One phrase springs to mind on entering the kitchen at Whatley Manor near Malmesbury in Wiltshire: "no expense spared".
Bought by the Swiss Landolt family and developed into a luxury 23-bedroom hotel with a fine-dining restaurant, a brasserie and a spa, the Cotswold manor house has a kitchen to die for.
Although head chef Martin Burge wasn't on board when the kitchen was conceived, he is very happy with the space he and his 20-strong brigade work in. "I feel really lucky," he says. "I've been able to get the quality of the cooking up so quickly because I have the facility to do it. Seventy-five per cent of cooking is mise en place and organisation."
Burge joined just in time to visit the Bonnet factory in France, where his Maestro bespoke island cooking suite was being hand-built, so he was able to add an extra hotplate and oven.
The kitchen serves two restaurants, the 50-seat Dining Room, which opens five nights a week, and the 75-seat Le Mazot brasserie, which is a seven-day lunch and dinner operation. The cooking works on a line concept, with the food for each restaurant making its way down either side of the suite.
There were several requirements designer and Foodservice Consultants Society International member Andrew Powis of Sterling Foodservice Design had to take into account when planning the food operation.
Locations for deliveries, waste and dishwashing were dictated by the owner's desire that all noisy operations be unobtrusive. Consequently, they are all hidden away in the basement.
Goods coming in are unpacked and delivered to a series of four coldrooms - dairy, fruit and veg, fish, and meat - and a dry store in the basement. All coldrooms are alarmed, so no one can get locked in, and all shelving is on wheels, so it can be taken out and the floors scrubbed. Additionally, all the refrigeration has remote compressors and is monitored by a Digitron system, which gives temperature readings every hour.
From storage, ingredients go to a temperature-controlled preparation room before moving in one of two lifts (one for food and clean dishes, one for dirty dishes) to the kitchen on the ground floor ready for cooking. The low ceiling in the kitchen meant that canopies weren't an option, so Powis opted for a stainless-steel Vent Master ventilated ceiling incorporating an ultraviolet system of grease and odour removal.
Green issues such as fuel economy and waste management also featured highly, as did health and safety: every opportunity to minimise the risk of cross-contamination was taken - such as knee-operated taps and an abundance of hand basins, fly killers and Tournus UV-light knife-sterilising cabinets. Stainless-steel channels with roll-up grids made by German company Ado and cut into lengths that will fit in the dishwasher, are fitted into the floor anywhere there is likely to be liquid spills, such as in the dishwash area and by the combi-oven and lifts.
The brief
With no chef in place or menu to consult, and with a brief of "state-of-the-art with traditional influence, capable of producing food to Michelin-star standards", the designers created a kitchen guaranteed to turn most head chefs green with envy - except, of course, Martin Burge, who now runs the show
Favourite bit of kit
The jewel in the crown is a 7m-long Bonnet Maestro Classic cooking suite which Burge describes as "phenomenal". It has a 9mm-thick stainless steel and titanium top that spreads the heat, so the entire surface area can be used for tasks such as holding sauces. "The heat distribution is very useful," Burge says. "It gives you more space, so in effect you've got more solid tops than you think."
Two solid tops sit in the centre of the 1,200mm-wide range, so they can be used from both sides. Towards one end is an electric plancha designed for direct cooking of meat and fish, although it's more often used as another solid top. Next to that are four open burners for stocks. At the opposite end is an electric twin radiant hob. A total of five traditional ovens with cast-iron doors sit underneath.
Food makes its way down each side of the cooking suite to the pass, which houses refrigerated drawers and cabinets. Over the top is a salamander with all sides open so dishes can be passed through.
The soiled-ware carousel means that waiters can dump dishes even when there's no one clearing them the other side
Running the length of the suite, opposite each side is a preparation counter unit, also by Bonnet and incorporating refrigerated drawers and cabinets, bottle drawers, a sink and a twin radiant electric hob. Because there was no fryer in the cooking suite, Burge had a drop-in Valentine fryer fitted to each counter for menu items such as canap‚s, risotto cakes and the chips served in the brasserie. At the end of one counter sits a four-grid combi-oven and a small convection oven.
The four pastry chefs are lucky enough to have a bay window in their area overlooking the kitchen garden in which grow flat leaf parsley, thyme, cherry tomatoes, liquorice, pea shoots and courgette flowers. There are fridges and freezers underneath the stainless steel and marble work surfaces including a drop-in Silver King ice cream conservator. Cooking equipment includes a Bonnet portable induction hob and a two-tier pastry oven.
The dishwash area receives dirties right on its doorstep by way of the dirty hoist. They are processed through a Meiko conveyor dishwasher fitted with a heat pump, which means there is no need for external ventilation. It uses the heat generated to raise the temperature of the incoming water and produces cold air, which helps to air-condition the room. Glasses go through a separate hood machine, also by Meiko and fitted with a Winterhalter reverse-osmosis unit. Waste is kept to a minimum by an IMC disposal unit with waste-management system.
All butchery, fish filleting and pastry prep is done in a thermostatically controlled room. It is kitted out with Foster refrigerated counters, a pastry brake, a chocolate-tempering machine, a floor-standing Hobart mixer for bread dough and a Williams retarder-prover which, after the Bonnet cooking suite, ranks as Burge's next-favourite piece of equipment. "Items are perfectly proved and ready to bake by morning, which eliminates the need for staff to come in at 6am," he says.
Contacts
Ado/Technocator 01788 860525
Bonnet 01494 464470
Digitron 01803 407693
Foodservice Consultants Society International 01483 761122
Foster 01553 691122
Hobart 07002 101101
IMC 01923 718000
Meiko 01753 561561
Sterling Foodservice Design 0121-445 0900
Tournus/Neville UK 01322 443143
Valentine 0118 957 1344
Vent Master 01634 666111
Willams 01553 817000
Winterhalter 01908 359000