The Studio’s commercial kitchen allows us to cook what we produce on site. The kitchen is an extension of Morrisette House and is separated from the original house by a dogtrot. The kitchen, certified by the health department, is off-limits to students (who have their own kitchen). The addition adheres to the age-old local practice of separating the main house from the kitchen to prevent the house from catching fire. We built the commercial kitchen with two-by-six-inch frame construction on piers. The gabled dogtrot, framing a beautiful grove of pecans, connects the Great Hall—the Studio’s main daily gathering space—to both the house and the kitchen. The tall cathedral ceiling is framed with plywood trusses.
We hired a local chef to run our kitchen two meals a day, three days a week, and the students in the 3rd-year studio even designed a diet inspired by food writer Michael Pollan and his “flexitarian diet.” The diet is based on the slogan: “eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”
