House Call: Joan at Home in LA

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When Julie and I head to LA to check out the design scene and visit our favorite haunts, our inevitable first stop is Joan’s on Third, which you might describe as LA’s answer to Dean & Deluca. Over the years, we’ve gotten to know Joan (she’s a Remodelista reader, perusing our newsletter every day and calling us on our cell phones when she’s got something to say).

Joan has lived in an industrial chic loft a couple of blocks from Joan’s on Third for nine years (the ultimate walk-to-work situation). The store predates the loft— in 1995, Joan began what started as a small catering business when West Third Street was not yet a destination. Although a West Coaster now, Joan McNamara grew up in New Jersey in a Czech family, and learned to cook from her mother—by the age of eight she could whip up a full dinner. Her early working years in New York combined her two passions: design and cooking. She was the office manager for modern furniture and industrial designer Paul McCobb and then went on to work for Dione Lucas, the noted English chef who was the first female graduate from Le Cordon Bleu. (She tells us that Dione taught her the secret of a great pie crust, “it’s all in the fingers.”) Her restaurant and loft share a similar look: clean, neutral tones decorated with plenty of antique and vintage finds. As Joan tells us, “I’ve collected so many special things over the years. I love antiques shops and flea markets.”

Photography by Laure Joliet for Remodelista.

Above: Joan, always clad in black, at home in her loft. Her favorite pastimes? “Reading cookbooks, making lists, and baking bread on a rainy day in my loft.”

Above: The marble-topped kitchen island. Joan prefers a neutral palette of white walls, gray concrete floor, and warm dark wood tones. Colors come from “family photos of children and grandchildren, fresh flowers, my cookbooks, and food in the kitchen.”

Above: Joan counts a white farmhouse sink as one of her kitchen essentials—this one is a Kohler Gilford. Other crucial elements are her mother’s wooden spoons, an omelette pan, and an original design Kitchen Aid mixer in white.

Above: A row of copper pans lined up on a GE Monogram stove that came with the loft (industrial Wolf ranges are what she has at her store). “Cooking at home is something I love to do whenever I’m not at work. Sometimes I experiment with new ideas and bring them to Joan’s on Third.”

Above: A drawer full of white ramekins used for cooking sessions with friends. Joan explains, “At home, I love to entertain and host the Spoons, a wonderful cooking group that I’m a part of. We’re a group of professional chefs who get together about once a month to cook together and chat and drink wine.”

Above: Hand-carved wooden spoons, passed down from her mother.

Above: The dining table is from Bourgeois Boheme in LA and Joan believes it was originally a wine maker’s table. It’s extremely narrow—29

House Call: Joan at Home in LA