A few years ago, my family and I were lucky enough to build a home on the Island. We hired a reliable builder, a lifelong friend who produced a Vineyard miracle: we moved in six weeks early and under budget.

Though there are a few tiny things I would like to change, I love our new home, especially the kitchen. The house was designed around it. Since I cook a lot, and it’s how I make my living, my big requirement was no isolation. I want to work or cook dinner and be part of everything. I want to talk to our boys while they do homework or draw a picture. When we have guests over, I am there with everyone, socializing and sautéing at the same time.

I think the best part of my kitchen is all the counter space and the counter tops themselves. They are made of Indian soapstone, which is a bit darker and harder than Vermont soapstone. Indian soapstone is virtually indestructible. Without a thought, I can move a scorching hot pan from the oven or stove top and set it down anywhere. I’m not a big gadget person, either. I use my cast-iron pan, my Japanese knife, and my Microplane (a type of grater).

The new kitchen up and running, I asked a collection of talented Vineyard chefs – restaurant, catering, and private – to let me into their own homes and show me their own favorite kitchen spaces and tools.

Jaime Hamlin
V. Jaime Hamlin and Sons, catering

Jaime Hamlin of Vineyard Haven is, by several measurements, the best-known and most-traveled caterer on the Vineyard. In 1976, she joined Carol Brush as a chef and converted the old Martha’s Cheeses food shop into Martha’s Restaurant on Main Street in Edgartown (where Alchemy is now). With Raymond Schilcher, her husband at the time, she ran Feasts, a specialty food store, in the space now used by Lattanzi’s Pizzeria. Feasts moved to Chilmark, and Jaime and Raymond moved to Oak Bluffs, where Jaime catered out of the Oyster Bar kitchen. Now Jaime works out of a commercial kitchen at her home in Vineyard Haven, where V. Jaime Hamlin and Sons caters weddings, cocktail parties, and birthday parties for a former president of the United States.

Jaime and her team cater as many as seventy events a season. By late October, after the last bride and groom are happily fêted and fed, Jaime can slow down and enjoy time at home. With winter comes the time of year for comfort food: meals that cook slowly, filling the house with good smells and warmth.

One day not too long ago, Jaime and her “spousal equivalent,” the artist Bill McLane, got sucked into Showtime Rotisserie, an infomercial for the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie, which they bought and use often. It’s like a toaster turned on its side, and it roasts foods evenly and well. “It’s amazing,” says Jaime. “You stuff a chicken with onion and half a lemon and rub the outside with crushed garlic, olive oil, and salt and cook it for an hour and fifteen minutes. The house fills with this wonderful smell. You go on with your life, and a little later, Presto! Dinner is served. A perfect golden juicy chicken, just like on TV.”

Gina Stanley
ArtCliff diner, Vineyard Haven

After working as a chef in Washington, D.C., for seven years, Gina Stanley went in search of something new in 2000, and bought what was then a rather ramshackle diner, the ArtCliff on Beach Road in Vineyard Haven. She transformed it into an Island destination for good food. You often find Gina in the kitchen creating specialties such as bull’s-eye eggs with a codfish cake, greens, and spicy hollandaise, or smokin’ in the shower – a bagel with smoked salmon, tomato, onion, and cream cheese.

But Gina is not all restaurant. She enjoys gardening and loves the 1900 home she is restoring in Vineyard Haven. She appreciates the old ways of doing things, and her kitchen reflects this ethic. In it you find a large, old porcelain sink, a small original wood counter with just a mortar and pestle, a loaf of bread, a jar of honey, and some good salt. The only newer piece is her Viking stove and hood.

Her favorite part of her kitchen is the walk-in pantry, original to the house and made of pine and bead-board. It is not a huge space. But there is a large window admitting a great deal of natural light, which makes it seem larger than it is. The pantry is filled with photographs of family and friends, antique milk and juice bottles, and hand-blown glass bowls and other pieces of artwork from Glassworks in West Tisbury. The shelves are filled with cookbooks, spices, salts, and antique kitchenware. “It’s like I have a little altar, a real living space in my kitchen,” says Gina.

Perry Ambulos
Truly Scrumptious, catering

Perry Ambulos’s love of food comes from his family. His grandparents owned restaurants in Connecticut, and it was his Greek grandmother who influenced his tastes in food. She used to make phyllo dough from scratch, which she turned into excellent spanakopita, a traditional Greek pie filled with spinach, feta cheese, and spices. Another favorite was her lamb, always marinated in fresh herbs such as marjoram, rosemary, and thyme, with lots of fresh garlic and lemon, then cooked over fire. But even with this compelling background in food, Perry didn’t embrace life as a chef right away.

