What would you advise someone starting from scratch?
I really encourage everybody – and not because I’m a consultant – to get them to draw on experienced people and work as a team. You may be a great chef, but not a great operator, or you may be a great operator, but you don’t know how to cook.  I consider the restaurant industry a pie – if you’re a fine-dining restaurant, food could be as much as 50% of the importance of the restaurant, followed by service at 25% and maybe 15% location. I find the reason most restaurants fail is because they are missing pieces of that pie to be a completed unit.

What comes first, the menu or the design?
If your passion is food you need your menu first. If you don’t know what your food is and you design from the kitchen forward it’s almost impossible to design a restaurant. I also find a lot of restaurateurs without a lot of experience listen to their customers too much – some feedback is good but you don’t want to change the essential nature of your brand based on what you think others want. It’s best to just stick to your idea and have the confidence to execute it.

What kind of experience do you need to own a successful restaurant?
If you’re going to own a restaurant you need at least five years of management experience, minimum. If you have a degree in hotel/restaurant management, that can give you an edge but you still need the real world experience. I find the transition between general manager and owner is the hardest there is. I can say that because I sold two of my restaurants to managers and they failed.

What do owners have that managers don’t, and vice versa?
Managers work day-to-day and week-to-week, but a good restaurant owner is working on the long-term projection of the restaurant. They don’t have to worry about who’s on the shift that day; they’re more concerned about promotions, affiliations, networking in the community. I think a lot of general managers get caught up in the day-to-day activity such that when they become owners, they struggle. They don’t teach ownership in school, unfortunately.

Have you ever had to discourage someone from opening a restaurant?
We had a young man come to the Ask the Design Experts booth – he was maybe 28 to 30 years old and had convinced his parents to invest in a restaurant concept. I questioned the capital injection versus his experience. Without saying ‘you shouldn’t do the restaurant outright’, I suggested he needed more experience and that risking a life savings to get into the restaurant industry just wouldn’t be a good idea.

What are some trends you’re seeing in restaurant concepts?
We’re still seeing the burger trend and customisable pizza is a big thing now. But what I’m seeing in my market in Texas is Vietnamese – or pho – getting huge. There’s also a trend toward healthier food and pho is pretty healthy – it’s broth-based and has lots of fresh vegetables and lean meats. It’s also affordable and easy.

What equipment do you see being used more in the near future?
Induction cooking is getting huge. Eventually municipalities – such as California – will insist on it. Induction draws only 10% of the energy and puts no heat out in the room. Also, smart equipment is on the rise. Some of the ovens now have computers in them so they will send signals back to the corporate office to tell you they’re not being cleaned properly. You can also programme new recipes from a remote location.

Amelia Levin

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Described as “a living science lesson” and “museum as sculpture,” the $185m project tells its own story. The mechanics of the building were left transparent, a 54ft continuous flow escalator in a 150ft glass-enclosed tube-like structure sits on the outside of the building. It’s designed to stimulate curiosity.

The Café, located on the ground level in the plinth to the right of the main entrance, has a dual mission – to feed the stomachs and minds of its visitors. Like the museum in which it is housed, it is green, focusing on local Texas ingredients and sustainable practices.

Designed by 2005 Prizker Architecture Prize Laureate Thom Mayne of Morphosis Architects, the building was conceived as a large cube floating over a landscaped plinth. It registered and worked on three green building accreditations – LEED Gold, Green Globe and The Sustainable Sites Initiative.

Foodservice consultants Manask & Associates from Burbank, California, brought 20 years’ experience of work with cultural institutions on 
their earned income areas to the task.

“The museum called us four years ago,” says founder and CEO Arthur M Manask FCSI. “They were looking to move from a downtown location in an older building and wanted help programming and planning the café and catering support, facility rentals for corporate and social events, and the gift shop. We became part of the project team and our role was acting as the operator. We were all operators first, so were able to act that role until the actual operators came on board. We were on the project team the first two or three years and then managed the RFP [request for proposal] process to help the museum select an operator for foodservice and the gift shop.

“We looked at local and national operators and signed contracts (with Wolfgang Puck and Restaurant Associates) nine months before the museum opening. They provided the final OK on the space and Manask offered on-call support for the pre-opening and post-opening.” The challenge, he says, was the way cultural nonprofits operate. “They move very slowly. We had to be incredibly good in managing the schedule because they relied on us to do that.”

The cafe is simple and elegant

The self-service café is relatively small, a factor mitigated by its location adjacent to an outdoor patio. The kitchen is small and supports only the café, with catering supported from an outside venue.
Museum directors and CEOs have moved from viewing foodservice outlets as a basic, often mundane necessity to a rewarding part of the total guest experience, says Manask. The café’s designer, Rod Worrell, principal-in-charge of Worrell Design in Houston, Texas, views it as a “boutique operation in a somewhat confined space”. In what he sees as a unique twist, the firm was brought in before an operator was chosen to run the café.

“We invented what we felt would be good for that space and size for the customers – a walk-up service counter for limited staffing, an open kitchen concept. It became the basis for Art Manask to use in the RFP,” says Worrell. “When Wolfgang Puck was selected to operate it, they chose a different configuration of equipment in the same footprint.”

Cashier stations were moved out to the open servery and it was decided that foods would be prepped on a wall alongside the back of the servery wall, so customers could see the preparation.

“The biggest challenge was to successfully articulate a foodservice concept in a uniquely-shaped, awkward space,” says Worrell. “We achieved an elegantly clean café environment with a very neutral finish. The food is well lit and becomes the element of colour in the room.” All the serviceware in the café is disposable. “The food took the presence – it’s colourful. Customers, as they enter, see the panorama of the whole area. It’s very sensory.”

The museum, in Dallas’s Victory Park, is designed to evoke curiosity and wonder in its visitors, creating an experience that immerses them in the exhibits, the architecture and the city itself.
“The visitor becomes part of the architecture, as the eastern facing corner of the building opens up towards downtown Dallas to reveal the activity within,” according to Morphosis. “The museum is a fundamentally public building – a building that opens up, belongs to and activates the city. The public is as integral to the museum as the museum is to the city.”

