Thursday, March 28, 2024 Mar 28, 2024
65° F Dallas, TX
Advertisement
Publications

Entertaining With Abacus’ Kent Rathbun

Abacus celebrity chef has created a Bluffview home perfect for parties, dinner guests, and "of course "cooking.
By Jennifer Davis Dodd |

Kents kitchen is sleek and simple”maple cabinetry, stainless steel appliances and trim, black galaxy granite counters, and travertine floors. I wanted the darkest natural stone I could find for the countertops, Kent says, because no matter what they tell you, every natural stone will stain to some extent. I dont want to have to fight that. To keep the look clean, necessary evils such as switch plates and outlets were made as unobtrusive as possible. I enjoy the details of this kitchen: the stainless trim and toekicks, the hidden outlets, the lights on dimmers. My kitchen is cool.

Entertaining with Kent Rathbun
Abacus celebrity chef has created a Bluffview home perfect for parties, dinner guests, and of course cooking.

He’s a celebrity chef; she’s a successful sales manager with Park Place Porsche. They meet, fall in love, and decide to marry. Which house will they live in? His house? The commute is too difficult for her. Her house? It’s a bit small. House hunting is fun at first, but they can’t find anything they like and they know what they like: modern design, an open floor plan that lends itself to entertaining, and a kitchen in the center of it all. That’s why Kent and Tracy Rathbun chose to design and build their first home together.

The result is a clean-lined, contemporary home with an open floor plan that is perfect for entertaining and a kitchen worthy of a professional chef at the heart of it all in other words, exactly what they wanted.

To refine and implement their very specific design ideas, Kent and Tracy gathered a strong team of talented people. They selected architect Michael L. Chandler and builder Steve Flansburg to translate their concepts into blueprints and schematics and rounded out the team with designer Francesco Buccieri and two of the people involved in the creation of Kent’s restaurant Abacus, Jennifer Johanson and Al Berger.

When the home team was complete, they went on a tour of Abacus, where Kent pointed out features of the restaurant he especially liked, reinforcing his and Tracy’s commitment to designing a contemporary interior geared toward entertaining. I’m very proud of Abacus,  Kent says. And I’m very pleased with its design. I took the team to the restaurant to show them that this wasn’t going to be the normal home-building project, that Tracy and I aren’t your average homebuilders. We’re both about entertaining, and it’s what I do.

Kent wanted the house to have strong Asian influences and incorporate feng shui principles that enhance flow and energy. His fondness for Asian design shows in grand strokes, such as the custom stainless steel shoji-screen doors that separate the media room from the larger living space, and small details, such as the exterior doors that are painted red to attract good fortune.

The Rathbun’s dining room table can comfortably seat 10 or serve as a buffet for larger parties. Tracy loves the Arne Jacobson chairs because they’re functional as well as attractive: The secret about those chairs is they’re stackable, she says. It’s so easy to get them out of the way during large parties. The painting is Mindy Collins Delicious. What else would you hang in a dining room? Kent asks.

The team adapted many of the best aspects of the restaurant’s commercial design to Kent and Tracy’s home. For instance, the Rathbun house has a lighting plan as well thought out and unobtrusive as any world-class museum. There are 110 low-voltage, recessed lights in the house, plus all of the other fixtures, Kent says. And they’re all on dimmers, so we can create any mood. Kent’s house also has three separate audio systems that control the interior speakers, the exterior speakers, and the home-theatre system. Controls placed throughout the house each have an infrared sensor, allowing Kent and Tracy to access the sound system by remote control from any area of the home.

And, of course, the professional chef had certain requirements for his new kitchen: I wanted the kitchen to be simple but workable. I don’t believe a chef needs to have every piece of equipment out there. I get by fine with a double-oven, seven-burner range with a griddle and wok station and my microwave. The kitchen is the center point of the home because, as Kent says, When you have a party, everyone ends up in the kitchen”even more so when the host is actually a chef. My idea was that when you walk in the front door and see the kitchen right there in the middle of things, you know you’re going to be fed some good food and have fun.

The Rathbuns interior certainly supports that expectation. Curves and angles abound, creating interest and energy. An abundance of large windows and well-placed skylights bring in natural light during the day and create drama at night when strategically planted, up-lit Japanese maples and bamboo capture your attention. When we began building the house, Kent says, I knew that we wouldn’t have a huge budget to blow on art, so I wanted a way to decorate the walls in the meantime. Framing a spectacular view through the windows is one way to do that

Part of that spectacular view is the backyard pool area, which Kent and Michael, the architect, envisioned as a glass of iced tea with a lemon-wheel garnish. The lemon wheel is a negative-edge spa that continuously spills water over its sides back into the pool. This isn’t a play pool, Kent says. This is a party pool. This is a pool for sippin margaritas. In Kent’s world, the backyard is just another entertaining space. So much so that he and Tracy sacrificed square footage inside the home for the pool and a second, outdoor kitchen specifically for poolside prep: If we’re entertaining outside, I love to serve backyard barbeque, salads and grilled meats and veggies.

Since they moved into the finished house last fall, the Rathbuns have hosted a number of parties, everything from small dinner parties with friends and private cooking lessons for his best customers to a wine tasting for 75 and their own open house, a four-hour event that saw 300 people pass through their home.

And what does a professional chef serve at home? Simple food, usually, he says. I do love to cook, but I don’t like to be at it all day. And it’s really not about the food. If you get the right mix of people together, people who want to mingle and talk and have fun, you could get by serving popcorn and hot dogs.

The dark wood floors were Tracy’s choice. I wasn’t sure about the ebony stain, Kent says, but Tracy told me to trust her, that I’d love it. And she was right. The living room’s fireplace surround is polished travertine marble. Designer Francesco Buccieri suggested adding the stainless steel bands. Kent dreamed up the angled display niches. The floor of the gas fireplace is covered in tempered glass pieces from Fire on Ice. Flames seem to dance over the glass, illuminating its contours.

Related Articles

Image
Politics & Government

Q&A: Senate Hopeful Colin Allred Says November Election Is ‘Larger Than Our Own Problems’

The congressman has experience beating an entrenched and well-funded incumbent. Will that translate to a statewide win for the Democrats for the first time since 1994?
Image
Hot Properties

Hot Property: This Preston Hollow Modern Has Limestone as Old as Dinosaurs

Designed by Todd Hamilton, the mansion features lots of organic elements, including a shell stone only found in Texas.
Advertisement