In the early 1980s, he was majoring in applied-math economics at Boston University. One summer he and a friend decided to go to Nantucket to start a moped-rental business. They didn’t have enough money to get to Nantucket, so they took the ferry to the Vineyard instead.

After a summer in the moped trade and a stint bumming around Europe and the Middle East, Perry returned to the Island. He began working as a dishwasher and breakfast cook at the Black Dog Tavern in Vineyard Haven. He moved on to the Ocean View Restaurant in Oak Bluffs, and Savoir Fare in Edgartown. Eventually he landed in Washington, D.C., where he married his girlfriend Mary Kuh and honed his skills at Restaurant Nora, the first all-organic restaurant in the nation, which featured multi-ethnic cuisine. In the early 1990s, Perry and Mary moved back to the Vineyard, where they opened Truly Scrumptious, now a full-time catering company, which also serves meals at the East Chop Beach Club in Oak Bluffs.

At home in Chilmark, Perry loves to cook with fire, as his grandmother did. He says that his favorite kitchen equipment is actually outside. “Nine out of ten meals I cook on the grill – spring, summer, and fall,” says Perry. He uses a regular old Weber, which he fuels with Connecticut hardwood. In Greece, he says, they use olive wood, which makes for the most delicious aroma and taste. In Chilmark, Perry lets the flame burn down and throws some herbs into the fire at the last minute. His favorite dinner? “Lamb marinated in lemon, garlic, and pomegranate molasses.” (No question what his grandmother would think of that.)

Job Yacubian
Bittersweet restaurant, North Tisbury

For many years on the Island, Job Yacubian was a chef and musician, spending his nights with his hands on a pair of tongs, plating grilled striped bass, then dashing off to a Vineyard bar – the Ritz, the Atlantic Connection, the old Hot Tin Roof – to play guitar. Eventually Job chose food over music, opening Bittersweet restaurant in North Tisbury with his wife Stacey Trevino in the spring of 2004. The name Bittersweet says it all – Job’s style as a chef is to combine the complex and the clean, the decadent and the simple. Bittersweet is one of the most popular restaurants on the Island.

 Among the benefits of working in a good commercial kitchen: loads of tools, equipment, and great food at your fingertips, as well as someone to wash your pots and pans. But after a long summer season in the restaurant, Job likes to come home to a simpler kitchen, and one of the simplest staples of them all: Shake ’n Bake.

For Stacey and their young son Jesse, Job buys pork cutlets, which have nice marbling throughout and are one of the few meat bargains at the market. After coating the pork in Shake ’n Bake, Job sautés it in a dab of butter and oil. He uses an old cast-iron pan and Microplane to make the dish. The Microplane does a beautiful job grating the garlic, ginger, citrus zest, and shallots for the vinaigrette he makes for the cutlets. “I’m cooking all the time,” says Job. “Shake ’n Bake is quick and easy. And you can do anything with it to make it interesting. It’s a great way to make use of ten minutes in the kitchen.”

Tom Engley
private chef

Tom Engley was born in the old hospital in Oak Bluffs and grew up in Vineyard Haven. Tom’s grandfather Bill Andrews once owned a barbershop on Main Street in Vineyard Haven, now home to Café Moxie.

His grandmother Edna Andrews was born on Cuttyhunk and later settled on the Island. Edna wrote the Island column for the New Bedford Standard-Times. His grandmother, Tom says, was a gossip and “not very nice, but a great cook.” His love of food came from her and his mother Lucille.

Tom works as a private chef, which allows him to indulge his passion for food and spend time with his son Pete and wife Anne Evasick, owner of Island Entertainment in Tisbury. His favorite foods to cook at home are Pete’s favorite to eat – his famous quahaug chowder, ribs, pasta with pesto Alfredo, clams, lobster, and just about anything else from the sea. (At the age of nine, Pete’s tastes are quite evolved – and expensive.)

Whether cooking at home or for his clients at their homes, Tom is never without his “kit” – a collection of favorite kitchen implements. The idea came from his stint as a chef at the Black Dog Tavern about ten years ago, when he saw other cooks come in with their own collections of knives,  well-maintained and sharpened. His kit holds a favorite ten-inch Wüsthof chef’s knife, tongs, a lemon zester, a whisk, a lighter, clam and oyster knives, and an instant-read thermometer. His most durable tool is a filet knife, which he’s had to replace just once in the last decade. (The tool he replaces the most often is his Microplane, which gets a constant workout grating cheeses, lemon zests, and nutmeg.) “A carpenter wouldn’t show up at a job site without his tools,” says Tom. “I wouldn’t show up at a kitchen without my kit.”