An Open View To The Future
Kitchen design as we near the turn-of-the-century puts the best equipment both out front and behind the scenes.
By Monica Rogers, Contributing Editor -- HOTELS Magazine, 9/1/1999
Looking at hotels built on the cusp of the millennium, one might conclude that "a room with a view" has as much to do with foodservice as it does with a well-placed guest suite. Conceptual planners for the world's greatest hotels are still of a mind that the theater of exhibition cooking is a major guest benefit, making the minutes between meal ordering and delivery feel like a quick-paced show.
Today, what used to be called "the hotel coffee shop" has been transformed into a well-orchestrated room full of elaborately decorated cooking stations where chefs flambe, grill and bake foods right before your eyes. Witness the sleek international wonders of the Mandarin Oriental's Biba's Café in Kuala Lumpur (six cooking stations plus a sushi bar), or the French-themed fun of Le Village Buffet at Paris Las Vegas Casino Resort (cooking stations represent five regions of France).
Of course, guests aren't meant to see it all. With plenty of trial and error under their belts, facilities designers have figured out how to selectively showcase, giving view to the showiest cooking functions, while keeping others behind the scenes where they belong. At the Herods Sheraton Resort in Eilat, Israel, for example, a two-sided pizza oven with an outdoor grill on one side and indoor specialty restaurant on the other is a design highpoint, but much of the major cooking batteries are tucked into a state-of-the-art kitchen.
Also behind the scenes, but winning kudos from facilities designers and hotel F&B managers alike are the more affordable, next generation cook-chill systems being installed to speed service for massive banqueting facilities. And looking ahead, foodservice equipment consultants talk about the inroads being made by highly programmable kitchen equipment designed to help with the shortage of skilled labor. Sanitation is key. And speedy labor-saving equipment, such as lightwave and microwave ovens are on the way.
Asian Exhibition
Mandarin Oriental's
Malaysian flagship entices with open views into the kitchens
and out to the world outside.
Seeking ideas for a foodservice methodology that would help differentiate the new Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Kuala Lumpur from a glut of competitors, concept developers from the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group had to look no farther than the streets. There, fragrant noodle dishes, rich curries, and grilled meats and fish are commonly cooked fresh and served piping hot from street vendor carts and market stalls. Nonetheless, the idea of preparing foods, especially Chinese, exhibition-style in a 5-star Asian hotel was revolutionary.
"There are few Asian hotel kitchens that have done anything with exhibition cooking," says Stephen Fong, director of technical services and new projects for the hotel group. "This is ironic because in Asia, cooking to order on the streets and in market stalls is something everyone is familiar with."
Bringing display cooking into the hotel's restaurants was a conceptual and design challenge hotel management embraced, believing the concept would resonate not only with tourists but with locals whose repeat business the hotel needed to augment sales in a soft market. Thus far, they've been right. "While sales generated by hotel rooms have been good, restaurant sales have been spectacular," says Jim Little, of Cini-Little, foodservice facilities designer for the project.
Bringing The Outdoors In
All three restaurants at the Mandarin Oriental prominently feature display cooking areas. Biba's Café, the hotel's 250-seat, 24-hour concept, serves international cuisine from six stations plus a sushi/sashimi bar and cappuccino/espresso bar. Upon entry to the restaurant, guests face the sushi bar, replete with elegant refrigerated displays and two induction burners.
Curving off to the right, the cappuccino/espresso bar leads toward a lower level on which the dessert bar is centered. This round, marble-topped island includes induction burners for showy dessert flambés, as well as a waffle-making station and an under-counter ice cream cabinet. And to the left of the entrance, a fresh juice display curves back to the main exhibition cooking line.
On the far end of the line, one chef mans the pizza and pasta station, working with three induction ranges, a pasta cooker and bake oven. At the center, an Indian and Thai station is equipped with tandoori ovens, a sate grill, rice cookers, sauce and curry bins, and under-counter refrigerated drawers. And on the far right, a chef working the Chinese station, fitted with woks and a noodle cooker, turns out dim sum and congee.
Opening Up
Pacifica Grill and Bar, the hotel's most avant-garde dining option, features Pan-Asian cuisine served from an open kitchen in a boldly contemporary setting influenced by turn-of-the-century Spanish designer Gaudi.
