Watch Open Door | Inside Binging With Babish’s New Brooklyn Home & Studio | Architectural Digest Video | CNE | Architecturaldigest.com

Welcome back to Binging with Babish

where this week we’re t–

Oh, hey what’s up?

Architectural Digest, welcome to my home.

Do you have a key?

How’d you get i–

It doesn’t matter.

I’m gonna get changed,

it’s a little formal for showing you the house

but why don’t you meet me upstairs?

I’ll meet you around front, okay?

Let me get changed.

[chill music]

Ah, that’s better.

Come on in, it’s cold outside.

Come on inside, this is my house.

Welcome.

This is my first house.

I’m a first time homeowner,

I moved here back in April of 2020.

As you can see the place is really nicely designed,

and I didn’t do that.

When I heard that you guys wanted to come through,

I immediately started watching a whole bunch

of Open Door episodes.

And I happened across the one with David Harbor,

and he had this really like light sort of Bohemian style,

a lot of plants, a lot of light colors.

The things that I’m not normally very good at.

I like grays, and blacks,

and I didn’t want this to look too goth.

So he mentioned his designer by name in the video,

Kyle O’Donnell of Gramercy Design.

And I called up Kyle and he agreed to work with me,

and he’s done an absolutely beautiful job here.

Things that I never would think of or do myself.

Thanks, Kyle.

It’s a big house for a first house, it’s kinda crazy.

So I’m still gettin’ used to it,

but it’s basically six levels.

The top four levels are my house

and the bottom two levels are the studio

where I make the show, so we’ll check those out later.

They’re downstairs, they’re not as nice looking as this,

so lower your expectations.

This is the living room, living room slash kitchen,

slash dining room.

This was literally barren like two weeks ago.

[laughing]

We did a lot of this last minute,

’cause we knew you guys were coming.

So this for instance was not here.

This is a photograph from Balthazar,

one of my favorite restaurants that was

right around the corner from my old apartment.

This is where me and my girlfriend Jess,

who’s upstairs, went on our third date.

So that’s why we got the picture, I don’t know.

I literally Googled black and white French brasserie,

and this was the first image that came up,

and I thought it was so cool

that we contacted the photographer and we got a print.

It’s a fond memory, ’cause I hope I get to go back

to Balthazar one day because it was hard enough

to get a reservation, but the whole COVID thing,

forget about it.

[groovy music]

This is the living room.

We wanted to frame the television with plants.

We figured if we put enough plants around the TV

it almost be like we weren’t watching TV.

It’d be like the equivalent of reading a book

if we watch a show, you know what I mean?

It hasn’t worked so far, but it looks nice.

We like having plants around the TV.

Got this nice floating sorta shelf here below it.

And an inappropriate cookbook put out just for you guys.

I put that away when my parents come to town.

[upbeat beat]

Then this is the kitchen.

This is my personal kitchen, not where I make the show,

where I myself cook for myself and my loved ones.

I never expected to have a kitchen like this in my life,

so I’ve tried to take as much advantage of it as I can.

I made these caramels yesterday.

Would you like caramel?

Come on, yeah.

This is one of my favorite rooms in the house obviously,

because it is just such a cook’s kitchen.

It really is laid out beautifully if you like to cook.

This island sink is so great.

One of the banes of my existence is filling pots with water.

You can see, I love this.

This is one of my favorite things in the world.

That’s how you fill a pot very easily.

[laughing]

[water splashing]

Pretend I didn’t do that.

This is one of my favorite parts of the kitchen right here

is this unbelievable pot rack.

It’s takes like four months to get one of these pot racks.

And my designer, Kyle was insistent that we get one,

and I was like, Can we just get something off Amazon

that hangs on chains, and costs $150?

And he was like, No, you gotta get this.

And we waited four months to get it,

and it’s so gorgeous.

I just stare at it sometimes.

I have a cookware line coming out soon,

and all the cookware on the bottom

and every piece essentially has the logo stamped into it

which as you can see is my face,

and it has my glasses, and I just lost my glasses.

And I was terrified that the logo was just gonna be defunct.

‘Cause they stopped making these frames.

But luckily I found an old contact seller somewhere

and I ordered like five pairs,

and they’re all my Superman backup glasses, just in case.

So don’t worry, these aren’t going anywhere.

[funky music]

So this is the bar, we had this installed.

I’m super, super proud of it because it’s this really cool

antique mirror and then this beautiful, beautiful marble.

And then I asked that they paint the interior

Veuve Clicquot yellow.

[laughing]

And they put lights in there too

so you can really see the Veuve.

Oh, there’s my book.

How’d that get in there?

One of my favorite things about this kitchen

is that it opens directly out into the backyard,

as you can see.

So I’ve got easy access to my grills,

my smoker, and my lovely yard.

But let’s check that out later,

that’s how we’re gonna get down to the studio,

why don’t we go upstairs first.

