Out of the Frying Pan

Last year around this time we were invited by friends to a vacation home in Watercolor, Florida. The house was not theirs, but one to which they had the keys as a business perk of some kind. Like all the vacation homes in Watercolor, apparently, this one was enormous, with three stories, sleeping quarters for sixteen, half a dozen bathrooms, a living room the size of a tennis court, balconies in all directions, rooftop lookout bristling with weathervanes, and so on.

It was also luxurious. So lush were the furnishings, the fittings, the bedding, and the linens, that the whole setup seemed at odds with the reality of sandy children traipsing in and out in wet swimsuits, dragging fishing gear and clutching buckets of slow-moving arthropods harvested from the seashore, or worse, the lake. Indeed, the presence of said children in such a home was cause for considerable non-beachy anxiety on the part of the parents. After a couple of days’ residence, I began to fear for the damage deposit.

But in one peculiar respect, our palatial Watercolor redoubt was strangely ill-equipped: kitchen utensils. At first glance the kitchen looked fantastic—a six-burner Viking range, marble-topped island large enough to sacrifice a goat on, stainless steel everything. I love to cook for a crowd, so the prospect of several days with access to a kitchen straight from the set of Master Chef, plus a sixteen-strong captive audience, had me squirming with anticipation. But when I went in search of the simple tools that a home cook requires to make dinner, they weren’t there. Sure there was a juicer that cost more than my car, but was there a potato peeler? Nope. Twelve-slot knife block carved in the shape of a leaping manatee? Check. Paring knife? Sorry. Electronic wine aerator? Yep. Wooden spoon? Whisk? Cheese grater? Spatula? Fugeddaboudit. On our first day, as a “thank-you” gesture to our hosts, I came back from Goat Feathers Seafood Market with a gorgeous selection of fresh fish and plans to stage a maritime feast. But having searched the kitchen’s cabinets and drawers, I concluded that the available preparation options—using only a juicer, a butter knife, and an aspirational set of barbecue utensils that looked like Genghis Khan’s ceremonial weaponry—were somewhat limited.

That a beach house would be short on kitchen utensils is not in itself hard to understand. But given the opulence, you have to wonder at the economics. Are the house rental agents conspiring with the many (fine) restaurants and food trucks on the main drag, secure in the knowledge that after twenty minutes of trying to hack the lid off a tin of tuna using a monogrammed barbecue branding iron, you’ll give up and go out for dinner? Or maybe they’re getting kickbacks from the Publix supermarket, which features a kitchen-utensils aisle longer than some rural airstrips. Or are the well-to-do just as prone to pocket a half-decent potato peeler as the rest of us? Of course, if you do go so far as buying your own spatula while you’re on vacation, you’re taking it home with you.

Beach vacation rentals figured prominently in my own childhood, and one thing I remember well is my mother complaining loudly about the quality of the cookware. Most summers, my folks would contrive to beg, borrow, or, as a last resort, rent a beach house in some coastal fishing hamlet. These were never fancy: a rickety clapboard bungalow set back from the beach with a sandy yard, a dodgy septic tank, a couple of bedrooms for grownups, and a threadbare foldout couch for the kids to sleep on. Knowing that kitchen utensils would be mostly or entirely absent, my mother would always bring a cardboard box of openers, tongs, a strainer, and a couple of decent knives. For all her complaining, I suspect that one aspect of our summer beach trips that she secretly enjoyed was the challenge of making an interesting meal in a dinky, unfamiliar, scantily equipped kitchen. Camping or concierge, a getaway is still a getaway, no matter how grand the accommodations.

With summer coming, I hope that you manage to escape to somewhere special. If you do, for heaven’s sake pack a can opener.