The Dining RoomExploring the Design of Twelve Iconic Rooms in Search of the Perfect Dining Experience

John Ota has been involved with architecture and design since 1978, with degrees from Columbia University, the University of Toronto, and the University of British Columbia. His bestselling book The Kitchen was a 2021 Taste Canada Awards finalist and a 2021 Paris Gourmand Cookbook finalist in the book design category. After working in architecture in Toronto, New York, and Vancouver, John now loves to travel the world visiting historic houses, cooking regional food, and meeting people of all backgrounds.

John Ota

In his new book The Dining Room architect and historical preservationist John Ota blends his passions for history, architecture, and food in his latest book. Inspired by a personal family crisis that necessitated a celebration of life, Ota embarked on a global journey to study some of the world’s most iconic dining rooms. From the Morris-Jumel Mansion where George Washington gathered his cabinet, to the vibrant yellow dining room of Claude Monet and the culturally rich spaces of Frida Kahlo and Martin Luther King Jr., Ota examines how design facilitates human connection.

John Ota recently spoke with us about the modern notion that the “dining room is dead,” arguing instead that these spaces remain vital arenas for conversation, diplomacy, and intimacy…He also opens up about his love of Jell-o salads. 

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John Ota: Thank you very much for having me. I’m so happy and excited. It’s great. Thank

Booksaboutfood.com (BAF): If you don’t mind me asking, what did you take at Columbia?

John Ota: Oh, I took a Master’s of Science in Architecture and Historic Preservation Architecture. Yeah. So I had a very nice time. It was really great. So I really like history and historical buildings and food.

BAF:Well, first of all, I got to say congratulations on this book. It’s a very-

John Ota: Thank you. Thank you.

BAF: Clearly it’s a labor of love.

How did this idea come into fruition?

John Ota: Well, a couple of things. When I was writing the kitchen book, I would go around and measure these historical houses, like the Morris Jamel Mansion that I write about. And people would say the dining room is dead. The dining room is dead. I thought, God, that doesn’t sound very good. That doesn’t sound very positive. So I was always interested in the dining room because I always wanted to write about it. And then a couple years ago my wife had a stroke and it was very bad. And really I thought I might lose her in the first 24 hours. It’s quite a frightening situation. She started talking gibberish. I just thought, this is too much.What am I supposed to do? So I went to the head nurse. I said, “What’s going on here? What am I supposed to do? ” Head nurse just says, “Just go with it.

Just go with it. ” So I just went with it and we’re very lucky. She’s about 90% back to where she used to be. So it was such a terrible situation for me. So she had a significant birthday coming up. I thought, oh man, we got to celebrate. I mean, you just never know what’s going to happen. So I thought ‘we got to have a big blowout dinner party’. And so I also want to redo our dining room. So I want to revitalize the dining room. So I went out. I’m a little obsessive. I went out and started looking at other dining rooms, famous dining rooms around the world and I wanted to go visit them and visit the people who own those dining rooms and that’s what I did. So I went to the dining rooms of … They’re people who I really admire and where people love to eat.

And with your website, you have people who love to eat. So who is it? It’s Frida Kahlo. It’s the dining room of Claude Monet. I went to the dining room of Downton Abbey. I went to the dining room of Jackie Kennedy in 1962. So I went to all these famous dining rooms and looked at the way that they’re designed, the architectural layout, the history of the place, the way that they set their tables, the food that they serve, the menus who were the chefs, the salt and pepper shakers, the chairs, the invitations, the place innings, everything. I wanted to know everything about those dining rooms. And the idea was to cherry-pick some of the best ideas from those dining rooms. And then I also wanted to cook a dish that would’ve been served in each of those dining rooms so I could serve it in this dinner party for my wife.

And that’s what we did. And I was able to do it and we redid our dining room. Actually, see this gold screen behind me? That’s one of the ideas. We can talk about that in a while. And then we had a dinner party. We actually, it turned out to be a buffet. That’s part of the story. And it all worked out. We had our friends all over, our friends and family and had a nice party. And so we did it. We did it.

BAF: That’s terrific and so you get a book out of it.

John Ota: Yeah, it was a lot of fun. So much fun. Well, I love to travel and see food and architecture, historical places. And they’re all people that I admire. So it was a great thing.

BAF: Well, it’s quite a diverse and interesting list. How did you narrow it down?

