In the kitchen
How to Nancy Meyers Your Kitchen
Fruit in a bowl, something under a cloche, and copper within reach. The kitchen as the warm middle of the house.
There is nothing quite as dreamy as a Nancy Meyers kitchen. Father of the Bride, The Parent Trap, Something’s Gotta Give, It’s Complicated: full of light, generously stocked, a little bit busy, and so welcoming you could walk straight into the frame and put the kettle on.
What makes them work is the counters. Layered, never bare: the stand mixer out, the cookbooks open, oil and vinegar decanted into something pretty, a plant on the sill, a pan on the stove. They look lived in because they are meant to look lived in. I have watched these films far too many times, and these are the threads I keep finding, and the ones I have borrowed at home.
Bring the outside in
Fresh flowers, a pot of something green on the windowsill, a jar of cut herbs by the stove (they keep beautifully in water and you actually use them). If a plant is in a pot, I cover the soil with a little moss. It is a small thing, and it makes a pot look like it has always lived there.
A proper bowl of fruit
Somewhere in every one of her kitchens there is a big bowl of fruit. Not three tired apples: a bowl full to the brim, washed, at its best, no stickers showing. Green apples in The Intern. Lemons and oranges in It’s Complicated, Something’s Gotta Give and Home Again. Grapes, melons and a bit of everything in The Parent Trap and The Holiday.
It isn’t a prop, so put out fruit you will actually eat.
We squeeze oranges most mornings, so the bowl turns over quickly and gets topped up every few days. Whatever is in season and doesn’t need the fridge goes in a bowl where I can see it, which is the best reminder I know to make a smoothie, a tart or a pie.
Something good on the counter
The other hallmark is that there is always something to eat. Who wouldn’t want to pull up a stool at Meryl Streep’s counter in It’s Complicated, pour a glass of iced tea and cut a slice of that bundt cake? Croissants and pies sit under glass cloches, and the kitchen always seems to have just made something.
The meals are the best part. I can practically smell the chocolate chip pancakes in The Parent Trap (and the Oreos dipped in peanut butter), and the breakfast in Home Again has stayed with me for years: pancakes, eggs, croissants, fruit, bacon, orange juice, everything you could want and then a bit more.
So keep a few easy bakes in rotation, the kind that fill the house with a good smell for family, friends and neighbors. Mine are scones, a banana bread, brownies, and a malted chocolate granola adapted from Anna Jones. Then think about where they sit until they are eaten: a cake stand with a cloche, a glass jar, a board by the kettle.
Cooking happens here
Cookware everywhere. Copper pans hung within arm’s reach, a crock of wooden spoons beside the stove, oils and vinegars decanted, salts and spices out on the counter. A lot of her kitchens have open shelves or glass-fronted cabinets showing off plates, bowls and jars of pantry things. Wine, books, tea towels, a good wooden board. Stocked, and ready.
Full, and a little busy
What makes these kitchens memorable is that they are perfectly imperfect. They are used, and a bit messy with the hubbub of the household, the opposite of a sterile kitchen with everything hidden behind a door. In her films the kitchen is the heart of the house: you catch someone halfway through a bake, there is flour on the floor, and nobody minds, because the point is to be together, cooking, eating and generally carrying on.
Leave the good things out. Use them.
Something under the cloche, always.