Aleksander (Zander) Tamm-Seitz, onsite project architect, calls the building “unique. It’s three separate institutions coming together to create a natural history museum, children’s component and a science centre. We were always interested in having the building and what it’s about ingrained in the project.”

The 4.7-acre site was developed around the native ecologies of the state, from the East Texas forests to the West Texas rocks, grasses and cactus. Tamm-Seitz says “The skin of the building is an abstract of geological stratification. These things connect the building and its programme and become a way you view the exhibits. The public spaces are connected to the city and the plants outside. In the galleries, there are no windows – it’s a different environment. The whole project is the idea of the building as an exhibit. We’re interested in the layering of information and transparency. The structure inside is not covered up. The floors are concrete, the ceilings are open or partially open so you can see what’s above them. The exhaust sprinklers and air ducts are painted in colours.” The public galleries are designed to have lots of light, so there are skylights, large and small. At the top, visitors get a 180˚ view of downtown.

On the roof, he points out, are solar hot water collectors that generate hot water for the café. Water on the rooftop falls off one side and goes through pipes – again visible to visitors – into a large cistern for use in irrigation and toilet flushing uses. “This cuts the use of city water and, most of the year, we can just use the water collected this way.”

Buro-Happold’s Culver City, California, office, the mechanical, electrical, plumbing engineer on the project, was eager to take advantage of the city’s high humidity in the summer, says Sam Kashanian, PE, associate principal.

“Rainwater on the roof,“ he says, “comes down, drains and is diverted to two cisterns. Condensation from air conditioning in the summer cools down, becomes almost clean drinking water, and is diverted to cisterns. Some water used for toilet flushing is pumped into the building and dyed blue so people won’t drink it. Some is used for irrigation. There’s a cooling tower on the roof and cooling of the building is done partially using recycled water. Potable water is filtered twice to meet Dallas standards.”

The project, says Kashanian, presented “tons of challenges”. One was learning local requirements for recycled water. Two cisterns were designed for the space and there were challenges in making equipment fit the spaces for them. Throughout the project, “we kept the end user in mind,” he points out. “You don’t often have a project where the owner understands that the story was important to tell and forks over the money to accomplish that. We meter everything and know how much water we are using and saving. The water,” he says, “was part of the architecture.”

Sue Holaday

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Atherton understands the need to start spending more time out of his kitchen. At the same time he wants everyone to understand how it works, now he’s heading up his own rapidly-expanding restaurant group.

“This is the restaurant where I cook, judge me here as a chef,” he says. “If you have a bad meal here, I’ll take it on the chin; and if you have a great meal here, I’ll take the praise. When I open somewhere new, I’ll put my chef whites on and stand there for the first couple of weeks and see what is coming out of the kitchen, but I’ll never cook there. Anything else I’m involved in beyond here is me as a restaurateur. That’s me trusting people I’m employing and giving them the opportunity to shine.”

Since he left Gordon Ramsay Holdings, where he created and ran the hugely successful Maze, in 2010, Atherton has been in and out of the kitchen. He opened Pollen Street Social, his Michelin-starred flagship in Mayfair the following year, and now has three restaurants in Singapore and one in Hong Kong – and consults on a another in Shanghai.

He spends an average of 10 days every six weeks in Asia. The rest of the time he’s in London, where he’s opening another two restaurants this year. Little Social, a 40-seat bistro and Social Eating House.

Atherton, who at 16 left Skegness in Lincolnshire to train as a chef, thinks that many still find it hard to accept chefs as restaurateurs. “A journalist in Asia said to me recently: ‘You own a lot of restaurants now, you’ve become another one of those chefs.’ I get it, but I came to London with nothing and I’m employing hundreds of people at a time when things are hard. I plough everything back into the business – I’m not taking the money out.”

How does he think London is supporting its current restaurant boom, with new openings up 25% for the last year on record and the number of restaurants closing also down?

“Good food has become the norm in London,” he states. “When I came to London, about 20 years ago at the back end of the recession in the early 1990s, there were a lot of brilliant chefs who went bust and had to close great restaurants, because the market couldn’t support them. Back then dining out was considered a luxury. Today people feel like they have to go out for dinner, it’s a part of who we are and what we do.”

He believes there has been a shift in the style of restaurants. “I want to open restaurants that please me and please my customers. Why open a restaurant just to please a guidebook? I know that’s difficult for some chefs to get their heads around. We’ve got a Michelin star and nine out of 10 in The Good Food Guide here, but you’d never know it by the way the restaurant looks – and I like that.”

Not that Pollen Street Social arrived fully formed. “When I opened here I let my ego get in the way,” he recalls. “I tried to make the menu too fancy and too complicated. I was so nervous because my mortgage was attached to the business. I didn’t know if I should go super-casual or do fine dining. I was trying to be somewhere in the middle and lost my confidence.

“Now, two years in, the restaurant is working well. It’s easy to make mistakes when you’re doing something on your own for the first time. I learnt a lot from that experience.”

He’s also learnt a lot from his time in Asia. “Singapore has been very kind to me, both my business partners are from there and I just love Asia,” he says. “I’m married to an Asian woman [his wife, with whom he has two daughters, is from the Philippines] and I can imagine myself retiring somewhere in Asia one day.”

He would never have opened his Asian restaurants if he didn’t enjoy visiting there. “If you don’t actually want to go there, it will seem like twice the work,” he says. “The food will also be affected, because there’ll be little or no love in it.”

This November he’s taking his wife on 
a luxury Asian cruise with Silversea. “I have to cook a dinner for 100 people,” he explains. “We sail from Hong Kong to Singapore over five days and we stop off at Vietnam, where we’re doing a tour of the food markets. I’ve never cooked on a ship before.”