John Ota: Well, first of all, I have to really like these people and really admire them. I’m not going to go to someplace where I don’t admire somebody. But also I go to places that are sometimes they’re accessible or they’re not accessible and they’re places where these people like to eat. And if they have a good story to tell as well, a good story about the dining room, a good story about the food and about the cooking. So it’s a combination of history and architecture and food. And those are the three things that I’m really passionate about. So for me, I will go anywhere if there’s a story like that.

BAF:Well, I mean, certainly you’ve got everybody from Washington to Frida Kahlo, MLK, Monet, Kennedy, Sinatra. Yeah, all fascinating. Plus several bunch of others as well. You mentioned accessibility. Are these dining rooms still available to the public? Are they still intact somewhat?

John Ota: Let’s see.

Yes. Yes. So there’s one at the Morris-Jumel Mansion up around, what is it, about 163rd and Broadway in that area. It’s a mansion where Washington once had his headquarters during the Battle of Harlem Heights. And so he had his dinner with his first cabinet up at that mansion. And so there’s a dining room there and they might’ve eaten outside, but it’s really quite a significant dinner that he held at the Morris-Jumel Mansion because he also invited the wives and he invited the kids for this dinner. And the idea was at the time, his first cabinet, it’s his idea to have a cabinet, they weren’t getting along. So Hamilton and Jefferson were always arguing with each other. And so it’s really sort of a team building kind of dinner that he had. And he invited the entire families, which is great because the wives are such significant patriots themselves like Abigail Adams and Martha Washington and with the others in the cabinet, they were all supporters of the revolution.

And so what I did there was I found out about this dinner and I called them up and I said, “Are you still having it? ” And they said, “Well, we’re having some problems. Can you help us?” And I said, “Sure.” And so I helped put together the menu.

I helped cook the meals and then they said, “Oh, we need a dinner speaker.” And I said, “Would you be the dinner speaker?” I said, “Sure.” So I had a lot of involvement with that dinner. So that’s an example of one of the places that’s accessible. Claude Monet’s dining room, his garden, his house, I mean, that’s certainly accessible to the public. It’s in a place called Giverni, which is about an hour outside Paris. So that was number one on my bucket list. So I had to go there and I went there and there’s a fabulous garden. When you get there, it’s unspeakably beautiful with a Japanese garden as well with rivers and ponds running through it. And then I went to his house and it’s this pink, long, narrow house and you can walk through the house. And then eventually I went into his kitchen, which is a blue tile kitchen.

It’s just gorgeous and then into his dining room. So his dining room is this brilliant yellow that overlooks his garden and the walls are yellow. The overhead beams are yellow. His armoires are yellow. It’s just a simply beautiful dining room. The chairs are like sunbursts and on the walls are these walls are covered with these 18th and 19th century Japanese block prints, which were so important to the impressionists. So even though he was a troubled man, he loved entertaining and he loved having his impressionist friends then go and Rodan and Ranoir over for lunch and he would serve them late 19th century French food, roast chicken, roast duck. He raised his own chickens, his own prized chickens. He was very proud of the vegetables that he grew. He had his own kitchen garden. He fished for Pike right out of his own ponds and he loved his tarte tatin.

He loved apples. So when I went there, I also made a tarte tatin in Paris to get that full clawed money meal dinner experience together. So wonders. Yeah.

BAF: Well, certainly of all the dining rooms in the book, that was the one I haven’t been there, but I’m most familiar with it. I think it probably maybe next to the Kennedys might be the one of the most well-documented ones.

John Ota: And the thing is this is that it’s no mistake. It’s no mistake that he made yellow his dining room because yellow was a color that really meant a lot to Monet. Monet loved looking at color and light and the sun and nature. And so he painted many of his pieces with yellow in it. He does a famous series called The Haystacks where he looked at these haystacks at different times of the day and painted them in different seasons. He does yellow with a field of daffodils. He does yellow with famous paintings of poplars. And so it was a color that when he painted, he wanted his audience to feel serene and uplifted when he saw his art. So that’s exactly probably what he wanted to do with people who came to his dining room. He wanted them to be happy and transmit these good feelings that are reminiscent of the sun and light and nature in his dining room.

So it’s more than just a pretty color for Monet.

BAF: When you mentioned the yellows and then he mentioned Van Gogh had been in the room, that just piqued my interest.

John Ota: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. It’s a highly significant color for all the impressionists because they were so into nature and light and improving people’s moods with their art. They had very serious discussions about the role of art in society and they wanted to improve the world through art. They’re very serious about that. So yellow was a very significant color for them.

