Small kitchens
The Food Chain
BBC
4.7 • 545 Ratings
🗓️ 26 February 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From Michelin starred kitchens to Hong Kong’s high rise tower blocks, via informal settlements in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. Ruth Alexander hears from people making the best out of the cramped and tiny spaces they’re cooking in.
Gina Lai shows her around the kitchen in her cramped Hong Kong high rise flat and Ruth visits chef Ryan Blackburn who has retained a Michelin star whilst cooking out of the tinest of professional kitchens in Northern England.
Plus Leah and her daughter Janice explain how they cook family meals in an informal settlement in the Kenyan capital Nairobi and AJ Forget describes what it's like to give up a big kitchen for a new life on the road, living and cooking in a converted bus.
If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email: thefoodchain@bbc.co.uk
Produced by Izzy Greenfield, Rumella Dasgupta and Lexy O'Connor
Image Description: Gina Lai is cooking in her tiny Hong Kong flat. (Credit Gina Lai/BBC)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | I'm no longer ravenous. I'll no longer eat until I fall asleep. |
| 0:11.0 | The Hunger Game, a new five-part series exploring the meteoric rise of weight loss drugs. |
| 0:16.0 | It's been an incredible story with these drugs. |
| 0:18.1 | The uptake, the amount of product that's been sold, the amounts of money |
| 0:21.2 | is cost. What the drugs do, how they work, and the knock-on effects of their widespread use. |
| 0:26.5 | We'll be sitting here in three years' time going, oh, it caused problems that we're now going to have to |
| 0:31.6 | fix. The Hunger Game with me, Professor Gilesio. Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:50.4 | Around the world, kitchens are getting smaller, squeezed by high costs and busy lifestyles. |
| 0:54.3 | They're often sold as modern, well-equipped, desirable. But what's the reality? |
| 0:55.9 | Well, it's oppressive. It's an oppressive space. |
| 0:58.0 | It gets on top of it. You go a little crazy. |
| 1:01.2 | In this episode of the food chain from the BBC World Service with me, Ruth Alexander, |
| 1:06.6 | we're visiting some of the world's tiniest kitchens, |
| 1:09.7 | from tabletop stoves in the corner of the room |
| 1:12.2 | to Bijou Michelin-starred restaurants. |
| 1:14.9 | Just stepped on the chef's toes. |
| 1:18.1 | We'll hear how cooking dinner can become a sequence of exhausting workarounds. |
| 1:22.9 | The dishes do accumulate, and so I have to wash my dishes |
| 1:26.0 | pretty much after every cooking step. |
| 1:28.6 | Actually I see big kitchens on magazines, on TVs and personally I want to have those |
| 1:35.4 | kitchens, my own kitchen where I can cook everything I want at my own pace and just enjoy cooking. |
... |
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