Kitchens of the Week: Chef Samin Nosrat’s Characterful Oakland Kitchens
by Fan Winston
If you, like me, were thoroughly charmed by Samin Nosrat’s whole-face smile and bottomless curiosity in her 2018 Netflix series Salt Fat Acid Heat, you’ll be delighted to discover that her home kitchen in Oakland, CA, is as warm and joyful and unpretentious as she is.
The Chez Panisse-trained chef and food writer—her latest cookbook, Good Things, was released last year—lives in a small cottage in an urban compound of homes that share a courtyard (we featured the lovely communal setup in our 2022 book Remodelista: The Low-Impact Home). Her galley kitchen is tiny. There’s no marble-topped island, no walk-in larder, no appliance garage, not even a full-sized refrigerator.
Yet—it is here, in this humble, compact space right next to the stairs, where she creates delicious dish after delicious dish, often to feed loved ones. Her new book, subtitled “Recipes and Rituals to Share With People You Love,” speaks to this core ethos: cooking can be an act of generosity, a gift of your time and care and attention. You don’t need a Lacanche range to be a better cook or more engaged friend—just some well-designed, durable tools and a commitment to nourish your relationships.
Samin’s kitchen isn’t fancy, but it’s not lacking in style. Far from it. “Beauty and utility is sort of my personal design motto,” Samin tells us. Let’s take a tour—of both her cozy home kitchen and her nearby sparkling-new test kitchen.
Photography by Aya Brackett.
Home Kitchen
Above: Her favorite things in the kitchen? “I love my little custom-made speedrack for half-sheet pans! It triples the amount of horizontal space I have in this tiny kitchen. I love all the windows, and the apron sink is beautiful,” says Samin. The European-style dish rack in the corner was custom-made by Michael Mellon.
Above: “I always grow shell beans, even if it’s not the most efficient use of a small garden space, because I love them and they fill the garden so beautifully. Most of these seeds came from Franchi.” Samin collects wooden bowls from vintage shops and flea markets. “My favorite local spot is Talisman Antiques in Oakland. I also have one new bowl from Holland Bowl Mill,” she shares. A girl after our own heart, she uses a plastic-bag drying rack so that she can wash and reuse.
Above: Samin hung onion baskets on the wall to store ingredient staples. She purchased them from Remodelista favorite Sugar Tools in Maine.
Above: “My love of splatterware was inspired by my friend Greta Caruso’s collection. It was through her that I learned about the Fasano family in the town of Grottaglie in Puglia. I hunt for it on eBay, Etsy, and a few obscure Italian websites. I also have a few pieces from (RIP!) March in San Francisco.” (The beloved store, another Remodelista favorite, shuttered last year.)
Above: The cutting board is from The Boardsmith. “I use it all day, every day for everything except raw meat (I use plastic boards for that since they are easier to clean), and we used it a ton when shooting the book.”
Test Kitchen
Above: “The studio kitchen is for work cooking (as opposed to home cooking)—recipe testing, developing, cooking (and some craft) projects, and for making large batches of things like jam. While it’s not huge by any means, it’s a bit bigger than my kitchen at home, and outfitted with some professional gear,” says Samin, who rarely leaves home without her sidekick dog, Fava.
Above: Samin collaborated with her friend, designer Meghan Dorrian (of Young America Creative) on the new cook space. The turquouise-green tiles are from Clé Tile. “I chose the color because a) it’s my favorite color, and b) it reminds me of the great tradition of Iranian mosaic tilework, specifically the mosques in Isfahan I visited with my grandmother 20-some years ago.” As for the smattering of gold tiles? “Im Persian! I love a little gold! I would have used more, but I could only afford 6 of the gold tiles.”
Above: “I’ve long heard about the superior BTU power of Blue Star stoves. This 6-burner model has a convertible two-burner grill and griddle, and you can adjust the height of the burners to give you precise control of the heat,” says Samin. On the stove is a Japanese copper tea kettle—”the first really nice thing I bought for my kitchen”—from Analogue Life.
Above: Samin loves hanging storage. A rail with S-hooks, installed just under the floating shelf, provides ample options for storing kitchen tools. “We had the metal worker who made the pot rack fabricate them for me.”
Above: Her proudest detail may just be the brass pot filler. “Ever since I first encountered one of these in a restaurant kitchen, I’ve wanted one in my own kitchen. It was almost symbolic, like a personal sign of my success, to have one of these. And it saves my back!”
For more cook’s kitchens, see:
- Kitchen of the Week: Practical Magic in Phyllis Grant’s Berkeley Kitchen
- Kitchen of the Week: A Locavore Chef and Landscape Architect’s Low-Impact Kitchen
- Work Smarter, Not Harder: 7 Tweaks for the Kitchen from Chefs, Cooks, and Cookbook Authors
N.B.: This story originally ran on November 6, 2025 and has been updated.