BAF: Oh, certainly just being in a room with all those artists. It must have been something.

John Ota: Wouldn’t it be something to sit there? Oh my goodness.

BAF: But in a way, that’s what the dining room was about, which you just mentioned with Washington. It’s where people can sit down together and talk, express ideas. And I’m sure I can imagine what … Well, obviously the White House dining room must have been something, people who were there. And you think of somebody like Sinatra, what was going on in that dining room, the people that were there and the heyday of the Rat Pack.

John Ota: Jackie Kennedy completely changed entertaining attitudes in America with some of the things that she did in the White House. White House dinners with previous presidents were kind of stodgy. They had one big U-shaped table and they would invite military leaders and politicians. She just changed everything. The dinner that I write about is the Malraux dinner and she invited artists like Rothko to come. She invited Leonard Bernstein. She invited George Balanchine to the White House for this dinner. She wanted to show Malraux the best of America. And then she hired her own French chef, Chef Verdon. And previously the dinners were made by US Navy cooks. So they had very conservative meals like Leg of Lamb. They would have Triscuits and Shrimp cocktail. She just changed the whole thing. They were long filling meals. She streamlined it down to four courses of French courses, four courses. And the one I write about, the main course is sea bass stuffed with spinach and mushrooms and it’s topped with this French white wine sauce with leets.

And that’s all served with the best wines, of course, and champagne and for dessert it’s croquembouche. So it’s a very much more sophisticated way of entertaining. And then she wanted enough time that they could have entertainment after dinner and they would have a string quartet. And then after the string quartet, they’d have dancing. So it was a very different kind of experience. And what she was really aiming for in this dinner was she wanted to convince Malraux, who was the minister of culture for France, to send the Mona Lisa to America so the Americans could see the Mona Lisa. And this was a very big request of Malraux because Malraux , I mean, if anything happened in 1962 to the Mona Lisa, they would never forgive him in France. His name would be completely mud. I mean, they consider that such an artistic treasure. Why would anybody ship the MOna Lisa across the ocean?

And they came on a boat. I mean, if anything happened to the Mona Lisa, the French would be outraged. But with her own dinner entertaining personality and the way that she managed things, Jackie Kennedy was successful in convincing Malraux to loan the United States, the Mona Lisa. And it showed at the National Gallery in Washington and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1962, and millions of people got to see the Mona Lisa.

And she had so much charisma and was able to get along with people at dinner. She had her own sort of soft dinner diplomacy. Whenever things went wrong for President Kennedy, she was there to smooth things over. So when they went to Paris, I guess it was in 1961, things did not go well for Kennedy. Kennedy did not get along well with de Gaulle, but the focus of that trip to Paris shifted from the president to Jackie Kennedy. And Paris loved Jackie Kennedy. She spoke perfect French. She had so much style. She knew about art and they were chanting ‘Jacqui’ in the streets. And if you look at some of the publications from that trip, they have Jackie Kennedy walking ahead of the president in her little pillbox hats. And you can see he’s just as happy to have her walking ahead of him. And Time Magazine said, ‘oh yes, there was also that fellow who came with her’.

And another situation where she was able to cajole people over dinner was she got along very well with Nikita Khrushchev after the October crisis, the missile crisis. And so there are photographs at the Kennedy Library of Jackie Kennedy sitting next to Krusha and they’re just laughing it up. And Krusjev, of course, is completely charmed by Jackie Kennedy and so much so that Khrushchev later sent a dog, a puppy dog to the Kennedys and the Kennedy kids loved the puppy dog. And the puppy dog was an offspring of the first dog in space. The Russians sent this dog into space. But there was always this one upsmanship in this whole thing. And Kennedy and Khrushchev actually had a letter writing relationship after the Cuban missile crisis. There’s always this whole thing about one upsmanship between them. And one of the reasons why, not one of the reasons, but one of the one upsmanship is that Khrushchev sends them a dog just as a reminder to ‘say, see, we were up in space first before you’.

BAF: Oh, well played, sir.

John Ota: Things. But she was able just through her dining room dinner party mystique, she was able to smooth things over for that president.

BAF: I don’t think the French minister stood a chance with her at the dinner party like that.

John Ota: Another dining room that I really love was Frida Kahlo’s dining room in Mexico City. So it’s in a place called, well, it’s in her house, the Casa Azul. It’s the blue house. And really her dining room, you walk in, it’s full of light. The walls are white with blue trim and all around the room are these yellow stands where she puts her indigenous artifacts in it. And then the floor is this bright yellow as well and it spreads out and just radiates this warmth and this good feeling throughout the whole ground floor.