Here, the entire kitchen is open to view, save for dish storage and warewashing, which are tucked behind the scenes. Providing a spectacular backdrop for the display, design consultants Hirsch Bedner Associates covered the entire back kitchen wall, from floor to ceiling, in a pattern of gold and blue mosaic tile that undulates toward the focal point of the cooking line, a wood-fired pizza oven.
Other equipment includes a hot-top range with oven, a microwave oven, woks, fryers, grill, griddle, salamander and two four-burner ranges. Three under-counter refrigerated units, a refrigerated dessert counter and salad pan also are included.
East Meets West, Old Meets New
Lai Po Heen, the hotel's fine Cantonese restaurant, features design elements that flash back to 1930's Shanghai-plaster ceiling moldings, art deco light fixtures and antique "found furniture" from Mallaca. New meets old in this restaurant in the form of a wok cooking area on display behind a curved glass wall near the entrance. Because this is the main kitchen, prep work and mise en place for all Chinese menus, including banquets, are done here, out of sight behind the wok display. Refrigeration is on the outside perimeter.
As in typical Asian kitchens, there are separate areas for poultry and fish preparation, several woks built into production cooking areas, barbecued-meat cookers, duck ovens, and a dim sum preparation area. And tucked behind all of this is the main production kitchen where all food is stored and rough preparation takes place. This area includes the Malaysian cooking battery, which consists of a stock-pot range, steamer, broilers, wok and tilting braising pans; and the Western cooking area, consisting of steam-jacketed kettles, a four-burner range, grill with salamander, fryer bank and braising pans.
In this kitchen, facilities designer Jim Little says hotel management is particularly proud of the cook-chill system adjacent to the Western cooking area. "One of the key competitive advantages the Mandarin Oriental has over other hotels in the area is its banquet facility," Little explains. With seats for 2,000, the hotel's grand ballroom is the largest in the city--and the hotel's Diamond ballroom seats another 1,000. But management didn't stop there.
"They felt that the several-hour span it normally takes to plate and serve 2,000 meals was too slow," Little says. "So, they invested in a cook-chill system. This allows them to prepare and plate meals ahead of time, and then rethermalize them and serve quickly."
Also unusual for a hotel: all restaurants, as well as the banquet rooms, have large windows allowing views to the outdoors. Fronting Kuala Lumpur's 50-acre City Center park and adjacent to Petronas Twin Towers, the tallest buildings in the world, the Mandarin Oriental makes the most of the view in, to capture local traffic, and the view out, to please both guests and employees.
- Mandarin Oriental At A Glance
- Location: Kuala Lumpur
- Operator: Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Hong Kong
- Architect: Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo, Honolulu
- Interior Design: Hirsch Bedner Associates, San Francisco
- Foodservice Consultant: Cini-Little International, Inc., S. Pasadena, California, with Creative Kitchen Planners
Paris
On The Strip
Las Vegas' new French-themed resort doesn't
skimp on the food: lavish concepts and kitchens abound.
Trump's Taj Mahal, the Luxor pyramid, New York New York. It was just a matter of time before someone in Las Vegas tried to recreate Paris, France. It took US$760 million to do it, but Park Place Entertainment Corp.'s Francophile fantasy of a resort is complete. From the half-sized copy of the Eiffel tower, supposedly accurate right down to the placement of the rivets, to reasonable facsimiles of the Paris Opera House, Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre, the Paris Las Vegas Casino Resort crams more French architectural landmarks into the space of a few blocks than most tourists see in France in a week.
Designed to attract street traffic from the Strip, as well as to entertain lodgers at the 2,916- room hotel, which is patterned after the Hotel de Ville, the visual extravaganza is pretty packaging for the loads of entertainment options inside. There's an 85,000-sq.-ft. (7,897-sq. m) casino, a European health spa, a two-acre swimming pool, tennis courts and a 1,200-seat theatre, as well as 31,500 sq. ft. (2,926 sq. m) of retail shops stretched out along a Parisian-looking thoroughfare (think Rue de la Paix.)