Although he now has to be a businessman, his first love remains cooking. He was the first British chef to work at El Bulli, Ferran Adrià’s legendary restaurant on the Catalan coast, where, before it closed in 2011, young chefs lined up to work for free to experience its crazy culinary creativity. His love for Spanish food is requited by the two tapas bars he operates in Asia.

Back in London, he describes his style of food at Pollen Street Social as “Modern British with an eclectic outlook.” He elaborates: “It’s essentially British, but if I want to use a bit of Iberico ham or some soy sauce, I’ll use it. I think lots of people are now pushing the local ingredient thing too far, like only using sunflower or rapeseed oil, instead of olive oil.

“It’s common sense to use good, local ingredients when possible. Go beyond that and it starts getting slightly silly.”

Although one day he’ll take more of a backseat role in the business, he can’t imagine a time when he’s not still involved in restaurants and cooking.

“I’ll always dabble. I have to have an outlet because I love it,” he says, looking around his dining room again. “I’ll always need to be doing something creative with food and restaurants. That’s who I am.”

Joe Warwick

The post Social graces appeared first on Foodservice Consultant.

Earlier this year Puck was inducted into the Culinary Hall of Fame. His flagship Spago Beverly Hills restaurant received a James Beard Foundation Outstanding Service award in 2005. It was also awarded two Michelin stars in the 2008 and 2009 Los Angeles Michelin Guide. Many thought the recognition was a long time coming for a chef whose restaurants in Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Las Vegas have attracted A-list celebrities and movie moguls for decades.

Star power is something the charismatic Puck has in spades himself – he’s funny, affable and comfortable working with the media. When we speak before the Oscars in late February, he is putting the final touches to the 50 imaginative dishes he is producing for the Governors Ball, the official post-Oscar celebration – 2013 marks the 19th consecutive year that Puck has created the menu for the ball.

Despite the stress, he seems resolutely unflappable and in great spirits. “I’m excellent, thank you,” he says when I enquire how he is, his accent a transatlantic hybrid of clipped Austrian and well-heeled Californian. “In Los Angeles it’s clear, a little chilly, 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Not bad. Almost as good as London,” he jokes.

Wolfgang Puck and his team in action

“I’m ready for Sunday night,” says Puck. “We are doing the Oscars for the 19th time so we have it down and under control. The great thing is that I have such a good team and everybody has been with me for many years, such as Matt [Bencivenga] our catering chef who has been with been with me for 20 years and Sherry [Yard] our pastry chef has been with me 19 years.

“That makes it a little easier, so it’s not like I’m struggling to find chefs and teach them how to make mashed potatoes.”

The evening itself will see Puck running the rule over an army of 350 staff working in the kitchen and a further 600 stationed in the dining room. “We have 1,500 to 1,600 guests. Everybody is coming,” says Puck, shamelessly name-dropping celebrities such as Adele, John Travolta and Daniel Day-Lewis. “All the big movie stars – you name it, they all come for dinner. And they’re all hungry too,” he laughs.

The logistics of the whole thing are fascinating. So how does he plan for it and what’s the biggest challenge his team faces? “The secret is to cook as we would at the restaurant,” he says. “We cook the dinner and we segment it out so that we have, say, 10 chefs who do the pre-ceremony cocktail and they just make little appetisers and pass them around. Then I have 30 or so chefs doing little salads. They can go really fast. We basically set up assembly lines so that everything is put together at the last second. For the Kobe beef steaks, we mark them off and then we put them into a very hot oven.”

As well as his obligatory chocolate-covered Oscars and smoked-salmon Oscars on the menu, one particular Puck dish has gone down a storm at the awards for the last three years. For his chicken pot pie with black truffles the team cook the chicken the day before the event, then make the sauce and prepare the vegetables, put them in small ramekins and cover them with puff pastry. “We have these big ovens where you can roll in a whole rack or two and I can cook 200 chicken pot pies in less than 20 minutes,” says Puck. “Now the Board of Governors, and even Barbra Streisand, said ‘You know what, I want the chicken pot pie again.’ It’s a big favourite with people because it’s comfort food.”

Born and raised in Austria, Puck trained in Monaco and Paris before bursting onto the American cuisine scene in the early 1980s. Spago, his first restaurant opened on the Sunset Strip in 1982, serving California cuisine. With all the success he has experienced since then, I ask him what continues to drive him. “We [chefs] are very lucky,” he says. “It’s not like in sports where you have to retire at 35, or whatever. We can keep going if we renew ourselves. If there is an evolution. I look at people like [Giorgio] Armani. He is 80 years old or so and he has to present two new collections very year. If he would stop doing that, some of the others would take his place and nobody would talk about Armani any more. Now he has enough money and fame but I still think he enjoys what he’s doing and for me it’s the same thing.”

Clearly not one to rest on his laurels, Puck continues to open restaurants around the world and look at new ways of maximising the brand that bears his name. “Do you know, it’s a little easier to enjoy something when you’re successful?” he reflects. “I always feel that we can get better. I look at the positive side, rather than thinking ‘I’m not good enough’.”

Puck became a huge global brand many years ago and I ask him what that feels like. “To me, I love cooking,” he says. “I love to go to the farmer’s market, the fish market. I like to be in the dining room and say ‘hello’ to the guests. So to me it’s just as exciting as it was 30 years ago.”

Puck took a team of 350 to the Awards

So has he ever lost count of how many restaurants he’s got? He laughs heartily. “It’s like having kids! Some of them I see often and some of them maybe not much. If you have 10 kids and someone asks ‘which is your favourite’ it’s always the one that behaves the most, that brings home great grades!” he jokes. “With restaurants it’s the same. If you get good critics and make money then they become a favourite.

“But for me it’s really Spago [in Beverley Hills] because that was really the ‘mother’ of all the restaurants. We just spent $4m renovating the whole restaurant. We’re very happy with the results and the guests are happy too.”

The new-look Spago has eschewed its previous European influences – all wood motifs and old world artworks – for a Waldo Fernandez-designed fusion of moodily backlit blacks and whites; while an open plan kitchen showcases Puck’s chef de cuisine Tetsu Yahagi and team.