There’s so much that’s made about Frida Kalo about her, well, of course her art, which I love is so colorful and evocative, but also about her drinking and her partying and affairs and her clothing and her eyebrows. But what I found was that really at the base of it all with Frida Kahlo, and this is what they say in Mexico too, she was a Mexican nationalist and she wanted people to love the culture of Mexico. So at the turn of the 20th century, people in Mexico, it’s hard to believe, but they turned to Europe, particularly France for their culture, for their art and architecture and their clothing. And Frito wanted to change all that. And so she used her dining room to invite important people to her dining room to feed them Mexican food and they play Mexican music and she dressed in Mexican clothing.

She wanted people from around the world to see the best of Mexico.

So she entertained people wildly so that they could go back to their country and tell them their people what a great time they had in Mexico. And we learned so much about Mexican art and food and clothing. So she was a Mexican nationalist when it was not particularly popular to be a Mexican nationalist. And that’s the story of her dining room. She had all these really important people come to her dining room like Nelson Rockefeller, movie stars like Gary Cooper, artists like Georgia O’Keefe. It was like the Studio 54 of Mexico. Everybody wanted to go see Frida and be seen with Frida in Mexico City. And so they would eat, drink, dance, have tequila and the mariachi would play all night. And how do I get an invitation to something like that? Oh my goodness.

BAF: I think you’ve answered this certainly. I guess it was hard to pick a favorite, but I think you may have answered that. Or were they kids? They are all favorites in a certain way.

John Ota: They’re like kids. They’re all favorite. I mean, they all have their own particular characteristics that help them in their lives that help them actually change history. So another favorite dining room was the dining room of Martin Luther King Jr. So the house that he grew up in up until age 12 is a museum in Atlanta, Georgia in a neighborhood called Sweet Auburn. So of course, I think Martin Luther King Jr. Is one of the most important people to walk the earth. So I had to go there and I really did not know very much about it at all until I got there. And so I got there and it’s this Victorian Queen Anne house, very lovely house. And you walk in and it’s like sort of a regular normal house for a typical family, but the dining room is in the center of the floor plan.

It’s the largest room in the house and it’s very quietly elegant and it was the place that the significance is that it’s the place where they had dinner every night and they would talk about the racial problem against Blacks in the Southern United States. And so he learned a lot and was influenced to become the person that he became and crusade for equality. All those values, all those stories came out around the dining room table.

BAF: I think as we touched on it before, but a lot of the most important things in the dining room aren’t about food. It’s about the company and the conversation.

John Ota: Yes, yes.

BAF: Maybe help me put your architecture hat on.

John Ota: Sure.

BAF: Are you able to go in without thinking as an architect and thinking, well, it’d be better with more light here, door should be over there. Can you go in and just enjoy the room? Are you always thinking like an architect in some sense?

John Ota: I would say I think as an architect, I look at all the elements of the room and I try to think about how does the architecture create a place that inspires and facilitates discussion around the dining room table? What is it about this architecture about the furnishings in the room that inspires hospitality, that inspires conversation? And because that’s what the dining room, just like you said, is about these long conversations, it’s about bonding with people. It’s about connecting and reconnecting and passing down traditions and stories and dishes so that how are the elements of this room conducive to help this happen, whether it’s Martin Luther King Jr. And having discussions, serious discussions about the racial problem in the Southern United States, or if it’s Frida Kahlo and how she wants to inspire people with the culture of Mexico or Claude Monet who wants to have these discussions with his artist friends about impressionism.

What is it about the elements all of this room that causes these things to happen and actually changes history? So when I go into a room, I don’t put my architecture hat on and say, I’m just going to look at the architecture. It’s just something that’s part of me that’s integrated into the elements around the room, how that makes a good feeling, and then the food as well. How does the food affect the discussion as well? So for instance, at Martin Luther King Jr’s dining room, they ate Southern food and Sunday dinner was always an important meal. And the Southern food that they had was fried chicken, collard greens, mac and cheese, cornbread, black eyed peas. So to get that fueling of that dining room, I took a cooking class down the street from Martin Luther King Jr’s house and I made fried chicken in a cooking class, but I did a lot of the coating of the chicken and frying and black eyed peas and sweet potatoes.

