INTERIORS : LITTLE SECRETS OF THE BIG CHEFS : Three Top L.A. Restaurateurs Cook in Surprisingly Small But Supremely Efficient Home Kitchens

NO DISHWASHER: Mary Sue Milliken of City Restaurant doesn’t own one. Nor does she have a garbage disposal, trash compactor, microwave or under-the-cupboard lighting.

In fact, Mary Sue Milliken doesn’t have any cupboards, and you could measure her counter space on one school-sized ruler.

But despite these little deficiencies--an apartment-sized refrigerator, an oven with a broken door--this well-known chef blithely cooks occasional dinners for six to eight people, with 100 guests every July 4. “I like to use my ingenuity,” she says modestly.

If you were expecting professional chefs to do their culinary homework in kitchens-to-die-for, you’re in for a surprise. Evan Kleiman of Angeli cooks on an apartment-sized stove. Lydia Shire, consultant to Langan’s Brasserie, says there’s nothing special about her home kitchen except for a Heller coffeepot and some nice antique bowls.

Even the kitchen of celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck isn’t so hot. “We just moved, and this kitchen is nothing,” reports his wife, Barbara Lazaroff. “I’m planning to spend $200,000 on remodeling in the next four to six years, but if you want the truth, it will be for me--I’m a designer, after all. Puck couldn’t care less.”

NOT EVERYONE is as minimalist about a kitchen as Mary Sue Milliken, but professional chefs seem to share the same thoughts about appliances and organization: Buy the best appliances that you can afford, and keep everything handy.

Bruce Marder invents the recipes for his two Venice restaurants, Rebecca’s and the West Beach Cafe, in his home kitchen with his two sons, Max and Dylan, perched next to the sink. (Marder is currently developing two more eateries, DC-3 at the Santa Monica Airport and a European-style delicatessen on the Santa Monica Mall.)

At the moment, Marder and his wife, Rebecca, are remodeling, turning the existing living room into a large dining area and adding a family room at the rear of the structure.

Marder’s kitchen is small, smaller even than the average household kitchen. “I don’t mind at all,” explains Marder. “A smaller kitchen is easier to work in--you’ve got your cooking line with a stove on one side, refrigerator on the other. You don’t want to do a lot of walking when you cook.”

A few years ago when originally remodeling the house, Marder designed the kitchen to suit his fancy. An indoor barbecue cost him $3,000--he’s still awed at the high price--but he got the design he wanted, a stainless-steel unit on wheels that sits next to the range and shares exhaust space with a custom-designed hood unit. Marder specified that the spaces between the steel grids on his grill should be as narrow as possible. “You can get it real hot without burning, it makes nice score marks, and small things like scallops won’t fall through.” The unit has a log lighter like a fireplace starter, a drawer to hold mesquite charcoal, and underneath sits a stainless-steel wastebasket on rollers to utilize space. When Marder entertains, he rolls the barbecue outside.

A great fan of commercial equipment--and with an indoor barbecue he needed a strong fan--Marder installed a restaurant exhaust system with easier-to-clean Teflon filters and a drip pan to catch grease overflow. He designed a stainless-steel hood inset with blue wire glass--”the last piece left in L.A.,” he claims.

Although he makes the kids cheese sandwiches on the grill, he bought a U.S. Range cheese melter to keep food warm and for glazing and toasting, although he admits that he seldom uses it. A U.S. Range stove top has S-grates which, unlike the usual star-shaped grates, are not raised. This way, Marder can slide pans over the top without worrying about tipping.

Under the range, which is welded onto hollow tubular legs, sits a Montague convection oven on casters. Marder doesn’t move this appliance; the casters allow him to roll it out and clean behind it. Marder is a fan of convection cooking. “The Montague cooks more evenly because of the circulating air,” he says, “and it doesn’t get hot spots like a household oven; I can do two turkeys at a time.”

Next to the Montague is a Marder-designed rolling work table with built-in knife rack and a blue granite top. On the other wall is an under-the-counter refrigerator and ice maker that turns out 25 pounds of small cubes at a shot. “We’ve got locks on all the refrigerator doors to keep the kids out,” Marder says, “and a wooden cutting board on top to give me more counter space.” Marder hangs his pots--”I’m very big on cast iron these days”--on hooks around the stove hood. And like any homemaker, he complains about a shortage of cupboard space, but with major appliances on wheels, Marder’s small space is surprisingly practical, even for a professional chef. “I don’t think you need a big kitchen--you just wind up looking around for things you need at hand,” he says.

MICHAEL McCARTY, CHEF and entrepreneur of Michael’s restaurant and others around the country, has stronger words: “I’ve been in 1,100-square-foot kitchens with every item Williams-Sonoma ever made, but the fact is that the day of the big kitchen is over. People are much more health-conscious and more into bringing stuff home and finishing it off. No one--not even professional chefs--slaves over a home stove like we used to. People just don’t eat that way anymore.”

McCarty tore down walls separating a den, dining room and kitchen to make one large area with a small--almost tiny--”cooking corner.” As in Marder’s kitchen, appliances are waist high. “Because you can see into kitchens nowadays, nobody wants to look at mondo- huge Sub-Zero refrigerators,” McCarthy says. Bending down to get the milk doesn’t seem to bother anyone.

McCarty and his wife, Kim, entertain large groups on weekends--sit-down dinner parties for 18 and sometimes as many as 75 people. “We do almost all our cooking on the outdoor barbecue,” McCarthy says, “and we often eat outdoors too, which makes it easier.” But with a 2-year-old daughter, Clancy, the McCartys also use their kitchen for breakfast. “We’ve got a toaster oven and a Braun coffee unit, the kind with a side for decaf and one for regular. They were wedding gifts--in fact, everything we own appliance-wise is a wedding gift,” he says with a laugh.

Most curious to McCarty’s friends is that until very recently he cooked on a G.E. electric double oven from 1972, which came with the house and which he had split apart to save space--”they said it couldn’t be done,” he says. Theoretically, professional chefs prefer cooking with gas, “but the bottom line is that if you’ve got heat and know how to use it, you can cook on anything.” McCarty recently traded in his halved G.E. oven for an electric Jenn-Air range with built-in grill.

MARY SUE MILLIKEN agrees with McCarty. Her ‘50s-vintage Western Holly stove was purchased for $50. Her Coldspot refrigerator was a discard. She does have an enormous Cue-Cart rolling barbecue, a gift from City Restaurant co-owners that she uses for major cooking.

Most important to Milliken’s tiny kitchen in the former pool house is organization. Knives are to the left of the stove. Pots hang above. Dishes are to the right on open shelves. (A cleaning woman washes everything once a week.)

Milliken actually enjoys cooking in a small space. Her favorite meal--when she and her husband, architect Josh Schweitzer, buy ingredients in Little Tokyo--is sukiyaki. “We drag our stools up to the range and eat directly over the stove while looking out to the pool.”