Reinvention is certainly a quality that can be ascribed to Puck. I ask him how frequently the urge strikes him to move on and try something new. “Well I really think that cooking is an evolution and you have to reinvent yourself a lot – or a little bit at a time. With Spago I said, ‘we have to change everything’. Not just changing the menu a little bit but complete reinvention. So we changed the whole decor, made it completely different. Yet still comfortable and not fussy. I want people to have fun. The only thing serious should be on the plate.”

“I don’t want every restaurant to look the same” he says. “I want them to have their own identity.” Fernandez will design more restaurants for Puck in the Middle East, while world-renowned designer Tony Chi will probably work on his new ventures in Shanghai. “We have to have different people for different sensibilities. But first I have to like their taste. I don’t care if they’re famous or not. I’m still looking for new talent in design the same way I always look for new talent in cooking.”

I ask what he feels he has left to achieve and if he ever worries about standing still for too long in this industry. “I think there could be a danger of that, but we do so many new things,” he says. “Two years ago when we opened in London [with CUT Restaurant in Mayfair London at 45 Park Lane], that was a big step for us – to expand overseas and go to a market where there are a lot of great restaurants. To end up being successful was very exciting for me.

“Now I think we are going to open in Shanghai, in Dubai, maybe Doha, and so on. We’ll continue to grow our restaurants, but very slowly really. When you think that Spago is 31 years old and we have 22 fine-dining restaurants, we have really gone slow with the up-scale restaurants.”

Puck’s ambitions continue to burn brightly. “I want us to be a global brand so we have to open in important places. There are still some places in America where we can open, but obviously Asia is an incredibly fast-growing market.”

Rest-of-the-world domination will have to wait for at least a weekend however, until Puck has finished with the Oscars at least. With typically breezy charm he signs off the interview to go and check on how his own cast of hundreds are faring behind the scenes. One suspects that with Puck at centre stage in the kitchen, everything will go rather well on the night.

Michael Jones

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Brudnizki began with an aim to “look to the heritage of the building to create an eclectic finish full of character; a room to complement both the restaurant’s surroundings and the inspired cooking of Hartnett and Holder”. He chose a sympathetic décor to show off the simple, deftly-created dishes in the kind of comfortable and unpretentious environment for which he is known.

The restaurant has a central bar, which allows the drama of the kitchen to spill out, allowing guests to absorb the theatre involved in food preparation. Meats 
hang from a wine gantry, while a meat slicer and coffee machine sit in pride of place on the bar. Dark oak distressed tables are clad with unfussy brushed silver cutlery and silver ‘wee willie winkie’ candle sticks. Small plates and bowls 
are the crockery of choice which guests are encouraged to share and taste come gli italiani.

The idea has attracted high levels of interest. Robin Hutson, chairman and CEO of the Lime Wood Group, explains how the concept was born. “We wanted to change direction because Lime Wood has two restaurants, which frankly is too many for a 29-bedroom hotel,” he says. “We wanted to de-formalise the offer, to move away from the traditional country house fine dining room, which I feel is an outdated concept and a bit stiff for the atmosphere we are trying to create here.”

In terms of the type of customer who will be attracted to the restaurant, Hutson believes that “our existing local clientele will love it as well as the hotel’s residential guests who travel from London for weekends in the sticks”. But in general, says Hutson, “you cannot be too specific in targeting sectors. You need to appeal to 
a broad range of clients and age groups. 
It is not like opening a restaurant in central London”.

The joy of Hartnett Holder & Co is further enhanced by its chefs. Their philosophy of a relaxed, approachable and fun yet quality-driven dining atmosphere can be found in all aspects of the operation. “Guests can enjoy food that we love to eat and indulge in products hard to find outside of London,” says Holder.

“This is the type of food that was shared during dining experiences before big plates and nouvelle cuisine took over the world in the late 1980s. You will see dishes such as whole baked turbot, Mr Zebedee’s rib eye for two with smoked bone marrow, spaghetti and lobster, and lots of home-cured charcuterie that we have been working hard on for the last three years.”

Just as important to the overall experience are the chefs’ suppliers, including local farmers and producers. “You are only as good as the produce you use,” says Holder. “We have worked hard with our suppliers. We have demanded a lot from them in terms of the detail, ageing and finishing. Some of the meat suppliers we have chosen to work with have a fabulous track record in producing great fare, for example, Lake District Meat Supplies and the New Forest Pig and Poultry Company, our local rare breed pork supplier.” He adds: “We have also improved on the programme that we currently have with local growers and farmers such as Sunnyfields.”

The work has taken nearly a year, with Holder and Hartnett spending time talking to family and friends about the kind of restaurant they were looking to create. “Our inspiration comes from wanting to create a restaurant experience that is as much about atmosphere as it is great food,” says Holder.

Sunita Passi

Q&A with ANGELA HARTNETT 

Luke and Angela in the kitchen

How does the location of Hartnett Holder & Co and Lime Wood influence your dishes?
The forest really is gorgeous and the proximity to the sea means we naturally get lovely fish. Moreover, there seem to be plenty of local suppliers, many of whom I have not worked with before, so it will be good getting to know them.

What does it mean to have a Michelin star?
It’s had a good effect, being one of the few female chefs to hold one. You stand out, but I think people expect too much sometimes and don’t understand how the guide works. Consistent cooking earns one star – it’s that simple; it’s not about glass plates, a huge wine list and white tablecloths any more.

Are you confident about achieving a Michelin Star, in time, at Lime Wood? If so, how do you think you will achieve it?
It has never been discussed. The aim is to have a fab restaurant with top food and a great atmosphere that appeals to locals and hotel guests. What is your advice for aspiring chefs? Decide which area or cuisine you want to work in and try to be the best at it. From burgers to fine-dining, contract catering to cooking on a plane – just maintain top standards and put some time into training. Lots of young chefs jump from one place to another rather than see a restaurant through a calendar year, so they can stick it on a CV. That tells me nothing.