As I say, we chopped up sweet potatoes and then put a dump truck load of brown sugar on it. And so how does that food as well as everything else in the room affect the feeling and the discussion in the dining room? And what I found was that it’s a very home cooking, comfort food and Martin Luther King Jr. Later on in life he would meet with other civil rights leaders at restaurants in Atlanta and they would eat that same food. And what I was trying to think of was what’s the meaning of this food to these people when they’re talking about civil rights things and I think it just brings them together.

BAF: In the introduction of your book, the term celebration of the art of dining was used, which I think that’s really what it is. It’s about celebrating the company, the conversations, the history, the connections, food that people have and building it. And I think to me, that’s what a dining room is about. It’s about the whole experience

John Ota: That’s right. I agree with you. So we go to today, the standalone dining room by itself is much less common in new houses. And because of there’s an emphasis now on informality and flexibility and an easier flow of movement, now we have the contemporary dining area, which is the great room. So it’s a combined kitchen, living room, dining room. And the question is how does that affect the way that we live now? And so when people tell me that the dining room is dead, I just have to say, you know what? I don’t think the dining room is dead. It’s just redesigned, remorphed into something different, which is now a dining area. And it’s conducive to these qualities of informality and a flow of movement that people want today. And I actually think it’s a good thing.

But still, I think that the trend towards informality is great, but my feeling is that it’s not conducive to those long discussions that go on all night where you really get to know each other and talk about things and pass around the bottle of cognac. So I think that because things are more temporary and there’s more moving around, there’s less of that. I think the architecture and the design is not conducive to those long dinners because if you look at the way that the dining areas are designed now, it’s much more open. People get up, they move around. Even you’ll see what dining room suites. Quite often they have a bench instead of chairs and that bench is so that kids can sit there and they can move around and run around. So I think that if we’re missing anything in the new dining area, I think that the design is less conducive to those long, deep discussions.

BAF: It used to be, in grandparents and great-parents’ time. The men would stay in the dining room and have cigars and cognac, like you said, and the ladies would retire to the drawing room. I guess when I mentioned the celebration of the art of dining, that was something that was leading. My next question was that the dining room for a while was always, well, at least recently it was sort of that spare room we didn’t go into unless it was a special occasion. It was a special dinner or that it’d be used to keep the mail on or something or store stuff in, but it was always a special room. A lot of times there’ll be a formal living room to go along with that too, that you didn’t need in.

John Ota: Yes. But historically, the dining room has always been an everything room. I mean, I’ve gone for tours of late 19th century houses and quite often they’d use it as a storage room or as a study or as a library because it is the biggest room. I mean, if it’s the biggest room, it’s got to be used for something. So it’s always been this everything room. And now, especially after the pandemic, when people stop going into the office, now it also becomes people use it as an office space, as a library, as a design room, a place to do homework, just like it used to be. So as well as this free flowing space and informality, it’s also used as a flexible space where other things can happ. But actually back in the 19th century, they also used the dining room for the same thing.

BAF: Could you make the argument that since the dining room was a separate room, it was a more intimate space that somebody like Monet could use his colors or Jackie use her charm in this smaller space that was more conducive for intimacy and for conversations and connections with people. Whereas if you’re in a great room, it’s just a bigger room that somehow that intimacy is lost somewhat because it’s the same room you sit on the couch nearby and watch TV.

John Ota: I just love what you just said because you used the word intimacy and you make a great point that in a large great room space it’s much less intimate. And so if you are in a room just like you said where there are walls around you and it has those classical elements of wood paneling that it’s much more intimate. And you’ve just made me remember that a key element of a historical dining room, and I saw this in all of them, is candlelight. And at Downton Abbey, something in that dining room you don’t see on the movie screen or on the television screen is that actually the walls are covered in a gold wallpaper. That’s why I have gold panels back here because candlelight was so important. So at Downton Abbey dining room, the candlelight would reflect off the gold flocked wallpaper and gold was so important in creating this sort of sparkling atmosphere and candlelight is so important in inspiring intimacy.

BAF: And there’s a house in Chicago called the Glessner House, and it’s a late 19th century house. It’s actually a quiet start, but the whole ceiling has gold.

