This annual tour raises funds for pre-school scholarships for families in need of financial help.
By Jody Stump/Special to The Malibu Times
Somehow, every year the good people of Malibu’s United Methodist Church manage to come up with an eclectic assortment of homes to delight and amuse the voyeuring masses who make the annual pilgrimage in support for pre-school scholarships for families in need of financial help.
Arranged by Kay Gabbard, director of the pre-school, the annual Cook’s Tour is in its sixteenth year of spotlighting four very different homes and the culinary talents of four equally different Malibu caterers.
This year’s tasteful selection ranged from steel bones modern to lush contemporary and dreamy ranch to Mediterranean `a la mode. One visitor called the tour, “Awesome,” described the sampling as “one home I would kill to own, one I’d like to live in and the one I want to tell my high school classmates is mine!”
The house he’d “kill to own” was Heather McKay’s home in Las Flores Canyon, designed by Malibu’s own, very stylish architect, Ed Niles. McKay lost her home in the devastating 1993 firestorm and chose to rebuild one that seems to soar from the ashes. With steel beams thrusting at angles through glass and stone and a three-story collage of charred fragments molded into a rising angel, the house is an eloquent testament to survival. FOOD INC, the caterer serving in McKay’s kitchen, produced a tasting menu as light and creative as the house: “Malibu Ceviche” flavored with grapefruit and a delicate Chinese chicken salad. Claudia Taylor graciously supplied the recipes in the tour’s souvenir pamphlet.
As his house “to live in,” there were two. The choice would depend on whether you shared your home with a passel of active kids. The Clunies-Ross house in Malibu Park was as homey as “Ozzie and Harriet,” amped up to a new millennium, a feeling intensified by the sounds of swing from Malibu High School’s jazz band. Tour volunteer John Salida called this nostalgic ranch house, “A celebration of children,” citing the cloud of white feathers dangling in the girl’s room and the daily school art hanging from rods in the hallways. Marlene Branch called it, “Friendly and relaxing.” It was the great outdoors that generated the greatest lust, from an in-the-ground trampoline I personally covet to a professionally styled skateboard ramp and party-sized tree house; the entire garden was simply a beautiful children’s paradise. No surprise-the food offered was child-friendly fare: pizza and Caesar salad from Tradinoi.
A full-leg cast, heavy as concrete, kept me outside the Pieper home on Zuma View, so I contented myself with interviewing Cook’s tourists as they emerged, still munching Richard Chesterfield’s airy, light and crunchy samosas.
From the outside, a very handsome Tuscan-yellow Mediter-ranean, viewers’ comments all bore witness to exceptional attention to detail on the inside. Inez McGee from Point Dume loved the “fabulous cabinetry-great knobs and sconces,” and Letitia Aloi was amazed by the pot-bellied stove and triple-headed shower fixtures in the master bath, “enough for a mnage `a trois.”
Here, Sir Richard’s House of Curry outdid itself with two curries; an addictive buttery, spicy-sweet fruit curry from Madras and a tomato-based curry with punch in the style of Marsala. Recipes are available by e-mailing: malibuwayoflife@aol.com.
Rod and Sandra Campbell own the home to brag about, although they are much too nice to do so.
It’s a contemporary stucco, designed by Malibuite Mike Barsocchini and finished in that luscious shade of white I associate with vanilla ice cream bought on Paris’ Ile St. Louis. Rich and creamy with thick walls and softly rounded corners, this exquisite home was the dessert of our tour, accompanied, appropriately enough, by luscious pastries from Champagne, Malibu’s own Parisian patisserie.
As impressive as the outside is-and the three-hole golf course packs a wallop-entering this home is an experience akin to entering an altar to the wonders of Malibu.
The massive bronze doors were custom-designed by famed Italian sculptor Augusto Ranocchio to highlight the owners’ passions: golf, wine and very fast cars. Floors are a sandy limestone and the ocean spreads out in a wide ribbon of aquamarine seen across a sunken living room.
Visitors look down and across exceptional landscaping in which a lapis-blue infinity pool is carved into chunky layers of limestone. Add a few spiky palms and the drama is complete. Awestruck, I heard whispered comments like, “Magnificent,” “Impeccable” and “Fabulous art,” and came home swearing I would buff my floors and borrow a few of the humblest touches to tune my home.
Yes, the joy of this always sold-out day in the ‘Bu is less the vice of greed than the twin virtues of hospitality and gratitude.
I am inspired by the generosity of these homeowners and all who produce this heart-warming event, year after year, in order to give a few dozen youngsters a stronger start in life, to open my home and heart a bit more.