We build professional galley kitchens. Layout design, bespoke stainless steel, refrigeration, cooking, dishwash, installation and after-sales service: the same trade we have practised since 1974, taken inside a hull, where the space is not a choice and every centimetre has already been decided by the lines of the boat.
Below is a galley we designed on a 47-metre motoryacht: a three-dimensional model you can step into and walk through. The equipment carries the real dimensions of the catalogues we work with; the proportions of the boat are those of a displacement yacht of this size. It shows how we lay out a galley before it is built, and it is exactly what we hand back to anyone who brings us a general arrangement.
Tap the model to step inside, then drag to turn. Two fingers to zoom and pan.
Navigable three-dimensional model of the galley.
It loads when you get here, so the page opens fast.
In the model the hull is a volume, not a set of lines: it is there to give scale. What the model states precisely is the galley — how you stand and how you work inside those square metres. Structure, ship systems, weights and class approvals stay where they belong, on the desk of the yard and the naval architect, and our work fits into theirs.
Why a galley is not a shore kitchen
The difference is not in the equipment, which is the same. It is that the space is not a choice: the hull decides it. In this study the galley measures seven metres by four forty, thirty-two square metres, and the working corridors are seventy-five centimetres. Not seventy because it fits: seventy-five because a person passing alongside another needs 0.31 m clear around them, shoulders and sway included, and below that two cooks touch. It is the kind of number you cannot see on a printed plan and feel immediately when you walk it.
Then there is everything that is unnecessary ashore and not optional at sea. Fiddle rails on every work top, because three degrees of roll puts a chopping board on the floor. The pot rail over the cooking island, to hook the pans to. Grab rails on the bulkheads, along the routes you walk with your hands full. Fiddles on the dry store shelving. A single cooking island under a single hood, because every extra duct is another penetration through a deck. They are all in the model, and you can see them.
The flow, which on board is tighter still
Stores come in forward, through the loading hatch, and go into the dry store and the cold rooms. From there they move to preparation, which runs along the port side under the windows. The centre is the cooking block, a single one, with the cooking functions on two working rows. Finished plates go out aft, on the pass, where the chef checks them before the steward takes them to the dining saloon. Dirty plates come back on the other side, on the dishwash line to starboard, and never cross the clean route. A dumbwaiter serves the upper deck. The service door, onto the lobby, is the one the crew uses: in the model it is open and hooked back, as it is during service.
Through the eyes of the people who work there
Under the frame there is a list, Through the eyes of. Pick one of the people in the scene — the chef at the pass, the cook at the cooking block, the dishwasher, the steward, the sundeck barman — and the model puts you in their place, at their eye height, facing the way they face. From there you walk with the arrow keys, run holding Shift, look around by dragging, and leave with Esc.
It is not an effect. It is how you answer questions that never come to mind in front of a printed plan. Does the cook at the cooking block hit the counter behind them when they turn? Does the chef at the pass see the dining saloon, or have their back to it? Does the steward coming back with a tray find the service door clear? On board these questions weigh more than ashore, because ashore a partition can be moved and in a boat it cannot.
Some views
The same views from the model, for anyone who prefers still images.
What we do, from the plan to the handover
Italfrigo Service has worked in professional kitchens and refrigeration since 1974. Layout: reading the space, work flows, forward flow, clean and dirty kept apart. Bespoke stainless steel: counters, sinks and cooking blocks welded to drawing, as a partner of Marrone Cucine, with fiddle rails, raised edges and reinforced fixings. Refrigeration: cold rooms, cabinets and plant — the trade the company was founded on. Cooking and dishwash: sizing, installation, commissioning. Service: after the handover, which on a boat counts more than anywhere else.
On board the work is run by the yard and follows the specification: structure, fire protection, ducting through decks and class approvals belong to the yard and the naval architect. Where a component has to be of an approved type, it is chosen from manufacturers who hold that approval. Our other work, ashore, is in the projects section.
If you have a project under way
Send us a plan of the galley area, even a preliminary one, even just a PDF. We send back a model like this one, navigable from a phone, to turn around in a meeting with the owner or the chef, together with the equipment list and its real dimensions. We speak English.