And if you're going to duplicate France, you can't make a mistake on the food. Paul Pusateri, the resort's president, wanted foodservice to go a lot further than the typical Las Vegas hotel buffet line. He's organized a culinary staff of 500 under the leadership of Executive Chef Eric Scullier to do its best in the complex's 10 dining venues, five lounges and vast banqueting facilities.
State-Of-The-Art On Display
Two of the options, Mon Ami Gabi and the resort's fine-dining Eiffel Tower restaurant, are being created in partnership with Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises out of Chicago. A third shop, a gourmet pastry boutique, is being developed by France's leading patisserie and chocolate maker, Lenotre, their only U.S. location.
Kitchens for the venues, which range from the LEYE concept 175-feet up the Eiffel Tower, to a rotisserie, boulangerie and food-court buffet, go beyond state-of-the-art. Because most of the restaurants feature display cooking, owners spared no expense on equipment selection and luxe finishes, such as brass, nickel and copper fittings, and powder and porcelain coatings on the cooking batteries, and brick and stone façades for some of the ovens. At La Rotisserie des Artistes, for example, two French rotisseries finished in porcelain and brass are a focal point, from where roasted meats are served by carvers off of rolling carts trundled throughout the room.
J.J's Boulangerie, the hotel's quick-service option, puts the bakery out in the open. There, bakers, under the tutelage of baking experts from Lenotre, knead and bake breads using a roster of equipment, including French exhibition deck ovens finished in tile and brass, proofing cabinets, and antique mixers.
At Le Village Buffet, guests make meal selections from cooking stations representing five French regions: Alsace, Brittany, Provence, Burgundy and Normandy. There's also a dessert flambé station and refrigerated salad station designed to look like a produce market stall. Except for gas-fired two-burner ranges, which are included in each station, equipment varies depending on region. Brittany has an exhibition crepe-making station; Burgundy, a charbroiler and rotisserie. In Provence, there are pasta cookers, while Alsace has a griddle for sausages. And Normandy incorporates a fresh fish display.
All equipment, and the serving counters for each region, are ensconced behind charming cottage façades, which feature slate roofs tinged with moss, flickering gas lights and lace curtains. The areas were designed to replicate the look of each region by Project Interior Design Director Joyce Orias, of Yates Silverman.
Back Of The House
Behind the scenes, prep work and cooking for most of the venues are done in a commissary kitchen behind the restaurant-and-shop-lined boulevard that links the casino to the hotel. Placement of the kitchen was crucial, says Project Architect Joel Bergman of Bergman, Walls & Youngblood.
"Because of the way the casino is linked to the hotel by the street of shops, with people walking through the center of it and food facilities on both sides, we couldn't have just one central kitchen," he says. "We had to have two centralized points with one being the commissary kitchen, which we placed on its own level as close as possible to the point of service."
Cook-chill production for banquet service to the hotel's three ballrooms, the largest of which seats 8,000, also is done here and finished off in the main banquet kitchen, which consists of two, 40-ft.-long (12-m-long) cooking lines and a satellite kitchen, consisting of one, 30-ft. (9-m) line. To speed banquet service, facilities designer Adam Blumberg, of JEM Associates, combined the benefits of cook-chill with an ingenious layout whereupon 24 plating stations surround the main ballroom.
"Management wouldn't accept the fact that it normally takes three hours to plate a banquet for 5,500," Blumberg says. "Using this system, we can plate a banquet of that size in 45 minutes."
Kitchen Tour De Force
Last, and perhaps most impressive, are the kitchens for LEYE's Eiffel Tower Restaurant. In an original twist on the display-kitchen theme, guests start their visit in the kitchen. The elevator that delivers guests to the restaurant opens into a wine room at one end of the kitchen. There, a sommelier greets guests, offers wine samples and leads the group on a series of stops throughout the kitchen, where menu items are displayed, sampled and ordered for the meal to follow.
First, guests queue up to a marble-topped caviar and vodka bar. A few steps to the right is the canapé station, followed by the appetizer station. Next up, adjacent to the Waldorf cooking island where chefs prepare the entrees, are the meat and seafood displays, from which guests make their entree selections. And the last stop is the soufflé station where rare ovens, of which there are only 20 in the world, with cast-iron, brass and nickel façades, cook up a variety of dessert soufflés.
