The Cooks’ Nooks : Home Is Where the Kitchen Is for Three Leading O.C. Restaurateurs

Just as the old “everyone congregates in the kitchen” rule holds true in the homes of those who do little more than operate the toaster, it also holds true in the homes of three of Orange County’s leading restaurateurs.

Audrey Heredia of the McCharles House in Tustin; Michael Kang of Five Feet in Laguna Beach and Five Feet Two in Newport Beach, and Antonio Cagnolo of Antonello’s in Santa Ana (who is also part owner of Trattoria Spiga, L’Opera, Emporio Armani Express and Planet Hollywood) can also from time to time be found at home cooking up traditional meals for family and friends.

And while their cooking may set them apart, their kitchens are in many ways very traditional--each reflects the heritage and cooking style with which each has become associated.

“I have an interesting setup in my kitchen,” Kang said. “My mother (who is Chinese) lives with us and my wife, Renee, is Caucasian, so we have dual cooking going on. Our refrigerator is divided in half. You’ll see my wife’s spaghetti sauce in a jar, pickles and hot dogs on the top half, and then my mom’s half has all kinds of weird things that she eats, as well as lots of pickled things like cucumbers and radishes.

“We make a lot of soup at home, so chicken stock is always going. Eating in the Chinese culture is a lot different than what you see in Chinese restaurants. At home, rice is the main dish and then we add condiments to it.”

Kang, whose culinary background is in French cooking, has added some elements of traditional Chinese home cooking to the dishes he serves in his restaurants, but on the whole the home cooking is left at home.

“One year I tried to cook a traditional Chinese New Year dinner in the restaurant. I think we scared a lot of people away. The Chinese use every part of the animal when they cook and waste nothing.”

Kang’s kitchen, situated at the rear of his Laguna Beach house, is as small as the ones found in beach cottages. But Kang is used to small spaces--the kitchen at Five Feet is about the same size as his one at home.

No high-tech restaurant equipment is to be found in his home kitchen. Instead, there are off-white tiles on the L-shaped counter, a built-in range and small microwave oven. Everything is comfortable and just the way Kang likes it. A homemade steamer sits on a burner with a fish being cooked inside it. “We steam everything in it: vegetables, fish, chicken. We try to stay away from the microwave, so we steam as much as possible.”

The most spectacular feature of the kitchen is its panoramic view of the ocean. The view through the dining room’s sliding glass doors not only makes cooking more enjoyable, it visually enlarges the relatively small area.

Although Kang does not cook at home every day, he said he enjoys cooking special celebratory meals for his family and friends.

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Antonio Cagnolo also prefers putting his home cooking time into special-occasion meals.

“I don’t cook often, but when I do I like to do something a little bit different, something like I used to do in Italy,” Cagnolo said.

Cagnolo’s kitchen in his Newport Beach home is spacious and beautiful, replete with skylights, a center island with burners, a built-in chopping board and cabinets full of ingredients. “I bought the house for the kitchen,” he said.

Even though the kitchen is completely modern and handsomely redesigned by Cagnolo himself, there are no restaurant ranges or special equipment, and he scoffs at the idea of having them. The changes Cagnolo made were staining gray the wooden floors of the 40-year-old house, adding arches at the entrance and creating an Italianate fireplace enlivened with trompe l’oeil . Cagnolo also added a bas-relief figure to the fireplace to make it resemble those in some Italian palazzos.

Because everybody ends up in the kitchen at most of his dinner parties, Cagnolo has provided stools around the kitchen’s island. There is also built-in seating near the windows.

“I believe if you make a traditional meal, you’ll never go wrong with that. I’ve seen all the trends come and go. I grew up very simply, and I like to keep things simple.”

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Doing things in a traditional way is also important to Audrey Heredia.

“I really love to cook for my family and friends, so when I designed my new kitchen four years ago I really made it my dream room. In fact, not a day goes by that I don’t feel thankful for it.”

Heredia’s Tustin house had a small kitchen, so when she decided to redesign it she enlarged it into the living room area. “In my small kitchen I felt secluded. I think that eating and cooking food is a time for sharing, and I wanted my family to be a part of that.”

The new eclectic kitchen reflects all the family’s interests: Victorian objects from the McCharles house; country and contemporary touches, copper and pottery pieces and trees of life reflecting a Mexican heritage.

Heredia doesn’t like wall-hung cabinets because doors always seem to be left open. “I only have one wall-hung cabinet; instead I have a 10-foot cabinet with French paned doors that holds all my glasses and dishes and another French-doored cabinet that is a pantry.”

The 10-foot-square island in the center of the kitchen has a commercial Thermador range top, warming drawers and well-concealed venting at the top. “After working in the restaurant’s kitchen I knew I didn’t want a ‘wimp’ of a stove. Not for the way I cook.”

When Heredia and her husband and five children, their spouses and her grandchildren get together for the holidays, there really is a crowd.

“For Christmas dinner we couldn’t decide on what to have, so I made it all: ham, prime rib and roast goose with all the trimmings. It was wonderful, and everyone was able to taste a little bit of everything.”

Because Heredia’s husband is a contractor, they did all the tile and construction work in the kitchen themselves. There are 12-by-12-inch tiles on the floor; other tiles that size were hand cut into 4-by-4-inch ones for the counters.

One of the additions that Heredia is particularly proud of is a California cooler on the north wall of the house. “I grew up in California, so I remember houses having them.”

The cooler is a 2-by-3-foot screened cabinet that stands 8 feet high. It is vented on the bottom and on the top so cool air from below the house rises through the slated wooden shelves in the cooler. The venting acts as a flue and helps keep things such as potatoes, butter, and onions fresh.

Heredia’s spacious kitchen is finished off with a nook that holds a table and chairs and is a gathering place for her family and friends.