Tech entrepreneur Fasie Malherbe, founder and chief executive of health and nutrition platform Feed Me Seymour, says he doesn’t do “things”. He doesn’t care, he claims, about the car he drives, the watch he wears or the usual trappings of someone who has made millions selling their last business (“I don’t have a plane”). But, having trained as a chef, his weakness is a really fancy kitchen.
Designed by Italian brand Officine Gullo, it features eight ovens (plus a pizza oven outside) and is “an absolute masterpiece of a kitchen”, he says. It cost £600,000. “There’s that expression, to throw the kitchen sink at something,” Malherbe says. “Well, I did. It’s a very beautiful sink in this case.”
High-tech appliances that would impress professional chefs are increasingly finding favour in high-end home kitchens, with certain brands a marker of taste. The vibe of the most sought-after brands leans towards the industrial. Officine Gullo, DeManincor, La Cornue and Lacanche have similar, almost steampunk metal-framed panels and drawers. Bertazzoni has sleek, stainless steel ranges, while Sub-Zero & Wolf’s signature louvred grilles and red knobs are a byword in set design for “affluent homeowner” (tech chief executive Samantha has one in the Disney+ drama Paradise).
In real life, actor Sienna Miller has a Lacanche range in her 16th-century thatched-roof cottage in Buckinghamshire. Designer Tommy Hilfiger and actor Zoe Saldaña both have Officine Gullo kitchens; model Gisele Bündchen has a Sub-Zero & Wolf range cooker in her Los Angeles home, as does the actor Reese Witherspoon. Bastien Daguzan, former Jacquemus chief executive, has a La Cornue stove in his Marais hôtel particulier. A bespoke kitchen “is an interesting reflection of an owner’s personal taste”, says Alex Christian, joint head of Savills’ The Private Office.
Malherbe describes himself as a “bullish South African entrepreneur — I approach everything with fun and excitement”. Missing the wildlife of his home country, he searched for “the highest headcount of deer in the UK”, found it was Richmond and set about looking for a property. When he first viewed Drum House, designed by Sir Terry Farrell, “I couldn’t contain myself, it was magnificent; but there wasn’t as much [design] focus on the kitchen”.
A new Officine Gullo design, with marble surfaces and chrome cabinets, had a steampunk dynamic. Malherbe loves to host — he can seat 12 in the kitchen or more for a proper South African braai outside.
Kitchens used to be hidden out of sight for the wealthiest, part of “domestic offices quite separate from the family part of the mansion or house”, David J Eveleigh, author of A History of the Kitchen, says. “Even as recently as the 1960s, new houses had kitchens with a serving hatch.” Not so now.
Appliance company Sub-Zero & Wolf says it has seen a 10 per cent year-on-year increase in sales of its range cookers, which start from £18,000. La Cornue’s best-selling model is the Château 150 range, starting at €43,528 (excluding tax).
The price comes from — in part — the craftsmanship. Lacanche has been awarded the Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant distinction by the French Ministry of Economy and Finance for its commitment to craft; Officine Gullo is proud of its hammered brass hinges handmade using a 19th-century technique; DeManincor’s copper and zinc ovens are finished using traditional methods in its Trento factory, where five generations of the same family have worked.
They are made for customers used to getting every tiny detail they want. Lacanche prides itself on the “immense amount of customisation available”, says Constance Spicer, media co-ordinator at Fourneaux de France, the UK distributor of the brand.
Lacanche offers 21 cooker models while Officine Gullo has 56 standard matt colours, with bespoke colours and customisation available. But the right budget opens a multitude of novel ways to cook or store food, be it a £1,990 Lacanche wall-mounted rotisserie, an Officine Gullo whisky cabinet, which will make its debut at Milan Design Week next month, or an integrated DeManincor pasta cooker.
“Kitchen aesthetics are becoming more expressive to reflect the personality of the rest of the home,” Claire Dickinson, senior strategist at WGSN Interiors, says. These bold statements “introduce a sense of theatre into the kitchen”.
When it’s time to sell, the brands will make it to the particulars. Malherbe is selling Drum House to move back to South Africa — and his Officine Gullo kitchen is mentioned in the first paragraph of the £10mn listing with Savills. “I went absolutely mad with it, and it’s been so much fun,” says Malherbe. “Leaving it is going to be really sore.”
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