Athanor at The Audley Pub and Mount Street Restaurant

Designing a new kitchen is hard enough when it’s on the same level as the main restaurant. So, try to imagine having to come up with a workable solution for a site that is spread over five floors and a kitchen that needs to create dishes for both a traditional pub menu, and a restaurant aiming to produce Michelin starred quality food. Well, that was the challenge at The Audley, a 160 year old site in Mayfair.

‘It was one of the most challenging projects I have been involved with,’ says Gareth Sefton, managing direct at SHW-Design, the company behind the design of the refurbished kitchens. ‘The building is essentially divided up both horizontally and vertically with a kitchen in the basement, pub on the ground floor, fine dining restaurant (Mount Street) on the first floor, and further private dining and function rooms on floors two and three. What made the project even harder was that the only way to move food from the kitchens to the dining areas was via a series of dumb waiters. And to complicate matters even further, although floors two and three are connected to each other, there are no lifts connecting them to the basement, ground or first floors.’

As you can imagine, this also presented a real challenge for Berkeley Projects, and specifically its Project Manager, Todd Bailey, who oversaw the project. ‘Access to the basement, via a single escape staircase, was particularly difficult, so additional labour and lifting apparatus was used,’ he says. ‘We also had to manufacture bespoke elements in smaller sections to reduce their overall weight. Equipment for the upper levels had to be delivered via an external hoist and passed through a window. These restrictions were overcome with the support of Berkeley Projects’ supply chain partners, all of whom are experts in their chosen disciplines, and the excellent working relationship that this produced between all the trades on site, and the main contractor, was fundamental to the successful phased delivery of the project.’

Returning to the design of the kitchens themselves, Gareth Sefton says: ‘A basement kitchen presents real challenges when you’re trying to serve a fine dining restaurant two floors up because there is a lot that can happen between the time a plate of food leaves the kitchen via the dumb waiter and when it arrives on the first floor. The basement area is already very cramped because as well as the main production kitchen. It also houses the beer cellar, food and beverage stores, and the guest toilets for the pub and the restaurant. Serving the kitchen is a bank of three dumbwaiters that transport food to the pub and the Mount Street restaurant. One of these goes up to the pub, the other two serve the restaurant, with one sending food up and the other one bringing dirties down.

‘What’s interesting about the basement kitchen is that over and above servicing the fine dining restaurant, it needed to be able to produce a traditional pub menu such as burgers, sausage rolls, and fish and chips. Ideally you would have two separate lines, one for each type of food, and two different chefs, as you don’t want the same chef doing Michelin food one minute and cod and chips the next. The initial design of the cook suite didn’t allow for this and so we flipped the kitchen layout around to make a bigger hot kitchen area and create room for a double-sided Athanor suite that allowed chefs to work on both sides.

‘The next challenge came in the form of the available electrical power – at one point we were within 1KW of the building’s total capacity. The Athanor suite in the basement kitchen is therefore a balance of gas and electric. So, alongside two solid tops, a salamander, chargrill, and an oven (all gas) we also incorporated a pair of radiant hobs, a Plaque Athanor, for both pan and direct cooking, and two twin tank fryers (all electric). All food for the pub and Mount Street restaurant is prepared here and sent up in the dumb-waiters. Waiting staff in the pub take the food straight to the table, whereas dishes destined for the restaurant are checked at a specially created “expeditor” pass on the first floor before being taken to the table. This pass also includes refrigeration, hot drawers, beverage still, coffee machine, an ice chest for a limited cocktail menu, wine fridge, and a dirties sorting area with a glasswasher.’

For the private dining areas on floors two and three there is a separate finishing kitchen on floor three with another Athanor cook suite. This is simply because the basement kitchen wouldn’t be able to cope with servicing these dining areas and because even if it could there is no way of physically transporting food via lifts from the basement to the third floor. Like the stove in the basement this one is also primarily gas powered and includes a 600mm(w) x 500mm(d) gas solid top, a 330mm(w) x 590mm(d) gas solid top, along with a gas oven. There is also a single basket fryer and salamander, also gas. Extraction at this level was also a challenge, as Todd Bailey explains: ‘The floor three kitchen is landlocked, with building restrictions preventing us from venting solely to atmosphere. Our design team used the expertise of

Halton to provide a ‘Reco-Air’ solution which was supplied, delivered, and installed as part of Berkeley Projects catering package. With various stages of filtration, this allowed the extract air from the Athanor cook suite to be recirculated within the building and a minimal amount expelled to atmosphere.’

‘The tight constraints and the unique layout of the building meant that we really needed maximum flexibility when it came to the design of the cook suites and it’s in situations like this where Athanor really comes into its own,’ concludes Gareth Sefton. ‘The custom built nature of each and every suite means that whatever space we have to work with, and whatever configuration the chef requires, Athanor can create a bespoke solution to suit. It is this, along with its exceptional build quality and unmatched reliability, that sets Athanor apart from others.’

But it’s not all about the quality and flexibility of Athanor says Todd Bailey. ‘Although we manage and simplify a project’s demands and processes to ensure a smooth, collaborative, and seamless delivery, the support and expertise provided by Grande Cuisine and Athanor before, during, and after installation, played a key part in us being able to deliver a successful project.’