Overcoming Obstacles

Two kitchens at The Peninsula Chicago go from cramped to comfortable as renovations add space and state-of-the-art equipment.

By Karyn Strauss, Senior Editor -- HOTELS Magazine, 5/1/2007

Since its debut in 2001, The Peninsula Chicago has earned numerous accolades as one of the world's top hotels, and its Avenues and Shanghai Terrace restaurants consistently are listed among the city's best. While this is a feat unto itself, it is an even greater accomplishment when one considers the culinary team's major obstacle: lack of space. Given the hotel's urban setting in America's third-largest city, when it came to constructing kitchen facilities, the name of the game was compromise-and creativity.

For both the Shanghai Terrace Chinese restaurant and the pastry shop, chefs learned how to make the most of tiny workspaces. When it opened, Shanghai Terrace's kitchen was just 260 sq.ft. (24 sq.m) and the pastry kitchen was just two 6-ft. (1.8-m) tables at the back of the main kitchen-for the first year of operation it didn't even have its own oven. "But that's part of being able to be a chef-being able to accomplish something good with the hand you're dealt," explains Executive Chef Terry Crandall. "When we started out, I thought, 'How am I going to do this?' But you figure out how to do things better and get creative. It really had more to do with scheduling staff-we'd have a night crew to do prep work because we didn't have enough room to have them in the kitchen during the day."

But, despite such challenges, accomplish they did, doubling restaurant revenues since opening nearly six years ago. However, almost from the start, Crandall was planning to expand his workspace. And now the view from the kitchens is decidedly brighter as he recently completed two major renovations, adding not only more space, but also state-of-the-art equipment to speed productivity and generate added efficiency.

Shanghai Terrace

When the hotel was conceived originally, the space that became Shanghai Terrace was set to be a bar. Then some months prior to opening, the Hong Kong-based corporate team decided it wanted to have a second restaurant. Given the small size of the kitchen, Crandall says they first conceived a noodle shop, but then the corporate office decided it wanted a full Chinese restaurant to reflect The Peninsula Hotels' heritage. The menu started small with just a handful of dim sum, appetizer, entrée and dessert options. "We worked with portable burners most of the time. We had about six people working in there, and they had to stand in one spot the whole time because there wasn't any space to move around," Crandall recalls. "We had one wok, one steamer and were doing 150 covers." And with almost no storage space whatsoever, the chefs were constantly running up and down stairs to the other kitchens. Despite these challenges, the menu doubled in size within three years. However, eight months into the operation, Crandall was already starting to plan an expansion.

He traveled to Asia to study Chinese kitchens to see how they handled workflow issues. In the process he learned just how differently Chinese chefs worked. One of the biggest differences, he says, is how wok items are prepared. Whereas in Western kitchens all the ingredients would be prepped ahead of time and set in front of the wok station, in China he learned that wok chefs prepare everything-ingredients and sauces-a la minute. "An order comes in to the kitchen and goes to 'the chopper.' He cuts all the meat and vegetables and sends them down to the wok chef who then knows that the dish is based on the ingredients." The wok then has to be cleaned by the chef between every order-so they have to work extremely fast.

By contrast, Crandall wanted to increase the number of woks in his kitchen, so now the new kitchen has three; the one steamer has grown to four. He also added two, 20-qt. (19-l) soup steam kettles, which he learned are very important to Chinese cooking. "They make what is called 'superior broth' that is used for flavoring most Chinese dishes," he says. Made of chicken stock, this broth has to be made fresh daily to serve as a base for sauces.

For additional freshness, he added fish-chilling drawers and four times more storage. "We went from a cubicle to a nice-size kitchen now," Crandall says of the new 696-sq.ft. (65-sq.m) space. The expanded kitchen also features two new convection ovens and separate work areas: a dim sum station, a wok station, a wok prep area, a sauté station and a pantry station for pastry and cold food. "I looked at how we work first, and then laid out the kitchen accordingly," he says.

Pastry Kitchen

Building a proper pastry kitchen took eight months to complete as the team had to redo a wine room, reconfigure two store rooms and knock out a wall. And while the original space was nothing more than an afterthought-literally, as the original plans forgot to include an area for a pastry shop-the hotel now has a workable space complete with all the bells and whistles.

"Some of the pastry equipment is pretty cool. We added a blast freezer for mousses and things-it freezes things solid in 45 minutes. Before we had to chill items overnight, so this should increase production speed quite a lot," Crandall says. They also installed a US$20,000 Pasto Chef, which can make ice cream as well as many other items. "You put all the ingredients in, for say, ice cream, and you just push a button and set a timer and the rest is done. It mixes, churns, pasteurizes, freezes," he says. Similarly foolproof is a state-of-the-art baking oven that with the push of a button heats up and steams to perfection-a US$36,000 investment. "We bought the nicest equipment we could find, figuring we'd do it right the first time," Crandall says. "It's top-of-the-line equipment, and it increases production. With our previous ice cream machine, we could make 2 quarts (1.8 liters) in half an hour, now we can make 10 quarts (9.5 liters) in 10 minutes."

Challenges

While building new kitchens is a big win for the culinary team, Crandall says completing such projects did not come without challenges. "We had to convince not only the GM but everyone up to the CEO of our company that this is what needed to be done and when to expect a return on their investment. When you look at a small restaurant (80-seats plus 30 on the outdoor terrace), US$1.2 million is a huge investment. It was a huge challenge to convince people," he says.

Another challenge the hotel faced is that adding space to the kitchens meant other departments lost some of their areas. "It's a domino effect-when you give to one department, you take away from another," he says. Both the banquet department and the laundry lost space to make room for the expanded Shanghai Terrace kitchen. "It needed to be done, but because of the size and scope of the project it takes so long to plan and to execute." But, Crandall adds, he is very happy with the results-and for fact that Peninsula was willing to invest so much in a hotel that is only six years old.

Direct comments to kstrauss@reedbusiness.com