Space Group and The Oxford Collection Look to Mareno Again for Quod Kitchen Refurbishment

Quod is one of the iconic restaurants to be found in the heart of Oxford. Along with sister restaurants Gees and Parsonage Grill and two five star hotels, Old Parsonage Hotel, and the Old Bank, it makes up The Oxford Collection, a group of chic, privately owned hospitality venues in the university city.

Having successfully worked with Space Group at Gees, the Collection turned to them once again for its latest project, the refurbishment of the ground floor kitchen at Quod.

‘The brief was to update the existing kitchen, which had been installed a number of years ago, ensuring that the new layout created an improved workflow, as well as increased output and productivity, whilst staying within the footprint of the existing extraction system,’ says Space Group’s Neil Mantle. ‘With the restaurant being situated in a hotel it wasn’t possible for us to close the kitchen whilst we carried out the work so, as part of the project, we set up a temporary kitchen to ensure that service was uninterrupted, and the hotel was able to carry on providing breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner as usual.’

‘The 24/7 nature of the kitchen meant that we had to put forward equipment that we knew would be robust, reliable, and long lasting. Our experience of MARENO cooking equipment is that it is exactly that and, along with its impressive energy efficiency credentials, that is why we chose it for this project.’

The new ‘L’ shaped MARENO Star 90 cookline contains a mixture of gas and electric appliances including a four zone induction top, six burner gas range with electric oven under, single tank electric pasta cooker, four burner gas hob, electric fry top with smooth chrome hotplate, a refrigerated base, and a selection of neutral top and base units.

‘Quod kitchen is now live and up to speed…” says Gino, Maintenance Consultant at The Oxford Collection… “…in short, this was a major refresh of existing equipment which had been in place since the 2016 refurbishment. Following the success of the Gees kitchen refurbishment last year, we worked with the same design team, implementing the very latest high-end range of equipment from Mareno. Working with the designers, on-site maintenance and senior chef team, we collaboratively redesigned the kitchen to improve the sections and efficiencies across the kitchen.’

With the kitchen being in use throughout the day, the range of menu items that need to be prepared and cooked is extensive, but careful planning has resulted in a cookline that is more than able to cope, thus meeting the client’s request for an efficient and productive layout.

‘Having to work within the confines of the existing extraction system was challenging, and so the advice that we received from the team at Grande Cuisine during the design stage was invaluable because it helped us to ensure that we specified the correct equipment and arrived at the most productive layout within the available footprint,’ concludes Neil Mantle.