Mystery Lovers' Kitchen: kitchens

Sunday, April 6, 2025

Around the Kitchen Table: Peeking into our Kitchens + 4-Book #Giveaway

LESLIE BUDEWITZ: A few weeks ago, Mr. Right and I took a vacation to Hawaii, spending a few days in Hilo on the Big Island and wrapping up on Waikiki, in Honolulu, on Oahu. It was warm and wonderful, and I could regale you bite by bite with the food—my husband was beyond thrilled to eat ahi five times, four different ways, in nine days. It took me far too long to get my macadamia nut ice cream, but it was worth the wait. And oh, the glories of garlic shrimp yakisoba and a blood orange margarita with Hawaiian chili pepper salt on the rim, with Hilo Bay in front of us!

But the highlight of the highlights was having dinner with Leslie Karst and her wife Robin in their Hilo home, a 1930s plantation style house that is long on charm and brims with life and generosity. The kitchen is roomy and welcoming, and appears little changed over the decades. Leslie and I realized we’re probably the only two MLKers to have visited in one of our homes. That got me thinking about our kitchens, and inviting you in through the magic of pictures.

Double Leslies -- in Leslie K's Hilo backyard

Our own house started as a suburban box in the middle of the woods, but through two major remodels, the addition of French doors and a big deck, and a cabin retreat, it’s now quite different. We remodeled the kitchen and dining room in 2010, replacing the misfit cabinets – no cutlery drawer! (I swear the builder knew this was his last house and used every leftover cabinet and fixture in his shop.) I designed it myself, and we were deliberate about using local materials and handcrafted work, from alder cabinets to concrete counters the installer and I painted together, to the blown glass pendant lights and sconces. (Both counter and lights were inspired by a plate Mr. Right and I bought in France.) I still remember watching our friend the glass blower make the sconces. No, we didn’t have a massive budget—we were careful and lucky, and the space is small.

And 15 years later, I still walk in and love every inch of it.

Dining room table and the view outside, from the kitchen. Originally, the dining room was half the size and the rest of the space was a ridiculously large bathroom with one small window!

A closeup of one of the kitchen pendant lights -- a trio hang over the dining room table, and sconces in the same colors hang on the dining room wall.

The inspiration plate, found in a tiny shop in Avignon, France. We loved the colors and textures -- it feels like an abstract of a bougainvilla vine against an old plaster wall -- knew immediately those were the colors and the feel we wanted.

Blog sisters, show us your kitchens!

Readers, tell us what you most
love about yours—or a feature
you dream about.

🍦 🍧 🍍

LESLIE KARST: Oh, my goodness, was it ever fun to host Leslie B. and Mr. Right chez nous, here in Hilo! As she says, our house here is a 1935 Plantation-Style single frame construction home with its original kitchen--including built-in cabinets and a gorgeous (though now somewhat pitted) 1930s-era enameled cast iron farmhouse sink. I do love to experiment with local ingredients from the farmers market to create recipes for my Orchid Isle mystery series: bok choy, ahi tuna and mahi mahi, papayas, apple bananas, Japanese eggplant, wing beans, Maui onions, the list goes on and on...

in my Hilo kitchen

But Robin and I live half time in Santa Cruz, California, as well, which has its own benefits--including my beautiful kitchen there, with tile counters and floor and gorgeous wood paneling that the previous owner (from Lucca, Italy) remodeled back in the late 1960s.

cooking home made pasta
in honor of the previous owner

How fun would it be to have a series of Mystery Lovers' Kitchen dinner parties in each of kitchens around the country!

🌱 🍋 🌿

PEG COCHRAN: I've had several different sorts of kitchens over the years. I had two galley kitchens (that hubby and I both managed to cook in at the same time) in our NYC apartments. My two houses in NJ had smallish kitchens but we were able to shoehorn in a kitchen table (which our Bearded Collie nearly chewed the legs off of). It felt like such a luxury after our NYC apartments.

Then we moved to Michigan and had a house that had a huge kitchen. We swapped out the appliances for stainless steel, installed a new backsplash, added granite countertops and it was perfect with white cabinets, an island, a desk and a little bar area.

Now we have moved to a condo for ease of living. The kitchen is a lot smaller but it suits us now. We revamped it a bit replacing the appliances with stainless steel, a new sink, quartz countertops, a new backsplash and a slate floor.

