JANUARY: Creating Curated + Beautiful Kitchens That Inspire With Cabbonet

Knowing kitchens increasingly serve as both domestic hubs and cultural stages, Cabbonet offers a compelling lens on how design and cooking rituals intersect. Seen through the backdrop of Los Angeles’ recent wildfires and the profound loss of these spaces, the British kitchen brand’s West Hollywood showroom offers a comforting philosophy – one that trades pomp and circumstance for intentional objects, thoughtful materials, and craft-led design. From jewel-like quartzite islands to drawers designed to cradle heirlooms or oyster knives, Cabbonet treats the kitchen as a setting for living, cooking, and the continued collection of memories.

Photo: TJ Girard, courtesy of Taste:Work:Shop

FEBRUARY: A Collage of Sorts: PLUCK Miami x Taste:Work:Shop

Rooted in the spirit of collage, this story explores how design, food, and collaboration mirror the act of cooking itself, gathering disparate elements and transforming them into something expressive and alive. A new collaboration between PLUCK Miami and food design studio Taste:Work:Shop brings that ethos to the table through the FLOW tray collection, where antique silver, eco-printed linens, and wine culture converge. Alongside ITRI’s “wine for misfits,” with its botanical labels and boundary-pushing blends, the project celebrates mischief, materiality, and shared authorship. Together, these collaborations reveal how culinary rituals and craft-led design can create experiences worth savoring.

Photo: Courtesy of Sachiyo Harada and Hardie Grant Books

MARCH: Sachiyo Harada’s Visual Guide to Mastering Japanese Cuisine

Part visual manual, part design object, Sachiyo Harada’s The Complete Illustrated Guide to Japanese Cooking blurs the line between cookbook and craft compendium. Designed for both confident cooks and curious observers, the pages are full of step-by-step photography, clean infographics, and a refined layouts to demystify Japanese techniques while celebrating their inherent beauty. From precise knife work to the poetry of plating, Harada treats cooking as a visual language – one rooted in balance, texture, and intention. In an age of screen-based tutorials, this tactile, Wi-Fi-free guide invites readers to slow down, study the details, and experience Japanese cuisine as both a culinary practice and a design-driven art form.

Photo: Murray Orr for Ocelot

APRIL: Taste Is on the Hunt for Modern Chocolate for Easter

With every candy-centric holiday that passes, chocolate steps out of the store aisle and into the realm of design object. From sculptural, gallery-worthy forms to ethically sourced bars wrapped in artful graphics, today’s most compelling chocolates blur the line between indulgence and visual culture. Brands like Milla, Ocelot, and Läderach treat cacao as a medium shaped by craftsmanship, sustainability, and aesthetic intention. The result is chocolate meant to be displayed, discussed, and slowly savored, not hurriedly unwrapped. Whether inspired by Bauhaus geometry, postmodern pattern, or Swiss precision, these confections offer a delicious crossover of culinary craft and design thinking.

Photo: Courtesy of Kloo

MAY: Small-Batch + Cold-Shipped Kloo Refines Coffee Concentrate into a Luxury

Kloo reimagines coffee not as a shortcut, but as a design-minded culinary ingredient that elevates daily rituals and moments of gathering alike. Created by a mother-daughter duo with deep expertise in specialty coffee, this small-batch concentrate delivers nuanced, single-origin flavor in a form that feels as refined as a fine spirit. Housed in an artfully screen-printed glass bottle, Kloo moves effortlessly from morning cup to cocktail hour, from sauce to dessert. Beloved by chefs yet made for home cooks, it bridges kitchen and bar, function and pleasure – proof that great coffee can be both beautifully designed and endlessly versatile, without sacrificing depth, craft, or ritual.

