Latest Recipe restaurant at the Le Méridien Kuala Lumpur features several show-ktichen food stations surrounding one main, back-of-house kitchen.

There is a trend in the industry toward this style of three-meal restaurant and toward chef/guest interaction and creative presentation that goes beyond the chafing dish to include cast iron pans, woks and specially designed serving pieces.

Kuala Lumpur-based kitchen design firm Creative Kitchen Planners (CKP) International worked with Le Méridien Kuala Lumpur's management team, including the general manager, F&B director, executive chef and executive sous chef, to create the Latest Recipe restaurant and its kitchen facilities.

Peter How, senior vice president at CKP, notes that the original plan for the restaurant had zero open-kitchen food stations, yet in the end, the multiple show kitchens and the cooking-as-theatre concept wound up as key components.

“Since the cuisine is so diverse, we decided to highlight selected show-cooking,” How says. “We made sure that the type of show kitchen selected would have busy chefs—all the kitchens are designed in such a way that there will always be activity in the individual station.”

Designing kitchen facilities for a live-cooking international buffet restaurant is not without its challenges, which is why Latest Recipe's show kitchens all are located on one end of the restaurant, next to the back-of-house kitchen.

“Initially, we wanted to create different zones within the restaurant for the different cuisines, but we had to bring all the stations to one end of the restaurant, as we could not get supporting plumbing and drainage to the various parts of the restaurant,” How explains.

“In addition, the existing exhaust system could not support the show kitchens and we had to run a new system. The exhaust is discharged just outside the restaurant, and to prevent the fumes from causing problems, we had to use UV treatment to get rid of the smell.”

Finally, the stations had to be somewhat round to flow with the configuration of the restaurant itself, which is round. To achieve this, CKP created smaller, segmented straight sections. “We had to make sure the stations could fit into the restaurant and did not look out of place,” How says.