Our kitchen table set for Christmas breakfast

I think this is after Christmas dinner

🍋 🍳 🍈

LUCY BURDETTE: Like Leslie K, we live in two places with two kitchens. The one in CT we designed and I love it. Lots of space for extra sous-chefs, and part of the counter is recycled wood from an old barn. The pantry is to die for. In Key West, we bought a condo designed and furnished by a single guy. It's long and narrow and all covered in faux stainless. Not what I would have chosen--it's a little stark but it's pretty and produces good food:). PS it does not look all neat and perfect like this IRL--in real life!

PPS I can't help sharing this adorable kitchen that was built by the brand new Key West Cooking School. I especially covet the turquoise appliances!

🌱 🍋 🌿

KORINA MOSS: Lucy, that Key West Cooking School kitchen is adorable! I'd love to copy it if I could renovate my kitchen. It is sorely in need of one. The last time I did a renovation was almost twenty years ago when I designed my dream kitchen. Here's a photo of my son giving it the thumbs up. It wasn't quite done yet--as you can see, it still needed the backsplash installed. Unfortunately, I don't know where any of the other photos of it are. (This photo was likely taken with a real camera, not on a phone.) And even more unfortunately, I only got to enjoy my dream kitchen for less than a year, because we ended up moving.

My next kitchen had a huge center island, which was very convenient for cooking and baking and reading the newspaper during dinner.

The kitchen in my current home is an alley kitchen separate from the rest of the house, which I prefer--it's easier to ignore the dishes piling up in the sink! Rather than show you a photo of that, I'll show you my favorite piece in the kitchen. I'd been looking to put something in this space at the far end between the windows that had been empty for almost a year and finally found this perfect little end table at a thrift store. I use it for my keys and mail, so I don't have to use up counter space.

🍲 🥘 🍲

MADDIE DAY: I love my kitchen, which I designed when we moved into this antique home thirteen years ago. Hugh gutted and rebuilt the entire inside of the house. In the kitchen, the white subway tiles fit the late-1800s age of the house. The backsplash got a contrast line of black, and I added pops of color with the mixer, the teakettle, and the utensil holders. The room has plenty of counter and storage space, room for several cooks working together, an island topped with antique wood from our previous home, and an over-sink window looking out on the back garden. The only thing I didn't get was a vertical cookie-sheet cabinet. Oh well!

We took down a wall between the kitchen and the sitting room, which makes the room much airier and lets me talk with folks at the table or sitting around the coffee table while I'm cooking.

And I even got built-in cookbook shelves!

🍳 🍒 ☕

MOLLY MACRAE: Our little old house has a little and very efficient kitchen. The people we bought the house from did a great job remodeling it, making use of just about every available inch of space in the 7’x11’ room - they even put in a vertical cookie sheet cabinet (I love it, Edith!). It'd be nice to have new countertops (so tired of beige Formica) and nice to have more counterspace. Maybe for a stand mixer? We could free up some room by getting rid of the behemoth microwave, but we bought that thing 41 years ago and it’s still going strong. Oh, the stories it could tell. Abandoning it now would feel like a betrayal. Give the countertops a few more years and they’ll probably reach that status, too.

☕ 🌷 ☕

CLEO COYLE: Marc and I live in a two-story red brick rowhouse in Queens, New York. The kitchen is small--and because we are constantly cooking (or noshing) in its tiny confines, it is stupefyingly cluttered! There are two (yes, two) refrigerators, a gas oven that is on its last legs, three types of coffee makers ☕ ☕ ☕ and multiple cats underfoot. 🐈 🐈 🐈

Our dream kitchen, it is not. But, after recently celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary, we can honestly say that we could not be happier cooking together in our fugly little kitchen. :) Rather than showing you the stains on the wall and the clutter on our counter, we have snapped two pictures of our favorite features....

Above is a pic of our packed (and supremely useful) spice shelf, which sits conveniently above the double stainless steel sink and ancient cabinets. And sitting on the bottle of white pepper in the middle of the shelf is our kitchen totem...

Why is Baby Yoda (aka "Grogu" in the Star Wars universe) sipping on a cup above Cleo Coyle's sink? Well, Marc and I loved our time developing and writing books tied to the second Star Wars trilogy for Lucasfilm (back when George was still running the show). We were Star Wars fans as kids, so having that experience was special for us. Our little "Baby Yoda" is a daily reminder of the great times we had at Skywalker Ranch. And reminders of good memories are always welcome. They're the very things that make a house (or a kitchen) your own. 🌷 ~ Cleo

GIVEAWAY!

To enter our giveaway, leave a comment on this post. What do you most love about your own kitchen—or tell us about a feature that you dream about.

Include your email address

so we may contact the winner.