuisine magazine, she's quick to qualify that she is "a journalist/publisher rather than a cook - but I do love to cook".
Julie knows a new owner may modernise the kitchen, but she has never wanted to change anything. For instance, the upstand that screens the bench from view. "I don't like seeing mess in the kitchen." There's space on the bench at the back for the coffee machine, soda machine and toaster and a bar fridge in the pantry. Siting the convection oven and main wall oven away from the gas hob works well for two cooks and it has made for extra drawer space under the hob.
The Fay family of four have lived here for the past 12 years. "We've been in the 'hood for 32 years," says Julie. "When we moved here from Argyle St, we called this place the 'Mansion on Mortgage Mountain"'. Thankfully they didn't have to finance any alterations. They had been done previously including the upstairs extension that was completed during the mid-1980s.