It’s a gold ceiling. So you’d be sitting at the dinner table and the candlelight would be reflecting off the ceiling as well as in the Japanese samurai house I visited, it has gold walls too, gold leaf that catches the light and creates this nice warm feeling. Also, the gold on the outside of dinner plates or on saucers and teacups, that’s there to catch the candlelight as well and reflect off. So that whole idea of candlelight and intimacy, I think you really hit it on the head there that we have lost, not lost, but the whole open concept is less conducive to intimacy because people are moving around and it’s a big space. I guess that’s part of informality too. In fact, it’s a drawback. Informality, that’s a drawback. It’s not intimate. I mean, I’m all for informality in the dining room because when guests come to our houses and we’re serving them dinner, we want them to feel welcome.

We want them to feel comfortable when they come and have a good time. Don’t worry about all these other historical manners just to be yourself and feel good and wear comfortable clothes. But yes, I think that kind of attitude is good in one way, but yeah, we lose that intimacy and talking into the night, staying in one place and talking into the night.

BAF: Well, I was just thinking- That’s a

John Ota: Great point! That’s a great point.

BAF: Oh, thank you. 

John Ota: Intimacy yeah.

BAF: Thank you. Well, I just got to thinking about what tdo all greent rooms have in them; the TV in. So people leave the TV on and so the conversation is somewhat stifled. I guess the same could apply to people in their phones, but that’s not the fault of the dining room. I’m just thinking because everybody has a TV in their living room these days or family room. You sort of touched on my next question. Did these vast arrays of different rooms, were there any similarities? You mentioned the gold.

John Ota: Yeah, I would say yes. I would say that gold and yellow is a similarity and a theme in Frida Kahlo’s house at Downton Abbey at Glessner House, like I just mentioned. Oh, I went to another house, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s house up here in Canada. It was an early 20th century house and light and gold and color is so important in that room. In her late 19th century, early 20th century buffet, there’s a mirror in it. So often we see that and the whole point of that mirror is to catch the light and reflect it back into the room to make the room twinkle. So in that early 20th century house, she did not have any electricity. So the whole lighting scheme was from gaslight and gaslight lights a little bit brighter than candlelight, so it’s really fantastic. She was also a photographer. She took these black and white photographs and you can see with this gaslight that the light hits the architecture of the house, the different changes in the wall, it hits the folds in the tablecloth, it lightens up their faces and the wrinkles disappear and they all look very happy and joyous.

And that’s another intimate, warm and happy way of the way that light makes this kind of atmosphere. One other thing about color and light is that at Lucy Maud Montgomery’s house, she actually was a very good cook and she used to make something called a Sunshine Salad. So Sunshine Salad is a jelly salad and in it has gelatin. It’s an orange gelatin and it has diced pineapple sliced carrot and orange pieces. So you can just imagine it’s this very nice bright geltin salad. So I love jelly salads.

BAF: I’m

John Ota:Sorry, I said it. I love jelly salads. I know either you like them or you don’t like them. I love them. But the other fact about the jelly salad in a late 19th century, early 20th century setting, especially with gas light that she had was the jelly salad would catch the light and it would become like a stained glass window so that this Sunshine Salad, jelly salad would’ve been such a wonderful topic of conversation and people would pick it up and look and catch the light and it would be a reflection on the hostess as to be a credit to her creativity and her ability to make and develop something like this.

BAF:That salad makes it sound like Ms. L. M. Montgomery was ahead of her time because to say a Sunshine Salad, the name and the description sounds like something out of the 1970s or 1960s, that just sort of what the heyday of the yellow salads.

John Ota: And yes, and it was orange.

BAF: So she was clearly ahead of her time. 

I have to ask, so what’s next for you? You’ve got this book…

John Ota: Oh, well, I just like to write, I like visiting houses and I was thinking about that today actually, James, that I like visiting houses and if there’s something out there that they all have in common, just like this dining room with the color gold and yellow that pulls it together, I would try and knit something together. I don’t really go out and think that I’m going to write another book. It’s whatever I go to visit and see, then that just determines what I’m going to do next.

BAF: Well, John congratulations on the book.

John Ota: Well, thank you. Thank you. And congratulations to you. I love the website. Really, it’s fantastic.

BAF: Oh, well, thank you. Thank you. It’s fun to do.

John Ota: Well, it’s the best website I’ve ever seen on food and books. It’s just great. It moves a lot and it’s very colorful and so many images of food that it’s great. 

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“Ota is making a case for the return of the dining room, with The Dining Room, and it’s a pretty convincing one.” —Vancouver Sun

“[The Dining Room] is a rally cry, with recipes, for a space that is vanishing from modern homes: the dining room.” —Chatelaine