Two dishwashers? To be truly middle class you need two kitchens...

If you really want to keep up with the Joneses (and the Beckhams and everyone else in the Cotswolds for that matter), Debora Robertson says double-kitchening is where it’s really at

David and Victoria are ahead of the double kitchen curve in their Cotswold home where David enjoys spending hours on his outside grill (Netflix)

There has been much comment last week about the trend for installing not one but two dishwashers in perfectly ordinary kitchens. Not since Kirstie Allsopp suggested having a washing machine in your kitchen rather than in a separate room was squalid has there been so much appliance-based consternation.

Personally, I see double dishwashering as the most successful way of ensuring twice as many opportunities to row over who, when and, most volcanically, how to load and unload the things.

But no, it appears designers are increasingly being asked to make space for a pair of dishwashers, sometimes three, ideally on either side of the sink. Jamie Oliver has two, and Ben Fogle’s kitchen apparently has four, which makes me think he may be taking in washing up from elsewhere.

Yorkshire kitchen design company, KC Design House, reports a 35 per cent rise in customers asking for two dishwashers. Clearly they smooth the wheels of domestic life, especially for large families and those who entertain a lot, but it does make me wonder if any of these dishes, glasses and cutlery ever see a cupboard.

But it’s not just dishwasher extravagance hitting the nation’s kitchens. In 2019 the late Tory MP James Brokenshire was roasted for being pictured in his kitchen holding a Victoria sponge in front of four gleaming stainless steel ovens. Further enquiries revealed that he also had two dishwashers.

Keeping up with the Kardashian kitchen game – this is her second kitchen used by her chef off-camera (Kim Kardashian/Instagram)

But extra appliances are merely the shallow end. If you really want to impress, get two kitchens.

In 2015, Ed Milliband was mocked when a photograph appeared of him and his wife, Justine, in their north London house drinking mugs of tea in a kitchen that had all the spartan charm of shared student accommodation. A journalist friend of theirs two-jagged it by leaping to their defence on X, née Twitter, stating “Ed Miliband’s kitchen is lovely…the functional kitchenette by the sitting room is for tea and quick snacks”.

More recently Kim Kardashian revealed that she also had two kitchens, one for show and one for staff, which surprised me as I have never seen any of those well-worked-on sisters eat anything other than vast containers of take-away salad.

But this is part of an old, grand tradition of course. Butlers’ pantries have long existed in grand houses and apartments, an area where the less aesthetically pleasing activities of scrubbing huge pans and preparing a banquet’s worth of vegetables could happen efficiently and out of sight. In some ways, we’re going back to this.

The recent trend for vast open-plan, live-in kitchens has revealed their inherent flaw. You create a spectacular kitchen to impress your friends and family, to create relaxing, elegant lunches, dinners, parties, but it sinks the souffle somewhat if you’re handing out drinks and canapes while counters groan under the weight of dirty glasses and plates.

James Brokenshire raises you with his four oven game (Handout)

Oddly, the trend for more casual entertaining means that if you want to conceal all the work it takes to pull it off, you’re going to need an extra kitchen, or at the very least an engine room of a butler’s pantry so you can hide your workings as you you glide like a swan among your guests, not a Marigold in sight. For many, sacrificing some space in your main kitchen to make this possible has become an appealing prospect.

If – after the extra dishwashers, ovens, pantries and kitchens – you’ve really and truly run out of things to spend your money on, you could always treat yourself to an outside summer kitchen. Many of us have experienced these when renting holiday places in sunny countries, but don’t let our British climate put you off. They can be as simple as a barbecue or pizza oven next to a sink, or the full kitchen, complete with wine fridges and ice makers, which all just happen to be outside.

The most luxe example of a summer kitchen that we humble one-kitchen folk have been allowed to cast our gaze over recently is that of David and Victoria Beckham, in their Netflix documentary. More accurately, Victoria appears only to have a visiting interest, whereas it truly seems like David’s happy place. He admits to spending whole days in there, pottering about, hours spent “grilling” while watching the football on his iPad.

And why wouldn’t he – especially when his son Brooklyn can be counted on to make a right mess of a basic burger in his first kitchen? David and Victoria’s wood and canvas pavilion sits by the lake of his Cotswold home and is filled with state-of-the-art kitchen equipment and a 12-seater dining table. If you’d like to try this at home, it’s yours for only £60,000 from his friend film director Guy Ritchie’s company, WildTent. Lake extra.

The more affluent we are, the more we spend on our kitchens and, in some cases at least, it seems we barely use them for cooking. They’ve morphed into sitting rooms, homework and home work spaces, and somewhere to watch the telly.

Two years ago I moved from London to a village in the south of France, swapping my huge, bright, glass block of a kitchen tacked onto the back of our Victorian brick terraced house (yes, that cliche) for a neat, square modest kitchen with a generous larder off one side. Everything is within easy reach and now I have to get my steps in by actually walking outside. You know what? It’s really soothing. Highly recommend.