LUKE HOLDER on the new venture

Luke Holder, 35, trained in London, starting at the Orrery with Chris Galvin before peaking at the three-star Michelin restaurant Enoteca Pincciori in Italy. He tells us about his inspiration, his vision for Lime Wood and his working relationship with Angela Hartnett and his suppliers

How would you sum up the concept for Hartnett Holder & Co?
Fun not fine dining, quality-driven, atmospheric. How long have you spent thinking about how to develop the ideas? Nine to 10 months on and off, with lots of time spent conversing with family and friends about the kind of restaurant they would love to go to.

Where does your inspiration come from?
From not having a restaurant quite like this to visit on my days off. Wanting to create a restaurant experience that is as much about atmosphere as it is great food. From eating out at restaurants that seem to follow the same done-to-death dining format.

How would you say it differs from other restaurants in its class?
Relaxed and approachable, confident in its product and delivery, with the style of food that chefs cook at home as opposed to the kind of food chefs cook for restaurants.

What experience would you like your customers to take away?
The realisation that the socialising aspect of dining is just as important as the food.

What challenges, if any, do you think you will face to bring about the Hartnett Holder
& Co vision?
Delivering confident service and food within a stunning building that doesn’t come across as try-hard or contrived.

How does the refurb and design by Martin Brudnizki support the vision?
It will inject a lot of life and atmosphere, moving away from a boxed-off, behind-closed-walls feeling to a much more open and vibrant space.

How would you best describe your working relationship with Angela Hartnett?
Angela and I have a similar sense of humour, which helps, as well as being driven professionals with a shared a vision of the type of restaurant we wanted to create. In a lot of ways it has been easy to divide the work up between us as there seemed to be a understanding of who is best to pick up what.

How did you plan the menu?
It became obvious that we have similar tastes, as everything we were suggesting to each other, the other also loved. The main points of contention were keeping the menu to a sensible size. It is so nice to work with like-minded people and Angela brings a lot of experience with her. Angela quickly integrated with the team and I think she is happy that she is joining a team full of confidence for what we have achieved and with an appreciation of what she will be bringing to the table.

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Add in the frequent television appearances, book launches and gourmet retail product lines, and you begin to wonder how he keeps tabs on it all.

It’s the first question I ask him as we take our seats in his stylish Glass brasserie in Sydney, and it turns out that the answer is right under my nose.

“I just use this,” he says, pointing to his iPhone upon the white linen table cloth. “I wake up every morning and I’ve got a report from every restaurant: how many covers we’ve done, spend per head, any VIPs in, if a glass of wine was spilt over someone – everything. So I wake up to a lot of emails but that’s good because that’s how I keep in touch with all of my restaurants.”

That level of detail must be reassuring for Mangan, but do his staff ever feel like big brother is watching? “They should not be scared to tell me anything,” he says. “I’m very open and want them to communicate with me. I’m not the Gordon Ramsay type. We’ve got a little pact that if a customer sends a steak back that’s overcooked, my guys will always tell me. It’s only if I see a customer on the street and he tells me about it [without it first being reported to Mangan by staff], that’s when we have an issue.”

Whether it’s the Salt restaurant in Tokyo or the soon-to-open Salt grill in Jakarta, all Mangan’s venues have a head chef and a restaurant manager who operate fairly independently. “They’re important because I can’t be there all the time,” he says. “They’ve got to have their own autonomy. I see myself as a support for them. Tonight I’m flying up to the Gold Coast [to be at Salt grill in Surfer’s Paradise] and next week I’m in Singapore [at Salt tapas and bar and at Salt grill and Sky bar]. I just like working on the floor with my team and seeing the guests and all that sort of stuff. That’s important. It’s all part of the show.”

This hands-on approach makes for an exhausting schedule, but it’s nothing compared to where Mangan started. Having been kicked out of school at 15 (“I was terrible, disruptive. Didn’t do homework, couldn’t sit still”), he was plunged into life as a foodservice apprentice, with gruelling 60-70 hour working weeks in the renowned Melbourne restaurant Two Faces (“My first pay packet was $88, I remember it quite clearly”).

Mangan stayed five years, working under the tempestuous tutelage of Herman Schneider (“a prick of a boss but also a good boss. He taught me the discipline of cooking and that you have to work bloody hard. He was in the kitchen every day”). When Mangan packed up and moved to London, to work for Michel Roux in the three Michelin-starred Waterside Inn, the working week climbed to “80-90 hours”. But he was learning all the time. “Michel Roux taught me about technique, about modernising old-fashioned French food,” recalls Mangan.

“And he was a showman. He was out on the floor, then he would rush back into the kitchen, call an order, plate up, yell at a chef, then he’d be back on the floor kissing the girls.”

Mangan says he picked up a lot from Roux. “What’s the point of a chef, who’s got a brand name, being tied behind a stove? A restaurant is the package – from wine to lighting to music to service – it’s the whole lot. And I realised that I want to be part of the whole package, not just show how good my food was.”

Understanding this bigger picture might just have saved Mangan’s skin when he returned to Australia and opened his own restaurants. In Sydney alone it’s estimated that there are 20,000 cafes and restaurants; so a big-name chef does not guarantee success (just ask recent casualties like Justin North and Matthew Kemp). “Some chefs only think about the food that goes on the plate,” Mangan laments. “They forget about the linen bill of $5,000 a month, the electricity, rent, superannuation and tax. This is how restaurants go broke. Maybe the restaurants that have gone down could have used better advice.”

This is one reason that Mangan co-founded the Appetites For Excellence Awards, which promote the development of young chefs, waiters and restaurateurs in Australia. “It’s a hard business,” he says. “We’ve got a shortage of great chefs and great wait staff and we need to encourage them. Some of Australia’s very best chefs and restaurateurs are on the judging panel and all the kids who enter have access to them. They can pick up the phone, email and ask any questions.”

