Hotel F&B – Kitchen Design
The flow of the kitchen and how a particular chef works is crucial to a kitchen design. Although ‘flow’ is sometimes seen as obvious a chef will have their own personal vision of how their flow needs to work so it is always important for them to be consulted initially and then subsequently involved in the design.
There are key items that need to be in a kitchen and consideration needs to be given to these and how they relate to a brigade’s way of working. These always need to be factored in as I have seen many a design completely change for one item of equipment!
As well as the chefs, designers need to speak to the manufacturers and get a good understanding of their equipment and how it works. This is important because if a piece of equipment that is currently being suggested is not quite what is required then the manufacturer may be in a position to offer a better alternative, if consulted.
Chefs’ tables are now something that we are seeing more of, and open ‘theatre’ style kitchens are popular too. The customer is more interested in seeing and understanding how the food gets to the table and chefs are more and more willing to show/explain/detail their side of this process. And from the customer perspective there is also the psychology of “if I can see them cooking it then it must be hygienic/clean”, which I am sure is leading to more footfall.
It’s no secret that kitchens are getting smaller and smaller all the time. As a result, manufacturers have done a huge amount of development work aimed at making prime cooking equipment as small as possible whilst not compromising on key criteria such as power and output. This decreasing amount of space inevitably means chefs are asking more and more of their prime cooking equipment. So much so that looking forward to the kitchen design of the future it is my opinion that with the continual development of catering equipment multifunctional appliances – i.e. equipment that is essentially two appliances in one – will become the “norm”.
For further information on products in the Grande Cuisine portfolio, which includes equipment from Athanor, Adventys, and Capic, please call 01908 745540 or visit www.grandecuisine.co.uk.