When guests arrive at the end of the kitchen, they've actually reached the beginning of their meal. A host seats them in the restaurant where the meal they have just selected is delivered to their table.
- Paris Las Vegas Casino Resort At A Glance
- Architect: Bergman, Walls & Youngblood, Ltd., Las Vegas
- Interior Design: Yates-Silverman, Inc., Los Angeles Kovacs & Associates, Chicago
- Kitchen Consultant: JEM Associates, Las Vegas
Vertical
Village
Rising from the shores of the Red Sea, Eilat's
Herods Sheraton celebrates past cultures while embracing
the new.
Located on the north shore of the Red Sea, a short way from the border with Jordan and the town of Aqaba, Eilat, Israel is a city steeped in history. From the Egyptian copper mines operated some 2,000 years B.C., to the culture of nomadic traders wandering between Asia and Africa, through an era of Islamic rule, the Crusades, Turkish domination and British colonialization, and finally to the bedouins of today, modern-day Eilat is a fusion of the seven different cultures that came before. Delving into the richness of this multi-layered past, Joav Igra found inspiration for Eilat's newest resort, the Herods Sheraton.
The hotel's theme, which Igra calls "a fun-filled evocation of the majestic heritage of past empires and kingdoms," is carried out in a lighthearted way through story and architecture. Igra explains the legend of Vitalis, a natural spring found on the property. "The story goes that Vitalis flows with the water of life," he says. "Many individuals from centuries past have partaken of this water and so, become immortal. You never know when you might see them."
Carrying the myth through to its logical conclusion, Igra explains that the resort has a cast of costumed characters--Ethiopian princes, a bedouin sheik, a king and queen, a British gentlewoman, and King Herod himself--who roam the property acting out impromptu vignettes. There could be up to 25 actors taking part in a set presentation, anywhere in the hotel at any time of the day.
Architecturally, Herods is designed as a "vertical village." with stepped towers, interior walls that crumble to show archeological digs, and other elements of bygone eras. Three distinct but connected buildings include Herods Palace, a 300-room hotel; Herods Vitalis, a 64-room spa and luxury hotel and Israel's first member of Sheraton's Luxury Collection; and Herods Forum, a yet-to-be completed convention hotel.
Kitchen Innovations
To shape foodservice for the resort, Igra brought in Yosef Shefts of Nachshon, the food facilities design firm that has designed restaurants for 29 of Eilats 42 hotels and resorts. Asked what sets the kitchens at Herods apart from previously built operations, Shefts focused on several points:
The kitchen equipment is all modular, grouped in consistent design lines and from a single manufacturer.
The major equipment lines are wall mounted or island-cantilever mounted, all off the floor.
All equipment is designed to take modular-sized pans based on "Gastronorm" sizings, allowing pans to be moved from ovens to blast-chillers to hot or cold-holding cabinets and to serving lines.
Beyond traditional kettles, bratt pans, ranges, grills and griddles, the combination steamer oven is now the major cooking tool in the hotel. There is at least one of these in each section of each kitchen.
Kitchens are fully air-conditioned with ventilated ceilings that have replaced hoods, enhancing the open feeling of the space and giving flexibility for future development and layouts.
Floors are granite porcelain tiled, and walls are ceramic tiled, all the way up to the ceiling.
There is no visible piping in the kitchens, and all duct work is concealed above the ceiling.
All cooling fixtures--cold rooms, cabinets, counters, buffets, beverage units, etc.--are connected to a central remote cooling system that is fully automated and controlled with on-line printouts of temperatures at the central control point. This means there are no mechanical cooling units in the kitchen.
And carbonated beverages are piped from a central distribution point.
Built-In Attractions
Currently, resort restaurants include the Bird Watcher's Restaurant, which serves dairy in the morning and meat at night; The Tamarind, offering fusion cooking with a North African flavor; The Terrace, serving light fare by day and transforming into a fish grill at night; the Officers Club, a British-styled bar; and the Four Winds bar.
