Local chefs reveal the features that make their kitchens function
Credit to Author: Mary Beth Roberts| Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2020 14:44:58 +0000
Your designer kitchen may be beautiful, but is it actually functional? Not if you ask many professional chefs. We chatted with three of them, from three very different restaurants, about what really is essential in a kitchen. What they had to say may just change how you plan the most important room in your home.
“We’re set up for speed, so it’s obviously functional,” says Andrew Richardson, executive chef of Toptable Group’s Elisa Steakhouse in Yaletown. Richardson, who also oversees CinCin Ristorante + Bar, was able to design the kitchen at Elisa on a relatively generous budget. It is as elegant as it is efficient. “We just try to build systems to make things easier,” he says.
A very different kitchen is the one at Farina a Legna in North Vancouver. Alessandro Vianello, executive chef of Kitchen Table Restaurants, took over the former Il Castello Pizzeria’s tiny, open kitchen, which is dominated by a large pizza oven. He had little time, space or budget to renovate before opening last September, but with a few smart changes, made it into an attractive and user-friendly space. “It’s remarkable to me how we can pump out so much food from this small kitchen,” Vianello says. “You can do a lot with a small space.”
For Fairmont Chateau Whistler’s executive chef Isabel Chung, a well-designed workflow and meticulous organization are essential to operations in the hotel’s seven kitchens.
Meanwhile, as the Fairmont Chateau Whistler’s executive chef, Isabel Chung oversees seven sprawling kitchens, where 10 head cooks and 100 line cooks prepare food for four restaurants, as well as banquets, in-room dining and a staff cafeteria that feeds 800 people. As if that weren’t challenge enough, the building is 30 years old “and each chef has added something, so it feels cobbled together,” Chung says. Plus, it has features such as supporting walls that are virtually impossible to alter.
“There are things in the building you can and can’t change. Kitchen design is very different now than it was then, very different. You can have all these amazing plans, but when it gets into the space . . . .” She sighs. “We use a lot of kitchen designers, but there are still things that don’t work.”
Different as all these kitchens are, though, they have similar needs—and chances are, so does your home kitchen.
“At home, 90 per cent of the time, I’m a one-woman show in the kitchen. So it’s my ease of use and logical organization that matters,” says Chung. “Here at the hotel, it has to make sense for each of the stations, and it’s still evolving.”
The key element in a commercial kitchen is flow. Things need to be organized logically, so food can be prepared efficiently and safely. Work is done at different stations, which are organized in logical progression—a single line, perhaps, or in clusters around a central module where the cooking is done.
Executive chef Alessandro Vianello leads his team in a discussion in the kitchen at Farina a Legna. Although the kitchen is open to the dining room, guests can’t see the storage that was built into the bulkhead above.
At Elisa, the kitchen is essentially split in two. Prep work is done at stations hidden behind a wall, with an area for dishes to the far right. “They’re at the end of the line so a cook can just grab and go,” Richardson says. Plating is done in the open kitchen with its majestic Grillworks Infierno wood-fired grill. In front of the grill is the heated “pass,” where plates stay warm as the line of cooks season, slice and arrange steaks and sides before servers pick them up.
At Farina a Legna, the built-in pizza oven was both an attractive feature and a real obstacle. “We added some menu items that were challenging with the space, with the oven. We had to set up like a triangle where everything comes to a point,” Vianello says. “We didn’t have an extra oven, so we added a convection oven for prep and two induction burners. And we converted the private dining room so it’s a prep pace.”
While food should move easily around a kitchen, those who are cooking it shouldn’t have to.
“The less distance you have to walk anywhere, the more efficient you’re going to be,” Vianello says. “Have the things you use frequently within arm’s reach so you don’t have to bend over or reach into a cupboard.”
Line cooks should be able to do their job “without taking more than a step in any direction,” Chung says. “In a professional kitchen, it’s about spacing and efficiency of space. If everything is not within arm’s length of you, it’s too much. Efficiency of space utilization is the most important thing.”
If there’s one thing professional chefs know, it’s that your kitchen probably has too much stuff in it—and chances are, it’s the wrong stuff.
“Limit the specialty tools and have tools that can do multiple things,” Vianello says. Think: knives, spoons and tongs, rather than, say, a garlic press, avocado slicer and salad chopper.
At home, Chung loves her gadgets. She has two smokers, numerous countertop appliances, at least four rolling pins and a pantry overflowing with baking gear. (“I have an ungodly amount of sprinkles,” she says.) But all of it has a purpose, and all of it is in regular use. “I would not let Marie Kondo touch my kitchen,” she says. “My kitchen has a lot of stuff in it, but it all has a functional use.”
In commercial kitchens, functionality is more important than beauty (fancy wood-fired grills aside). Things just need to work. Cooktops need to be hot enough, coolers cold enough, mixers powerful enough to meet the demands of high-volume cookery. That said, chefs consider certain appliances essential that home cooks likely wouldn’t, such as a sous vide circulator or tabletop deep fryer.
Natural gas is still the standard for cooktops, but increasingly, induction is becoming the preferred choice. “I love working with induction,” Richardson says. “The big thing for me is no heat pollution. It’s a much cooler environment.”
Vianello adds: “They’re also portable, so they’re good for a smaller space.”
And while constant wear and tear drives many chefs to use inexpensive, easily replaceable pots and pans, Richardson isn’t one of them. “All of our cookware is Le Creuset or Staub. The Staubs are wonderful for retaining heat,” he says, noting that he uses Staub cast iron for Elisa’s famous roast chickens and gooey mac and cheese.
“Because it gets so hot, it develops a great crust and it stays hot for a really long time.”
Your biggest challenge is also the biggest challenge in a commercial kitchen: storage. “There’s never enough of it,” Chung says.
At Elisa, Richardson makes the most of space with hanging hooks, open shelving, plastic bins and a special rack for cutting boards that lets them slide easily in and out. Pots, pans and plates are stacked neatly with the same styles and sizes kept together. Staff have dedicated drawers for their own tools. And storage bins are on wheels. “It’s important to take them out so we can clean behind them,” he says. “It’s a lot of work. The guys spend a lot of time cleaning up every night.”
Cleanliness is especially important when you have an open kitchen and nothing is hidden from customers. At Farina a Legna, that was a special challenge because the space was so small. “We added a bulkhead for storage, but it’s also a really nice designed feature with mirrors,” Vianello says. He tucked industrial wire shelving behind the pizza oven and installed open shelving under the counter so plates and other essentials are easy to access. “During service, it looks tidy and nice,” he says, “and we did it on a budget.”
Everywhere, dry goods are stored in sealed plastic containers and clearly labelled. “In a commercial kitchen, there are so many people using it that everything has to be labelled,” Chung says. “Otherwise, someone is going to put saffron in the chowder and you’ll be sad.”
Of course, you likely don’t have to produce dinner for dozens—or hundreds—of people a day. But there are plenty of aspects of commercial kitchens that you can bring home to yours. As Chung says: “I think there are a lot of situations today where we value design over function. I just don’t think I could live with a show kitchen.”
The kitchen at Farina a Legna had to be designed around the pizza oven inherited from the pizzeria that it replaced.