Come on.

[upbeat music]

All right, so in here we have Jess’ office.

This is Jess.

Hi.

She’s got her cat.

This is Toulouse.

Like a super villain.

And she’s over it.

She’s camera shy.

So this is your office.

This is my office.

You wanna give them the tour?

Sure, don’t mind the cat fur.

So I do all of my editing, it’s absolutely wonderful.

Also I have my guitars, all of my things.

It’s just nice, and cozy, and yeah.

Oh, one really cool thing,

one of my favorite things in this room

is the signed Hamilton poster that Andrew got for me.

Of course, I have to have the Harry Potter collection

going back to the good old days.

[Andrew] It’s got it’s own shelf.

As it should.

Oh, and this also functions as a cat room.

Come here.

[Jess grunting]

This is Bucky, full name Buckwheat.

She’s probably very scared right now,

but we found her outside the studio actually.

And we couldn’t let her, whoops okay you can get down.

We couldn’t let her live outside in the cold

so we brought her in and yeah,

we did not intend to have three cats.

It was just supposed to be two.

But now we’re really a cat family,

I wouldn’t trade Bucky for the world.

Or the other two.

Or the other two.

No.

Whatever their names are.

Thank you very much for giving us a tour of your spot.

I’ll let you get back to work.

Thank you, I have a lot to do,

and I’m happy to have you guys.

[kissing]

[Jess laughing]

Bye.

[groovy music]

So that’s Jess’ office.

And then on the other side of the floor here,

this is where I hang out.

Ah.

[Andrew sighing]

LoveSac.

So this is the home theater.

This is something that I’ve always wanted my entire life,

since I was like eight years old,

I was like one day I wanna have a home theater.

So we issued having a guest room,

so we don’t have a guest room.

So if you wanna come and visit from out of town,

I’ll put a blow up mattress in here, no problem.

So this is where I come to play video games,

and blast movies, and lose a little bit.

There’s a lot of people like to talk

about winning all the time,

sometimes you gotta lose a little bit.

So this is where I lose.

So Jess got me this for my birthday,

this is one of my most treasured possessions.

It is a recreation of the painting from The Sopranos.

I love it so much.

And it’s just it frames,

it’s the centerpiece of the whole room.

[laughing]

This theater has a beautiful Southern exposure

but that unfortunately means

that it just gets blasted with a whole lot of sunlight.

So again, another dream from when I was a child,

motorized curtains.

Bond shit.

So normally when people come into my house

I forced them to watch Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

but I think something more appropriate today

would probably be like.

There’s no TV.

What?

I don’t watch TV.

Of course I watch TV.

Of course he watches TV.

What do you wanna watch?

It’s David Harbor.

Wanna watch some Netflix?

I watch some Netflix.

Let’s do it.

[David] There’s a projector up there.

Mine’s bigger.

Upstairs.

[upbeat music]

So this is the third floor.

This is my and Jess’ bedroom.

This bed and the side tables were already here,

so we just kept those.

But everything else was brought

into here by Kyle and Kristen.

You’ll notice several copies of The Connoisseur’s Cookbook

around the house.

This is the official Frasier cookbook,

both because I treasure it,

and because it’s the gift

that I’ve most received in my life,

’cause people know I love Frasier.

And speaking of Frasier

I was insistent that we get one of these.

This is an Eames classic,

it is the same chair that was in Frasier’s apartment

in the television sitcom Frasier.

♪ Hey baby I hear the blues a-callin’ ♪

♪ Tossed salad and scrambled eggs ♪

So here’s the sort of walk through closet.

These are floor pillows,

they weren’t here this morning, but I like ’em.

This is Jess’ side of the closet,

this is also Jess’ side of the closet.

This is a little bit of Jess’ side of the closet,

and this is my part of the closet.

And this over here where I keep my watches and perfumery.

There we go.

Cool.

Wish we had smell-o-vision cause that’s some nice stuff.

[upbeat music]

This is our bathroom.

It is the coolest bathroom I’ve ever had,

we’re bendin’ really.

I love this bathroom.

It’s got like a rainfall shower head in here,

it’s also got the horizontal sprayers.

You get so soaked in this shower, it’s crazy.

Which is what I look for in a shower.

And this really, really sweet super sink bathtub.

That I’ve only taken one bath in successfully.

[grunting]

Because it leaks, it doesn’t hold water very well.

We’ll fix it eventually.

[laughing]

[jazzy music]

Up here on the top floor we have the gym.

This is where I try to work off

all the things that I cook downstairs,

or at least make my best effort

which is generally not very good.

The bar, the ballet bar is obviously for me.

I don’t like to show off, but I’m very flexible.

I’m kidding, this is for Jess.

She’s a former professional dancer

so she likes to do ballet barre workouts.

And we just do yoga,

and this is where we try to stay fit a little bit.

Try, emphasis on try.