If Mangan himself ever has to reach for his iPhone to ask for advice, he’s got a friendly ear in Sir Richard Branson. The chef once spent two weeks cooking on the Virgin supremo’s Caribbean island, which he describes as a great experience but refuses to tell tales (“What happens on the island stays on the island,” is all he will say).

Branson is full of praise for the chef’s achievements, describing Mangan thus: “He’s an entrepreneur and you have to be more than just a chef to become a successful chef these days – you have to be media savvy, good on television. A lot of the job is promoting yourself and promoting your business and he does that well. But in the end you’re only as good as the product, so you can’t be all fluff and puff, you’ve got to have substance behind you, and he’s got substance. He’d be one of the best of his profession, and it’s a tough profession…”

Branson is right on all counts, including the last one. It is a tough profession. But somehow Luke Mangan is making it look easy.

Andy Mclean

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Over six hundred guests mingled with the stellar cast of culinary greats including special guest chef Joachim Koerper, dubbed an artisan in Mediterranean cuisine from Portugal, plus fourteen Masterchefs namely: Bo Lindegaard and Lasse Askov (Denmark), Corrado Assenza (Italy), David Munoz (Spain), Gabriele Ferron (Italy), Jean-Francois Piege (France), Matt Moran (Australia), Paco and Jacob Torreblanca (Spain), Rodrigo de la Calle (Spain), Sanjeev Kapoor (India), William Ledeuil (France), and Yannick Alleno (France). These artisans along with chefs from eleven hosting restaurants prepared a memorable feast of starters, soups, salads, entrees, surf-n-turf, and dessert bites for guests to sample surrounded by underwater creatures in the massive aquarium tanks.

While there was no shortage of Michelin-starred chefs gracing this year’s summit, the focus was more on their passion for their craft rather than the stars they have earned. Peter Knipp, the CEO of Peter Knipp Holdings, Bytes Asia, Foodservice Consultants, Food2Print, and Ala Carte Productions, jointly introduced World Gourmet Summit in 1997 with the Singapore Tourism Board. At this year’s opening reception, Knipp spoke of the summit as a proud father would, saying, “The World Gourmet Summit is a baby that is now a teenager. We’ve stopped counting the chefs. We’ve stopped counting the stars. It’s about the people. Many individuals in Singapore have told me that this year’s programme is one of the most exciting because it focuses on the true essence of what food and beverage is all about. It’s about artisans, master craftsmen. It’s not just about stars any more – it’s about what they bring to the table.”

Among food professionals and the public, WGS 2013 has become the most-anticipated event in Singapore and the region. Chef Susur Lee who flew in from Canada recalls, “When Peter Knipp started about 15 years ago, I was one of the chefs invited. One of the things I asked him when he phoned me was, ‘Do I need to cut my hair?’ He laughed at me.”

Much has changed since Lee’s first participation in the summit. The Canadian chef marvels at how World Gourmet Summit successfully connected the world of food. It doesn’t matter if you are a big restaurant. He points out the focus is not the size of the business, but the artistry of the chef. He says, “Some restaurants only have 13 or 15 seats. They are invited. In the old days, if you only have 15 seats you would not be invited to an event like this.” Returning chefs like Susur Lee, Joachim Koerper, and Sanjeev Kapoor, as well as first time visitors to Singapore such as Chef William Ledeuil all agree that participating in WGS allows them to sample the exciting flavors of the Lion City, plus it gives them a unique opportunity be stimulated by techniques and cuisines of fellow top chefs.

At the Citibank Gastronomic Jam Sessions where visiting Masterchefs each had 45 minutes to demonstrate their recipes, Peter Knipp shifts my attention to the passion of Spanish chef Paco Torreblanca, regarded on of the one most innovative chefs of the world: “You have someone who is not a chocolatier yet he understands cocoa. He knows how to manipulate it in a positive sense. He plays with it. Here’s a man who has devoted his entire life to one product. He has taken it to another level. You’ve got to be in awe of that.”

Knipp was spot on. The audience was spellbound by as Paco and his son Jacob created the most exquisite chocolate oyster right before their very eyes. But the phenomenal chocolate artisans dazzled foodies even more at Hearts on Fire, the first edible fashion show in Asia. Paco and Jacob Torreblanca, along with homegrown Singapore talent Chef Janice Wong created chocolate gowns and couture chocolate designs. The father and son duo have done chocolate fashion shows in the past in Madrid, Milan, and Paris, but this is their first in Asia.

Another Spanish chef who endeared and intrigued the WGS 2013 crowd was Rodrigo de la Calle dubbed as the Gastrobotany artisan. When Chef de la Calle met botanist Santiago Orts, the innovative chef developed a profound appreciation of the vegetable world. Chef de la Calle teases the palate by incorporating unknown greens in his cooking, such as the quirky oyster leaf, which tastes just like the mollusc.

Food artisans celebrated in Singapore

But the biggest discovery of WGS 2013 was a passionate Italian artisanal butcher. Dario Cecchini infected chefs and participants in this year’s summit with his zeal and respect for the cow. Cecchini from Panzano-in-Chianti brings with him 38 years experience as an artisanal butcher and is a descendant of eight generations of butchers. This master butcher demonstrated his philosophy that, “No cut is better than the other, the cow is not made up of only the fillet and steak.” As his hands worked with the meat, he told us how his family savours every part of the cow. Cecchini preaches, “Every piece of meat can be great, from head to tail, if cooked properly.” His teaching resonates with the prudent Asian cooks who waste nothing in their own kitchens.

While many attribute the success of World Gourmet Summit to Peter Knipp, this FSCI member is quick to dismiss it. He qualifies that mounting this annual food event is a team effort. Given the numerous food events happening in Singapore, food companies big and small continue to choose WGS. Knipp says, “It is made possible by our sponsors, from Citibank down to the little guy who’s probably spending his entire year’s budget, even though its small, because it’s meaningful to him.”

