Bon Appetit’- Cooking Icon Julia Child’s Kitchen at the National Museum of American History

Julie and Julia, the movie staring Meryl Streep as America’s first television chef, Julia Child (1912-2004), highlights the career of the American-born chef who brought French cuisine to the American housewife and made it easy to create at home in the 1960s.

Child’s television career was  launched when in 1962 at WGBH, the Boston PBS station, when Julia Child was promoting her cookbook on one of the programs. On the show she prepared a classic mushroom omelet. Viewer response was so positive that she was asked to create a weekly cooking show. And that’s how The French Chef, Child’s famous cooking show introduced the country to the tall (6’2”), somewhat quirky, 49 year old Le Cordon Bleu cooking school-trained chef.

Her initial credibility was built upon her easy-to-follow two-volume, 800-page French cuisine cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, published two years earlier.

Her television show ran until 1973, and then she returned with other cooking shows, including Julia & Company, Dinner at Julia’s,  In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs and Baking with Julia, plus others.  Many are still being broadcast today on PBS stations across America. Over the years, she won three Emmys.

One of her famous quotes include “I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate.” 

Her shows were not without the occasional disaster that gained her a place as a national icon and cult figure. She once dropped a potato pancake on air, and occasionally spilled or made a mess. But she never, as the rumors persist, dropped main courses on the floor, including rumors about a dropped chicken, a beef roast, and an entire salmon.  And she never stated after dropping the alleged chicken, “Your guests will never know.” 

She’s the author of 18 cookbooks, plus a biography and numerous cooking DVDs. My personal favorite cookbook of hers is Baking with Julia. (And I’m still trying to prefect the perfect French baguette.)

Julia’s cooking show was part of my weekend television schedule as an young adult. I must admit, I learned many basic cooking techniques from her instructional show and cookbooks, and (finally) learned how to create the perfect classic omelet from this episode of The French Chef (see below.)

Julia’s kitchen from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts was not used in any of her early television shows, until the 1990s.  Shows before that time used studio kitchens around the Boston area. 

Her now famous kitchen, where she researched many cookbooks, tested recipes and eventually recorded some of her later TV programs from is on display in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, as a lasting tribute to an American culinary pioneer, who also helped inspire me to want to learn to cook. 

The exhibit includes her famous 6-burner restaurant-quality stainless steel Garland gas range, that she purchased used in Washington, DC in 1956 for $495 (about $3,900 in today’s money).

Julia Child’s Kitchen
National Museum of Natural History
10th Street & Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20560 (map it)

Hours – Daily, 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Nearest Metro Subway Station - Smithsonian (use the Mall exit) – Blue and Orange lines or use the DC Circulator bus.

Parking – Limited metered street parking is available in the area.

Images – Flickr – kitchen, pot rack

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