Recipe for a tidy, creative space
It’s safe to say that Kris Yenbamroong is more comfortable in a kitchen than an off ice. And it shows — his Night + Market restaurants made Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants last year and a new outpost is due in Venice this year. But when it came to his home office, it was a different game. A small room in the Silver Lake home he shares with his wife and restaurant manager, Sarah St. Lifer, serves as ground control for the business side of the restaurants, plus the writing of his first cookbook, on northern Thai street food, coming out in fall 2017 from Clarkson Potter.
The state of the off ice was chaotic — and quite familiar to anyone who’s tried to work from home without an initial investment of time, money and thought into what kind of environment will yield their best work.
“We have a lot of big projects in the works, and it was becoming clear that working in the same environment as before was just not working,” says Yenbamroong. “And isn’t that the definition of insanity, doing the same thing but expecting different results? I knew if I wanted to tackle bigger things I needed a space that was conducive to that.”
The solution came from Laurel & Wolf, an interior design start-up in West Hollywood. They paired Yenbamroong with one of their designers, Jessica Ruiz Lee, and had him fill out a questionnaire about priorities and preferences; he was then served back three styleboard options to choose from. “It was pretty similar to how I work at the restaurant — I lay out my goals very clearly so there’s no need to mince words or deal with any confusion,” says Yenbamroong.
The “after” is an airy, creative space that Yenbamroong has been keeping tidy months after the redesign.