Special equipment features include a gas-fired pizza oven, which is designed to look like a wood-burning oven and has two openings: one facing the Terrace and the other facing Bird Watchers. Also noteworthy, Shefts has designed a new system for cooling buffet displays.
"We've gone to a forced-air ventilated system to cool all salads," Shefts says. "It's much more attractive--basically, a marble counter with a 6-in. (15-cm) raised slit at the back through which the cool air comes."
Looking ahead, Shefts is now working on completing two more restaurants and pubs in the lower level shopping mall in Herods Palace. Also coming: more kitchens in the Herods Convention Hotel, and more kitchens and restaurants at Herods Vitalis.
- Herods Sheraton Resort At A Glance
- Location: Eilat, Israel
- Owner, Architect, Interior Designer and Conceptual Planner: Joav Igra
- Architects, Technical Implementation: Gertner, Gibor, Komet
- Managing Partner: Sheraton, Israel
- Food Facilities Concept and Design: Yosef Shefts, FCSI, Nachshon
- Project Manager: Omrit Shweitzer, Nachshon
Equipment
Trendsetters
Lightwave and microwave ovens, cook-chill
units, and attractive exhibition equipment top consultants'
lists of what's hot in hotel kitchens.
Ask a food facilities consultant about new trends, developments and advances in kitchen equipment, and you're sure to hear some version of the "evolution, not revolution," speech--advances are usually incremental improvements, not earth-shattering overhauls.
Nonetheless, unrelenting forces that shape the way foodservice is done globally--issues such as labor, economy, food safety and the demand for quality quickly--have conspired to push equipment innovation forward in several noteworthy areas.
On the cooking equipment front, next-generation lightwave (pulsed quartz halogen) ovens and microwave-assisted ovens, which offer all the benefits of convection cooking, grilling and steaming plus super speed and a petite footprint, are going beyond promises on paper, to prove themselves useful in hotel applications (roomservice, for example) at newly affordable prices.
Meanwhile, professionals once disdainful of using conventional microwaves in cooking batteries are rethinking their views. In fact, chefs at top-rated establishments now openly confess that microwave ovens are helpful cooking tools. And induction ranges continue to make inroads, although some experts caution that for large-quantity cooking, ventilation is still a requirement.
Chilling's Hot
Cook-chill and rethermalization, once limited to huge non-commercial kitchens where economies of scale made the hefty price tags of such systems affordable, is now entering another era. Smaller, more affordable chillers and combination chiller/cooktanks are making inroads in hotel kitchens where speedy banquet service without compromised food quality is a priority. (See case study on the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.)
In all equipment categories, automation continues to be a huge arena for coming improvements, from the linking of equipment to point-of-sale systems, to even more sophisticated programs for push-button operation.
Looking at food safety, equipment manufacturers report that they are redesigning, or at least revamping, cooking and prep equipment, along with storage and handling and warewashing equipment to make items safer and easier to use and to enhance versatility, ease of cleaning and environmental friendliness. Refrigeration equipment also has been affected by more stringent cooling requirements.
Still On Display
In addition, the continued call for display cooking has had an overarching affect on kitchen design. As consultant Foster Frable, of Clevenger, Frable, LaVallee, says: "The topic of display kitchens is one that brings a whole lot of passion along with it, especially among hotel operators. They've all had experiences with some display kitchens that worked and others that absolutely didn't. Doing display cooking requires very careful orchestration. You don't just put a window into the kitchen. There needs to be a layered approach, the result of which is that you're looking into a specific cooking area through a series of frames. You're framing what you want people to focus on, not putting everything on display."
The call for more exhibition kitchens has driven sales of specialized equipment, such as rotisseries, wood-burning pizza ovens and high-end pieces covered in expensive finishes, a trend that shows no sign of waning in the new millennium.
Amplifying some of these points, HOTELS magazine spoke with foodservice equipment manufacturers and consultants about coming developments. Here's what they had to say.
Roland Gehring
Cleveland Range
Cleveland, Ohio
"With the quantity of labor being squeezed, the quality of that labor is causing foodservice operators to rethink their future. Cook-chill provides a hedge against this rapidly deteriorating situation. Other considerations driving the growing interest in cook-chill is the increasing incidence of food-borne illnesses. With the proper use of cook-chill, one can be assured of consistent quality and a high degree of safety. Looking ahead, our new product development is geared towards multi-use equipment, such as the combination tumble chiller/cook tanks and the use of smaller systems that operate with self-contained units."
