“It’s the biggest usable cavity in the field right now,” said Graham Sadtler, designer of the kitchen appliance we are admiring. We are at the launch of a new oven on what may be the hottest day of the summer so far in Toronto.

Sadtler, who wears a suit-friendly faux-hawk and tasteful rubber plugs in his earlobes, is explaining the four years of research and work that went into creating this new high-end oven (in the range—ha ha—of $5,000), made by Thermador, the North Carolina outfit who created the first in-wall oven—or, as it was known in the original 1955 literature, “a bilt-in range” (sic). Just as “bilt” seems a better-designed word, when you think about it, than the boxier, over-vowelled “built,” the oven we are looking at says “engineering” rather than “hearth” or “bread pudding.” It looks, in fact, like a cross between a smoky limousine window and a flat-screen TV.

The promotional literature also discourages any unseemly connection to cooking by featuring a woman in a couture gown in a high-tech kitchen in which no food is visible.

The model the designer is demonstrating for us has 16 digital controls that include “PROOF” (for helping dough rise) and “FAVOURITES” (for archiving the temperature and times that work the best for certain dishes), “SABBATH,” and “EASYCOOK,” which presumably dials the number of a nearby restaurant for a reservation. It self-cleans in two hours. Should anyone cook food in it.

The hand-friendly handles and burnished, angled edges of the oven were, according to Sadtler, a nightmare to manufacture. “The engineers had heart attacks getting those curved edges to work,” he said, opening the oven to reveal the hand-welded seams inside. At the back of the oven is a whirly convection fan. “Bakers like to use convection because the heat is even, and the elements go on and off in cycles. It’s a kind of a dance of elements, to keep the heat consistent. You can bake five sheets of cookies at one time in this.”

The designer is a pleasant young man who cooks himself, but doesn’t often bake or roast. “I’m single and I’m a vegetarian,” he said, “so I tend to use a wok.”

On the wall nearby is the non-digital Professional Series model, with old-fashioned round knobs that click in and turn. This is the version actual cooks tend to prefer. Jamie Kennedy, the top Toronto chef who is catering this event, agrees.

“I like to push the knobs in and turn them, and know that the elements are really on. With digital you never know.”

Jamie’s assistant is out in the alley, in the stupefying heat, barbecuing lamb over a trench of burning charcoal. This non-oven activity takes place out of sight of the guests. Inside the kitchen, equipped with a vast Thermador refrigerator and matching oven, Jamie is serving warm lobster claws skewered on stalks of lemon grass, which are delicious. Jamie is very relaxed. He looks as if he has just finished a pleasant session of Tai Chi rather than having just cooked for a couple hundred people.

Identically dressed hostesses wearing sapphire-blue cocktail dresses designed by Ross Mayer, with Rita Hayworth necklines, giant rhinestone broaches, and long rhinestone earrings, circulate through the room. Their dark shiny hair is coiled and pinned up with a blue hair band; the look has an echo of June Cleaver, minus the apron, crossed with tasteful dominatrix. This choice of costume must be intentional, suggesting that certain ovens can “host” food without any human involvement or sticky fingers. The women look ever so faintly fifties, but sleek and engineered. Even their eyeliner swooshes are identical. They turn out to be publicists and very gracious. They urge us to have more of the very refreshing special oven-launch drinks, flutes of sparkling wine with rhubarb essence in it and small strawberries clasping the rims. The hors d’oeuvre plates are dressed with yellow orchids; yellow orchids float in glass vases filled with water, and more orchids in vases keep the curious from venturing upstairs in this remodeled Yorkville house remodelled by Toronto designer Sharon Mimran.

The guests enter through a gauzy white tent set up to accommodate the considerable number of media and designers who want to see these new ovens. Outside, it is also an oven, verging on 40 degrees with the humidity. The heat itself feels like another design element specially arranged for the event.

Just outside the tent is a truck, with a large white duct leading up to the lip of the back wall. It looks like a high school science project demonstrating the principles of convection but it is in fact a rented cooling system of impressive simplicity: one duct sucks the hot air out of the tent area and then another big duct at the other corner of the room pumps cold air in. Would that ovens were so simple! The owner of the cooling system leans against his truck, while inside the hired pianist, who has a satirical gleam in his eye throughout this unorthodox gig, works in a spirited way through several oven-related jazz numbers, including “Mitts Off.”

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Posted on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 10:40 am. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.