Robert Rees of Wine Exchange Asia participated for the first time by bringing in Brian Lynn, South Australian owner and winemaker of Majella Wines in Coonawarra for an interactive session on how to blend red wines. The wine retailer says, “We are Singapore’s biggest online wine retailer representing about 400 brands, so it’s interesting for us to participate because we are always looking for new customers and exposure. This event attracts the right kind of demographic, food and wine lovers.” For Rees, choosing WGS over other food events is a no-brainer, “It’s the most prestigious and high-profile. Certainly, it has been going for a long time. It attracts the right kind of chefs, which in turn attracts the right kind of customers. It’s really just a matter of bringing like-minded interests together.”

But perhaps the best indicator of the success of WGS 2013 is having a long-term partner consistently support the event each year. Andrew Simpson, Regional Manager South East Asia and Greater China of Meat & Livestock Australia said, “It’s a proud honour for Meat and Livestock Australia to once again be represented in WGS. We have been a sponsor for 17 years.” Simpson continues to explain their involvement, “Singapore is one of the global culinary hubs that our producers are very proud to serve and to feed into. The cattle producers of Australia have supplied the Singapore market with over 16,000 tons of beef, 2,000 tons of lamb and 6,000 tons of mutton last year. We’d like to say thank you.”

Clearly, this year’s summit aims to impart a deeper appreciation of food artisans in Singapore. Knipp says, “When you understand what it means to be an artisan, you become humble and quiet. You say, ‘Wow this is really something!’” All the different events at WGS 2013, including hands-on workshops, wine tastings, themed dinners, wine blending, golf event dinner and an edible fashion show, successfully provided countless opportunities to be in awe of the best food artisans of the world.

Maida Pineda

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“Four years isn’t that unusual,” he says. “I feel huge relief that the Café Royal project is complete. I am most proud of the design, the quality of the installations, and the integration of new technology, such as the CO2 refrigeration and the vacuum waste system.” Café Royal is the first hotel in the world to use CO2 as a refrigerant.

Winch has a long association with the Café Royal, having played at the venue as a drummer in a dance band 30 years ago. One of London’s historical buildings, the Café Royal originally opened in 1865. In 2008, it was bought on a 125-year lease from the Crown Estate by the Israeli company Alrov Properties, run by Alfred and Georgi Akirov. It is the second hotel, after the Conservatorium in Amsterdam, to join The Set, the Akirovs’ new collection of hotels. And it forms the centrepiece for the massive Quadrant development by the Crown Estate, which is designed to revitalise the area.

The new, 159-room hotel, including six suites, has been designed by Sir David Chipperfield, with historic restoration work by Donald Insall Associates. Chipperfield, known as a minimalist, has updated the original theme of mirror, cast plaster and timber floors. “We took those elements and used them in a modern way,” Melissa Johnston, project director of David Chipperfield Architects, told The New York Times.

The famous Domino room remains open for business, while the Ten Room offers all-day dining. The Café serves cakes, breads, biscuits and chocolate, all made in-house. The opulent Grill Room has been restored to its original Louis XVI detailing. At the brass bar, a main feature, guests can order champagne, cocktails and a light menu in the evening. There is also a room called The Bar near the Ten Room, which has an eye-catching bar of steel and marble. The Akasha Holistic Wellbeing Centre will be opening in the next few months, and there are also plans for a private members’ bar and restaurant. As a result of all these additions, Café Royal is not expected to officially open until July.

Winch’s project involved designing and specifying several kitchens, plus warewashing and food waste facilities. In preparation, SHW prepared a detailed questionnaire for the client, which formed the basis of the work. “We have done everything we can to ensure energy conservation,” he says.

The new Ten Room

The Café Royal building is actually three buildings incorporated into one, which posed issues with varying floor height. “A tricky part of the project was the internal logistics and spaces allocated to each functional area,” says Winch. “Movement between these tight spaces was a challenge.”

No raw food materials, laundry or provisions are delivered to Café Royal at the ground floor level. Instead, they are delivered to the lower basement in Quadrant 3, a retail and office block across the road (formerly the Regency Park Hotel) and loaded onto buggies and delivered via an underground road to the lower basement of Café Royal’s Quadrant One. Lifts transport everything from the basement to a holding area, where food can be unloaded to a cold room. When required, food is delivered via hoists and lifts to the upper floors of the building.

C&C Catering Equipment, working closely with SHW, handled the installation and outfit of the catering facilities. Senior project manager, Mark Roxburgh, who has been on site for 10 months, explained: “During the project, access was difficult as we only had a 900mm-wide goods lift to bring the equipment in. The Ambach cooking suite came in pieces and was re-assembled on site. The Meiko K200 warewasher was hoisted up through a hole in the floor in what is now The Café.”

The site also had a flood, which submerged the CO2 refrigeration system. The system had to be dismantled and removed in small sections. “A new CO2 pack system was manufactured and fast-tracked from Italy and completely replaced and re-installed,” adds Mark.

Andrew Turner, the executive head chef who joined the Café Royal in May 2012, runs a brigade of 55 to 60 people. “Much of the design work had been planned when I came on board,” he says. “I walked round the site with Ken and Mark and looked at each area, the work flow, the storage space. When it was decided that the Café Royal would sell its own bakery products, we had to work out how we were going to incorporate a bakery into a kitchen that wasn’t designed to have one. We’re producing our own chocolates so we introduced a chocolate room, with equipment such as tempering and enrobing machines. We’ve created our own origin bean chocolate.”

This is an area that Turner will continue to develop, with plans to introduce three or four specialist ingredients under the Café Royal brand. “We’ll be going out and sourcing these over the next few years,” he says. “We already have our own line of flour. We want to promote great British products.”

The kitchens were refurbished

The main kitchen serves the banqueting rooms, The Café, The Ten Room, room service, staff feeding and bars, and will later serve the Wellbeing Centre and the members’ club restaurant when open. Winch says: “In the main kitchen there are no electrical, gas, water or drainage surfaces visible. It’s easy to clean, made of stainless steel with ceramic wall and floor tiles.”

