Cookery Theatre

I built this cookery theatre for the food festival we hold in our village each year that my wife used to organize. Local companies wanted around £2000 for the hire of just the kitchen island for a day (delivered, assembled and collected), so the committee decided to make one that could be taken apart, stored and used each year and asked me if I would take it on. Along with the kitchen island, I also built the 16ft x 8ft scenery wall to act as a backdrop.

The kitchen island consists of 4 store bought flat pack base units that I assembled and bolted together. I then made a kick board and clad the sides and front of the units with MDF boards machined to look like tongue and groove panels. The four corner posts (which are purely decorative) are made from clear pine. The rear posts are screwed on from the inside, but I couldn't screw the front posts on from the inside, so they are each held on with 8 rare earth magnets. The worktop is 9ft of solid oak. I rounded the corners, chamfered the edges top and bottom and cut out the holes for the hob and pop-up electrical sockets. I used the hob cut out to make a chopping board.

The MDF panels, pine corner posts, kickboard and scenery wall are finished with duck egg blue kitchen emulsion and the oak worktop is finished with 4 coats of Danish oil top and bottom. The third coat was de-nibbed with a 320 nylon abrasive pad and the fourth coat rubbed out with a non-abrasive nylon pad.

Here are some photos of the theatre in use on the day. There were a number of shows throughout the day by 4 or 5 celebrity chefs and also a kids kitchen.

The cookery theatre is only part of the event. Here are some shots of the rest of the activities that were taking place outside. Last year was a gorgeous sunny day and we had about 10,000 people attending. This year was overcast with light rain for all but 4 hours and only about 4,000 people attended. Unfortunately the weather is the only thing we can't control so we just roll with it.

The town crier announced all the events throughout the day in olde English.