The Ivy

Outside it’s chilly, down here it’s warm. The conserved heat of thousands of dinners. A successful kitchen never knows what it is to be cold. Neon flickers and chunters over the room. Everything rests at attention. This kitchen looks like the engine room of a beached battleship, all iron and steel pipes and ducts, thick and corrugated, worn rough and smooth by use. It is a room that shrugs off the word ‘design’, like oil on a hot pan. It defies order or elegance. The equipment squats like sideboard sumos, nutted and bolted, defending their small territories.