The Feeling of Home: Sommer in San Francisco
by Alexa Hotz
Before Sommer was a shop, it was a way of seeing. Founder Madeleine Shields had spent years working as an interior stylist before launching the project as an online shop in 2021. Following the birth of her daughter Romy, she envisioned a place built around what she calls “pieces of a home”—a thoughtful collection of furniture, clothing, jewelry, and objects by independent designers and brands.
The name reaches back even further: Shields was born in Norway before her family returned to California, spending nearly every summer visiting relatives along Norway’s southern archipelago. Those trips—and in particular the modest summer cottage her grandfather built there in the 1960s—became her earliest understanding of home. Sommer, the Norwegian word for summer, is less a reference to the season than to that feeling of return.
That vision first took physical form in a 250-square-foot shop in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights, opened in 2024 as a temporary experiment. This spring, Sommer found a more permanent home on Linden Street in Hayes Valley, in what was once a residential garage and later an auto repair shop. Working with designer Hana Mattingly of Innen Studio and woodworker David Flatow of Flatow Furniture, Shields transformed the simple industrial shell into a warm, quietly residential interior with custom cherry furnishings, polished concrete floors, and soft lighting.
Shields doesn’t see the space as complete. “I view our space like a home,” she says. “A space that will never be completely finished and will always be evolving.” The result is a jewel box of a shop that feels settled, but never static.
Photography by Eli Blanton for Sommer.
Above: Sommer is located at 327 Linden Street, an alley-like street in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood. The Sapele wood front façade and framing was done by the building owner, Sebastian Parker, who is also a woodworker and an artist, when he first converted the space from a residential garage into commercial use.
Above: Hanging in the window is a pendant by Danish glasssmith Silje Lindrup.
Above: Shields collaborated with Hana Mattingly of Innen Studio to maximize the shop’s footprints through strategic space planning, rendering ideas, selecting paint colors, and more. Shield’s husband, Will, did all of the construction alongside a single handyman—and installed all the lighting. “It’s a familiar affair!” she says. The pendant is the Ingo Maurer Knitterling Pendant. The rug is a Nordic Knots Avenue Rug in Walnut in a custom size.
Above: Shields and Mattingly designed the key store fixtures—desk counter, center table, and entry bench—originally in a much darker wood than what they ended up with. Flatow recommended cherry for its woodgrain pattern and warmth, which is what the pieces are made in and finished in a clear hardwax oil. The back curtains are Nordic Knots Grand Curtains in pale sand. The Charlotte Perriand Applique Wall Sconces were taken from Shield’s own living room.
Above: “We tested so many shades of white,” Shields explains who ultimately went with Benjamin Moore White Dove for its not-too-cold neutrality. The main challenge Shields was up against was a lack of natural light in a space with low ceilings. “We consulted with Tucci Lighting on our lighting plan and got some helpful pointers about where to place the track lighting. Our tight budget and quick timeline were also a challenge, but ultimately I think those limitations made us more creative.”
Above: The baseboards and bathroom door are painted in Benjamin Moore Delaware Putty in a high gloss finish. Shields originally sought out a yellow accent color but after testing a few, realized a beige was more suited to the limitations of the space. “I had seen quite a few homes photographed in Scandinavia with a high gloss accent paint, which is where the high gloss concept was pulled from,” she explains.
Above: The stainless steel rack was designed by Shields and and made by local fabricator Dylan Denicke of Friendly Fabrication. The concrete floors were existing and newly poured; Shields applied a grind and seal finish which is less intensive than typical concrete polishing “but offers a very similar finished look.” She then had the control joins filled with grey epoxy.
Above: Fragrance and jewelry are housed in a vintage Danish piece sourced from Far Out Finds in Hudson Valley, New York.
Above: Shields created a kitchen-like display space for kitchen and dining pieces out of Ikea Sektion for the base cabinets and a custom stainless steel counter from a fabricator in North Carolina. “Due to budget limitations we installed a white linen cafe-style curtain instead of adding cabinet fronts and intentionally kept the design simple so it didn’t feel overly cottage-y,” she describes. The shelf brackets were sourced on Etsy and painted to match the walls.
Above: A small changing room is designed with an Isamu Noguchi Akari 45A Pendant that Shields added a black tassel too. The mirror is from Crate & Barrel, the rug is an Etsy find, and the chair—by Norwegian designer Edvin Helseth—is pulled from Shield’s own dining room. The sconce on the wall is a vintage Swedish crochet lamp sourced on Etsy, available through Sommer later this year.
For more of our favorite shop interiors, see our posts:
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