Equipment in the kitchen includes the Ambach cooking suite, Rational Self Cooking Center and MKN’s FlexiChef multi-functional bratt pan, which has four different temperatures in one pan. This means various cooking processes can take place within the unit.

“I love this piece of equipment,” Turner says. “I’m the first person in England to have one. You can cook four different ways on the base plate, such as braising in 40 minutes, which normally takes two and a half hours. It’s self-cleaning as well – I wish I’d bought two.”

For private functions in the beautifully restored Pompadour Suite, an Alto-Shaam oven in the service pantry can cook food on-site. “We can plate up 100 covers in one go,” Turner says.

All warewashing appliances feature the latest reverse osmosis water treatment units. The water is filtered to remove minerals and calcium so the final rinse produces sparkling clean glassware and dishes. Bill Downie, managing director from Meiko, says: “The main benefit of the Gio process is lower chemical consumption.”

In its heyday the Café Royal defined the times. Now with its thoroughly modern refurbishment, it’s set to turn heads again.

The Café Royal story

The Regent Street entrance, 1965

Opening in 1865, the Café Royal became a centre of fashionable London, frequented by writers and artists such as Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley. Other notable visitors included Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling and James McNeill Whistler.

During the 1930s, it attracted famous people such as Augustus John, Winston Churchill, Noel Coward and Graham Greene.

Royalty also often seen here included the Prince of Wales, later to abdicate as Edward VII to marry Mrs Simpson, and the Duke of York, later to become George VI.

From 1951, the Café Royal became the home of the National Sporting Club, which held black tie dinners there before bouts.

A little touch of the technical 

Café Royal is the world’s first hotel to run off CO2 as a refrigerant. Produced by CCS and Iglu Cold systems, the hotel’s 15 cold rooms and 32 under-counter fridges give off zero emissions.

“The system cost £500,000, but it will pay for itself in two and a half years,” says David Blinkhorn from CCS. “For every kW you put into the system, you get 6kW out. For example, if it costs £1 to run a unit, you get £5 back in terms of energy. With standard refrigeration, you’re lucky if you get 2.5kW back. An Eco Box monitors and controls the system, which can also  be controlled from a smartphone or iPad.”

Winch says: “By putting in CO2 the hotel achieves first class Breeam rating – this is the standard for best practice in sustainable building design. It has never been used in commercial catering before. A hot water recovery system is attached to it, so waste heat from the refrigeration units is used to supply hot water.”

Café Royal’s food waste disposal system converts food waste into electricity. This is thanks to an initiative by Regent Street Direct, which manages Crown Estate properties north of Piccadilly Circus. A total of 17 restaurants share the cost and environmental benefits with Café Royal of this food waste recycling system.

At Café Royal, all the warewashing sections incorporate a vacuum suction food waste inlet. This is an opening welded into the stainless steel counters (see picture left). Staff scrape food waste directly into the system. At the press of a button, the waste is chopped up into a slurry, which then goes though a pipe to a 14,000 litre holding tank in the basement.

The food waste is collected from the tank every seven to 10 days by a vacuum tanker truck and is taken to the Bio Collectors Anaerobic Digestion plant in Sutton, Surrey, where methane gas converts the food waste into electricity to power the plant. Any excess is sold to the National Grid. A byproduct is organic fertiliser, which is supplied to local farms.

Bill Downie from Meiko says: “Seven litres of food waste is equivalent to one litre of gas oil. It’s a sealed system so there’s no chance of rats or insects getting into it. Less water is being used than in traditional maceration. There are no refuse bags at the back of the hotel. Food waste is picked up once a week, rather than daily, so the carbon footprint of a truck is reduced. Nothing goes down the drain.”

 Jackie Mitchell

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I’ve just finished a three-year project with Brisbane City Hall, a $215m restoration of the culturally and historically important 1920’s heritage building. The F&B project included the operational review, concept brief development, financial model and market approach and resulted in the inclusion of 12 state-of-the-art event rooms with capacity for 20 to 2,500 people, dedicated servery kitchens, and an excavation of the basement area to provide a full production kitchen. 
Current projects include the development of two Asian 250-450 seat restaurants, specialising in Yum Cha, and several noodle/dumpling outlets. We are also in the transition-to-opening phase of a recreation and leisure centre that includes a casual dining brasserie/café and event centre at a contemporary residential aged care facility.

What kind of work do you specialise in?

Two primary areas. Firstly the review of existing hospitality venues to improve operational flow and financial viability, and secondly the development of new F&B concepts within hospitality complexes such as sporting cubs. In Australia they are more like mini-casinos with an extensive range of products available to members.

What do you enjoy most about your profession?

The evolvement of the hospitality industry and the constant challenge of staying abreast of trends in dining, technology, design and equipment. And the cultural diversity of the Australian demographic. I am fortunate to be able to lead groups of clients on study tours to research industry trends such as FHA Singapore, Hotelex and next month to the NRA in Chicago and New York.

What does being an FCSI mean to you?

FCSI represents global standards in excellence, ethics and professionalism. I see my involvement both as an APD member and as a board trustee as being able to put something back into the industry.

What are your goals for the rest of the year?

From a work perspective – to enthuse clients about new and exciting concepts that are emerging in the Asia Pacific region. From an FCSI perspective – to increase membership and awareness of the FCSI brand.

Of what single achievement are you proudest?

Participating on FCSI boards as a trustee, both Asia Pacific and the World Wide Education Foundation.

Who have been particularly important mentors?

My previous CEOs in hospitality roles and my business partner at RT Hospitality Solutions.

What interests do you have away from the office?

Family. I have a property in Queenstown New Zealand where I try to spend as much time as possible. I love to travel and have a bit of reputation amongst my friends and clients as the ‘dining guru’.

Toni Clarke is director of RT Hospitality Solutions and representative member of FCSI’s Asia Pacific Division

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