Recently, Dwell Magazine featured a Southern California home with the tag line reading: “A storied 1980 party house enters a mellower chapter of intimate gatherings filled with canapés, crooners, and cocktails”…needless to say, we were hooked already.
Designed by Maurice McKenzie in the early 1980s, the home is now owned by Doug Paton and Stacey Chapman Paton and is a modern exercise in linear entertaining. The home was designed to be perfectly symmetrical with the kitchen and dining room in the center and the remaining 2 bedrooms mirroring off on the ends. Styled in a way that comes across as more Mad Men then opulent 80s, the decor reinvents ordinary rooms in unexpected ways (the kitchen is featured above and the bathroom is below..yep, that’s a bathroom).
The symmetrical layout was created to foster an environment for entertaining guests and now that mission is getting a second wind – so much so, that the Patons included cocktail instructions and a dinner recipe in their editorial. Their home is lovely, and if you’re like us and enjoy the voyeuristic pleasure that is Dwell Magazine, you can check out the full pictorial here and read about the home’s somewhat checkered past here.
Mainbrace Cocktail
1 ounce gin
½ ounce Cointreau
½ ounce grapefruit juice
In a cocktail shaker, shake with ice, then strain into chilled cocktail glass.
Salmon à la Stacey
Pumpernickel points
Thin-cut smoked salmon
4 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon dry mustard
2 tablespoons sugar or agave nectar
2 tablespoons vinegar
1⁄3 cup olive oil
1 large fennel bulb chopped or one bunch dill Combine Dijon, dry mustard, sugar or agave nectar, vinegar, olive oil, and chopped fennel or dill in food processor to make mustard sauce.
Place a piece of smoked salmon on pumpernickel point; top with mustard sauce and garnish with fennel or a sprig of dill.
The Strangest Thing
Erik Madigan Heck x Mary Katrantzou