[upbeat music]

Why don’t we go check out the backyard

and then we’ll see the studios downstairs.

Cool?

Come on.

[door sliding]

So this is my back patio.

This is where I get my grillin’ and chillin’ done.

I’ve got a gas grill over here,

I’ve got a smoker over here, a Traeger.

And then I’ve got a pizza oven down here.

Ooni is a sponsor and a friend,

but also they make really good pizza.

And it’s just really nice to have an oven

in the backyard that gets up to 932 degrees Fahrenheit.

Well, let’s go downstairs,

check out the rest of the backyard.

So this is the backyard proper.

This is a rather dead looking plant,

but the rest of the garden is very much alive.

We had landscaping done by Matthew Placek.

He’s a very, very talented guy.

He came in here and he did all this in like two days,

like unbelievable,

I’ve never seen anybody work so efficiently

and so beautifully on anything.

And he made this really nice little oasis

that we have back here.

You’ll notice that there’s a little smokey joe,

a little barbecue grill here in the fire pit.

And the reason for that is that the home builders

when they built this place,

they didn’t put fire safe concrete in the fire pit.

They just put some bricks up and called it a fire pit.

So when we tried to have a fire in there

it started exploding.

Like the concrete was shrapnel goin’ everywhere.

And so now if we wanna have a fire in here

we have to put it in the grill.

[laughing]

But it’s quite chilly out right now.

So I’d invite us to go inside and check out the studio,

follow me on my morning commute won’t you?

[chill music]

So this is the office, also decorated by Kyle.

I’m kidding, that’s the kill me if I said that.

[laughing]

It’s not been decorated, it’s a mess.

This is how I actually am, this is the reality.

It’s the mess.

This is my desk, this is where I lay down the voiceover

for the show and my wildly underpowered editing rig.

I gotta fix that.

Shoulda done that before the AD shoot.

[upbeat music]

And this is the BCU studio.

This is studio A.

This is where I make my show.

This is the original table I’ve had

since almost the beginning of the show,

it’s a Boos Block, it’s on Amazon for $300.

This is the oldest tool that I probably have.

This is my stand mixer.

I’ve had this for goin’ on 11 years now.

And you know, Kitchen Aid’s are built to last

so it’s probably the oldest object that I own.

This is the bar, which is normally very well-stocked,

but we should probably be brand safe am I right?

This is the faux fireplace.

We had a fake fireplace here ’cause this was supposed to be

a rental unit and they put some

crappy electric fireplace in here.

We ripped it out and found a real original fireplace.

This building was built in 1901,

so this guy is like over a hundred years old

it just made like a dusty noise when I.

[laughing]

[hitting wall]

Oh shit.

This is my twin Viking oven.

I’ve always wanted to have two ovens,

and now I have three, there’s another one over here.

This is a storage rack with just absolutely anything on it.

This is just where we shove stuff

when we don’t know where to put it.

So we have candy pumpkins,

like seven different jiggers,

which what does that say about me?

I have about as much of an organizational system

as a child does with their toys.

So, that’s how we have things laid out up here.

And now if you wanna see the real disaster

we have to go down to studio B, follow me won’t you?

[upbeat beat]

So this is studio B,

or at least it was ’cause right now it is,

as you can see in shambles.

The hot water heater was installed legally

in this house before we moved in.

So we’ve had to do massive repairs to try and fix it.

You can see there’s a bunch of holes

punched in the ceiling here,

’cause they’ve been trying to find where the problem is.

And they’ve discovered that the problem is everywhere.

But this normally is studio B.

This is where we have new creators,

and new faces joining the channel.

This is the sort of multipurpose studio

where people can come and make new cooking content

for the channel.

Normally it looks a lot nicer than this, I promise.

The main difference with the kitchens that we have down here

versus my kitchen upstairs

is that’s it’s gotta be sort of outward facing.

That’s not usually a way that

most home kitchens are designed.

We need to be able to cook, and prep,

and just present facing outwards.

And we need to have the ovens in the back,

everything has to be sort of designed with filming in mind.

But I designed these spaces because I’ve been

making the show for about five years now

so I knew what I was looking for in production spaces,

and I knew what we were gonna need.

And if you’ve seen my studio,

you’ve seen that I’m quite disorganized.

So I’ve made plenty of mistakes.

So we’re learning as we go.

That’s the YouTube way.

We make mistakes, and we show them,

and then we learn from them.

[upbeat music]

So I’m really happy you guys were able to come out

and check out my house.

The reason I wanted to show you

is because everything you see here

is a direct result of your support,

and your watching my show,

and having lifted me up in the incredible way that you have.

You’ve given me my dream house, my dream job, my dream life.

And this was just an opportunity to show you

what you’ve given me,

and to say thank you from the bottom of my heart.

So thank you guys for watching,

thank you AD for coming out,

and hey, you know, come back any time.

Watch a movie, watch Spider-Man.