Who needs a house? Here's the ultimate outdoor kitchen

Looking at a virtual clean slate in the backyard of his newly purchased Foothills home, Robert Rezetko wanted to make sure he didn’t leave anything out with his new outdoor kitchen.

It’s safe to say he didn’t.

“This is the first house we’ve owned in Tucson,” said Rezetko, an independent scholar who spent some of his childhood in Tucson, attended the University of Arizona, and has family living here. “We’ve been back several times over the last 30 years and we finally decided to come and stay here.

“We bought a house that we wanted to work on and make it our own. Part of that was doing an outdoor living area.”

There were a number of factors in play when Rezetko was considering everything he wanted in the outdoor kitchen.

First of all, he said, his family is generally the designated host of most family functions whether it’s a major holiday or other family get-togethers.

Second, he said, “We’ve always been outdoor people. A couple of times a month we want to cook out as a family.”

Finally, Rezetko said, the new house was a second chance to satisfy an old yearning. During an eight-year stay on a job in Guadalajara, Mexico, the family had an outdoor kitchen, but it was missing one key element – a pizza oven.

“I thought about building a pizza oven in our previous kitchen in Mexico and just never got around to it,” he said. “So this time I said, ‘We’re going to do this and do it right and put in everything I want from the very start.’ So we put in the pizza oven.”

It’s definitely the coup de grace on a kitchen that is about as equipped as one generally gets, said Rob Wilson, general manager of Flame Connection, 2736 N. Campbell Ave., where Rezetko spent nearly $40,000 on appliances alone. Wilson helped Rezetko design the kitchen for placement and functionality.

Like most outdoor kitchens, it began with a grill because, as Rezetko said, “it all centers around food.”

Rezetko installed a $7,000, top-of-the-line, 42-inch Twin Eagles grill with a rotisserie and an ultra hot infrared sear zone that can sear meat to seal in the juices before cooking it over the standard heat.

Above the grill is a Vent-A-Hood island hood – price tag $6,900 − that keeps the smoke from the grill out of the porch area. Below is a warming drawer to keep burgers, meats or anything else that has been cooked but is waiting to be served.

To the right of the grill is a side-by-side two-burner stove and griddle to cook side dishes and even breakfast, such as pancakes and eggs.

Turn to the right on the L-shaped kitchen and there’s a drawer for a garbage can, a sink, an icemaker in a cabinet, and a double-drawer refrigerator as opposed to one with a standard, swinging door. In the Rezetko kitchen, one drawer is for a wide range of beers. The other is for soft drinks for the kids.

Throughout the kitchen, there are sealed cabinets and storage space that keeps critters out of anything that might be stored there.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

Standing at the grill, you look over the top and into the yard to see Rezetko’s prize — a $3,600 Forno Bravo wood-burning pizza oven against the wall away from the porch. Rezetko said he thought about finding a way to put it closer to the house, but it wasn’t feasible because of the smoke, the heat — a pizza oven generally cooks at about 750 degrees — and the space needed.

Therein lies one of the keys to a great outdoor kitchen, Wilson said — planning a functional and even fun layout that considers a long list of factors including the view the owner wants to have when using the kitchen, where guests will gather while the cooking is going on, and even wind direction.

During his backyard remodel, Rezetko added a covered pad to his back porch, about 15 feet by 15 feet, where the kitchen was installed and that allows him to look into the backyard when he’s using it. Across the counter on the section with the sink there is bar-style seating where guests can keep the cook company.

That same spot looks out into the pool area at the far end of the yard.

“Old school was you’re off barbecuing by yourself and everyone else is hanging out and having a good time,” Wilson said. “My job is to have the family gathering together and enjoying this as a group, and to look at where someone is barbecuing so they’re not staring at a wall. They’re looking at the backyard enjoying it with everyone else.”

Wilson said building an outdoor kitchen takes a lot more thought than what appliances the cook wants or thinks might be needed.

“My job is to educate,” Wilson said. “Find out how many people you have in your household. What kind of gatherings you have. What kind of food you cook.”

Wilson said a significant segment of his business is newcomers to Tucson who are just getting acclimated to a life where outdoor living is 12 months of the year and the outdoor kitchen doesn’t get mothballed during a harsh winter or a rainy season.

“There are a lot of people moving here from Colorado, from Washington, from different states, and they’re very unfamiliar with Arizona and their first thoughts are, ‘We want something simple. We want an outdoor kitchen but we don’t have a lot of friends so we just want to be able to grill.’

“Outdoor living is a whole different outlook in Arizona than in Washington state where it’s raining all the time, to where you might find yourself − if you do something simple − looking back and asking why you didn’t do more.”

Wilson said it’s common for someone with the idea that they want an outdoor kitchen to not be sure precisely what they want. They know they want to spend more time outdoors and they want to cook. But it takes time to draw out the specifics.

“We literally spend at a minimum an hour with a customer and sometimes up to three hours to extract from them what they were thinking originally to three steps ahead on what the possibilities are − their lifestyle,” Wilson said. “I ask them what they’re doing in their backyard. Are they doing some simple landscaping? Are they putting in a pool?”

Or, do they covet a pizza oven?

Rezetko, with his remodel complete just a little more than three weeks ago, can now focus on his skills, like slinging pizza.

As of last week, he had used the pizza oven only a couple of times so spinning pizza dough in the air isn’t in his bag of tricks, but, he said, “I’m working on it. I’ll be slinging a few.”