I Bake 100+ Pastries At A Time In My Small Apartment (And These 6 Kitchen Rules Make It Possible)

After working in professional kitchens in New York City for three years, I wanted to create an environment without the typical budget and staffing restrictions of working in a restaurant or bakery. I was eager to start experimenting with my own taste and stretching the muscles built while cooking other chefs' recipes. The pop-up scene in New York took a big step forward during the COVID-19 pandemic as restaurants closed and chefs needed an opportunity to showcase their work.

Now, with restaurants back open and diners taking their seats, food pop-ups are being welcomed into some of the most acclaimed dining rooms in the city. These six tips for maximizing my kitchen space became essential to operating Guest Check out of my kitchen and are equally helpful for any home cook who’s tackling a simple weeknight meal in their too-small kitchen or a dinner party for twelve. 2.



Get a head start on dishes. It becomes very easy for any kitchen project to become about the pile of dishes that are stacking up in your sink, especially when you suddenly need the mixing bowl that is at the bottom of the pile. I don’t have a dishwasher, so a lot of the time I spend in my kitchen is with dish soap and a sponge.

I do my dishes as I go, mostly because I’m reusing kitchen tools for multiple different projects during the day. 4. Buy less, shop often.

While I wish I could have seven different types of mustards decorating my refrigerator shelf, the fact of the matter is that I don’t have the room. My veggie drawer has room for lettuce, a cucumber, and some peppers, even though I wish I could add radicchio and fennel to the mix. Because I lack food storage space in my kitchen, I do several small grocery runs throughout the week instead of one big haul on Sunday.

Changes in space force us to adapt our behavior (and force the habit of buying less), but shopping often is one that I had to adopt when I moved into my space. Thankfully, I love shopping for groceries and I find that this offers me more creativity and spontaneity in my cooking practice. If you, like me, love to cook but have a smaller-than-ideal kitchen, what piece of advice did you implement that made cooking so much easier? Tell us in the comments below.

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