Photo: Neige Thibault and Peter William Vinther, courtesy of Georg Jensen

JUNE: Small Pleasures, Lasting Craft: The Artisans Series by Georg Jensen

Ice cream has always been more than a dessert. It’s a ritual of comfort, nostalgia, and everyday joy. Just this past autumn, Georg Jensen tapped into that emotional pull with The Artisans Series, a sterling silver ice cream and coffee collection that brings design into the realm of daily indulgence. Debuting at Milan Design Week through a gelateria-inspired pop-up, the series paired Danish silversmithing heritage with Italian café culture, serving affogatos and gelato in reimagined silver vessels meant to be on view. It’s a thoughtful crossover of culinary pleasure and enduring design where beautifully made objects elevate the simplest of rituals.

Photo: Courtesy of LAYER

JULY: KEEP the Culture Alive: On Your Counter and In Your Glass

Pickle martinis and briny summer cocktails may feel fleeting, but KEEP proposes a way to make that flavor-forward ritual permanent – and beautifully so. Designed by LAYER in collaboration with Orrefors, the sculptural fermentation vessel turns ancient preservation methods into a modern countertop experience. Mouth-blown glass and leather details frame fermentation as both culinary practice and design object, inviting pickles, preserved lemons, and seasonal produce into everyday view – proof that even the humblest pickle brine can inspire year-round creativity in both the kitchen and the glass.

Photo: Courtesy of IKEA

AUGUST: Gustaf Westman Gives IKEA’s Swedish Meatballs Proper Presentation

Gustaf Westman has a knack for turning everyday food rituals into moments of delight, and one of his latest collaborations with IKEA did exactly that. Following a summer of internet-breaking, food-forward design – hello, pink baguette holder – the Swedish designer brought his playful sensibility to a 12-piece collection that launched this last fall. At its heart is a porcelain plate designed to elevate the humble meatball, arranging each one like a tiny throne-worthy hero. Equal parts functional and tongue-in-cheek, the piece invites reinterpretation – olives, eggs, arancini, sauces – as it blurs the line between tableware and sculpture.

Photo: Chris Collie

SEPTEMBER: Studio CRÈME Grows Vessels With The Gourd Project

As Climate Week NYC invited fresh thinking around sustainability, Studio CRÈME’s Gourd Project offered a quietly radical proposal: grow your vessels instead of manufacturing them. By shaping gourds into stackable cups and flasks using custom molds, the Brooklyn-based studio revived one of humanity’s oldest drinking vessels through a contemporary practice. Rooted in agriculture, hospitality, and craft, the project blurs the line between object and ingredient, where form is cultivated, not produced. It’s a compelling design–culinary crossover that challenges disposable culture and reimagines how we drink, serve, and gather. In looking backward to ancient practices, The Gourd Project suggests a more thoughtful, regenerative future for everyday rituals.

Photo: Courtesy of The West Hollywood EDITION

OCTOBER: Design-Inspired Cocktails at The West Hollywood EDITION

At the West Hollywood EDITION, cocktails are treated as an extension of design. A newly unveiled bar program – developed with beverage consultant Nils Schabert – unfolds across three distinct spaces, each shaped by its architecture, materiality, and mood. From rooftop mezcal sips above Sunset Boulevard to vegetable-driven pairings at Ardor and sculptural nightcaps in the lobby, the menus blur the line between culinary craft and spatial experience. Techniques borrowed from the kitchen meet California minimalism, while thoughtful zero-proof options signal a new kind of hospitality.

Photo: Stock x Stephan Jones

NOVEMBER: 2025 Best Modern Gifts for Cooks, Chefs, and the Culinary Curious

This year’s culinary gift guide celebrated objects that elevate the everyday rituals of cooking, hosting, and sharing food. From sculptural serveware and precision-crafted cookware to design-forward pantry staples and elevated zero-proof wines, each pick balances beauty with utility. These are gifts meant to be used, touched, and enjoyed – whether setting the table, perfecting a recipe, or welcoming guests with intention. Thoughtfully made and pleasing to display, the selections blur the line between kitchen tool and design object, turning prep, pour, and plate into moments of quiet joy.

Check out the rest of Design Milk’s end of the year coverage here!

With professional degrees in architecture and journalism, New York-based writer Joseph has a desire to make living beautifully accessible. His work seeks to enrich the lives of others with visual communication and storytelling through design. When not writing, he teaches visual communication, theory, and design.