Carlo Brunati
DIHR International
Castelfranco Veneto/TV, Italy
"Our new AX151 rack conveyor dishwasher, which has the capability to change working directions (right entrance into left entrance and vice-versa) and allows for the installation of accessories on either side, can perform eight different washing solutions. We believe the future in dishwashing systems will be environmentally friendly products, energy-saving systems and highly reliability products. We are working on these three major issues."
Jim Weaks
Hamilton Beach Commercial
Glen Allen, Virginia
"Increased demand for frozen specialty drinks like smoothies prompted our introduction of our new Tempest blender line, featuring programmed speed cycles; powerful, high-torque motors; quad-angled blades; and jar censors. For hotel kitchens, our one-gallon food blender has been revamped with a design that takes into account the ergonomic needs of operators. The 994 food blender has a new, low profile because the motor is mounted behind the container instead of under it. Made of clear polysulfone, it is lighter in weight than stainless steel models and gives operators constant visibility of the product being blended."
Fevzi Duygu
Inoksan
Bursa, Turkey
"Exhibition cooking has meant greater demand for our kebap machine by big hotels like Holiday Inn, Hilton and Sheraton, which are purchasing the machine to cook the doner kebap for their guests in special events and garden parties. The equipment we now have under development will be undergoing a change in control panels, which are being replaced by electronic controls for more precise time and heat setting. Chefs also have been asking for more versatile equipment. To meet their requests, we are working on two-in-one and three-in-one combination machines. We also are developing energy-saving systems for our equipment to decrease costs."
Katia Da Ros
Irinox SRL
Corbanese (TV), Italy
"As a manufacturer of blast chillers, we've developed a new, small and compact unit capable of blast chilling and shock freezing. We call it the microwave of blast chilling! This equipment will enable any operator to work safely, economically and in an organized fashion. Looking ahead, automation is one of our focuses. Labor costs are a major problem in many countries, and therefore, there is more unskilled personnel working in kitchens. That's why it is a must to have a simple, easy-to-use machine that can be operated simply by pushing a button. Reliability also is a big issue. Identifying technical problems quickly can save a lot of trouble. That's why a self-diagnosing control board will soon be a standard feature. Eventually, we'd like to perfect the ability to do this from a distance, for example, with a phone line. Lastly, data recording, especially with machines working in accordance with temperature requirements, will be an essential feature and an important part of any HACCP program. It will be more important to have a link to personal computers in order to transfer all the operations data without needing to print them."
Edmond Finkenauer
MKN Maschinenfabrik, Kurt Neubauer GmbH & Co.
Wolfenbuettel, Germany
MKN KucheuMeister cooking island is designed for operation from two sides. All appliances are completely welded into a seamless steel top plate of 3mm thickness. Hence, there are no joints on the top plate, which facilitates easy cleaning and movement of pots and pans. To meet the strictest hygiene standards, the island is designed as a piano type, with two feet. The complete island has one central connecting point for water, gas and electricity, which allows for easy and quick installation.
Marie-Christine Collier
Morice
Les Echets, Miribel France
"We have developed a new line of products with modules that can be combined to form a "monobloc" cook-top with no asperity between blocks. This makes for easier cleaning. The angles are round. And the complete line can be cantilevered and installed in many ways. We believe more hygiene and ergonomy combined with greater efficiency is what professionals are looking for in future installations."
John Parsons
TRAEX div. Of Menasha Corp.
Dane, Wisconsin
"We see the HACCP contamination issues as well as NSF as the big concerns. As we develop new products, those two issues are in the front of our minds at all times. Anything we can do to address these issues are usually very fitting to what the market needs are for this segment. TRAEX will be coming out with our new "Flip Top" salt & pepper shakers this fall. This is a perfect item to be used in warm-weather climates and tropical resort areas where humidity and insects are a concern. The pieces are attractive and functionable and come in an assortment of colors to compliment any décor."
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