What does the quintessential Chicago-style kitchen look like? Alison Victoria’s so glad you asked. On Windy City Rehab, she combines historic elements and design motifs with contemporary layouts and amenities to suit 21st-century palates — and the spaces she serves up won’t spoil over time. If your own kitchen feels a bit bland, consider this a tasting menu of her very best work; then re-season to taste.

Alison demolished an awkward wall between this home’s kitchen and living room to create an airy and integrated cooking, gathering and dining space. She installed an expansive island with intricately carved legs and a gloriously veined slab of stone, then topped the range with a copper hood that will develop an ever-more-excellent patina as the years go by. Countertop-to-ceiling cabinets create a symmetrical frame for the hood and offer all the storage a host could need.

Tasked with taking this kitchen down to the studs and fulfilling her clients’ dream of checkerboard flooring, Alison delivered a design that’s sophisticated and whimsical all at once. She sidestepped retro-kitsch by pairing the graphic treatment with clean and decidedly contemporary finishes like a counter-to-ceiling backsplash of white subway tiles, a sleek and squared-off brass hood and a luxe range with warm hardware.

We mean it: This repurposed mantel calls for extended meditation. Installed here, it lends the space the gravitas of a much older and more traditional kitchen, where an inset hearth would function as the principal cooking area. Although in this case, Alison installed a modern exhaust system, created contemporary nooks for gourmet supplies and used inset task lighting to dramatize the pale stone she chose for a backsplash.