Hearst Castle - cooking without gas

Mr Hearst was a proper Californian, with a proper Californian fear of earthquakes. He had all the buildings at the ranch constructed out of steel reinforced concrete and he refused to have any gas in his kitchen. So, from when building started in 1919, everything had to be electric. Imagine this enormous kitchen bustling with staff, cooking to feed the huge staff of the ranch, as well as Mr Hearst's family and guests.


Pay no attention to the unattractive strips of "tour carpet." They aren't part of the original design. They're there to protect the ranch from the damaging feet of tourists like me and we were not permitted to stray from them at any point. As Russ told us, if we looked down and saw anything even vaguely attractive beneath our feet, then we were standing in the wrong place.

As in the rest of the ranch, there are realistic objects scattered about the kitchen to create an illusion that life is still going on as it did in the 1930s. Still, it's hard to imagine that this room was ever so quiet during the heyday of the ranch.

This is one of the sights that most impressed me during the entire tour: a wooden refrigerator produced by Frigidaire. Only the best for Mr Hearst. Russ told us that the fridge was kept stocked especially for raiding by guests in the night.

There are amazing little details even here in the kitchen. Check out the taps on this kitchen sink!

This was definitely a commercial kitchen. A lot of the heavy equipment looks positively industrial. This is not a room for home cooking, it's a room for manufacturing food.

Of course the food they manufactured here was unusually good. Even the fake food looked pretty good, right down to the pretend lobsters.

Almost all of the food served at the ranch was produced on the grounds. The meat and poultry came from the Hearst herds. So did the dairy products. Fruit was grown in the orchards and vegetables in the gardens on site. Speciality foods were imported in bulk, but the majority of the food on the table was genuine Hearst fodder.

The tradition continues in a small way. There are still Hearst herds on much of the land around the ranch and Hearst branded beef is on sale in the visitor's centre. I didn't buy any. It wouldn't have been the same cooked in any other kitchen.