When Nelson Hotels sought to fit their new venue, The Fishpool Inn with a suitable kitchen, a sustainable all- electric cooking range was at the top of the wish list.
The aim was to create a state of the art, environmentally friendly open kitchen for the 17th century, recently restored building. The kitchen needed to be sustainable, economical to run, easy to clean and capable of maintaining a busy 180 seat restaurant with a diverse British menu. Due to the style of cookery offered at the new venue, unique cooking equipment was also a necessity, this included a powerful Inka charcoal grill and a Jestic Wood Stone pizza oven.
The design team, CHR, created a bespoke cooking suite which offers maximum versatility, efficiency in operation and amazing fuel-savings. The line–up uses induction technology with a plancha for top cooking, and Paul Prescott, Nelson Group Executive Head Chef, says: “The induction hobs are very user friendly and easy to operate, and induction is twice as fast as gas, much speedier. As for the plancha, which is the size of five frying pans it has completely cut out their use.
“The Jestic Wood Stone oven is perfect for producing authentic Italian style pizzas with a crispy base and is quite a talking point with customers. The other piece of kit I really like is the Inka grill: because we are cooking over charcoal so you get that lovely smoky flavour that nothing else can replicate.
“When it came to installation time, the cooking suite and fabrication were broken down like Lego at the factory to facilitate easier access and reassembled on site. The cooking suite alone weighs over 3.5 tonnes and with the Inka grill and pizza oven the combined weight on the front cooking line was over 4700kg. I have to praise CHR for their work. It was a pleasure and a privilege to work with them. The installation went without a hitch – one minute the Eco-chef wasn’t there, the next minute it was.”
“And post installation there were no problems with the changeover from gas cooking to induction. The team took to it in just a day. The first week we delivered over 3000 covers, which is testament to the skills of the chefs, and the overall training and support provided by CHR.
“The new kitchen has enabled us to produce a more bespoke menu and it has made the whole process of serving for up to 700 covers so much easier. The customers love being able to see what is going on in the open kitchen as their food is cooked and we get comments daily on how good the line up looks; it really is striking and very easy to keep clean so the stainless steel is always sparkling,” says Prescott.
“An all-electric kitchen is great to work in and the Eco-Chef is also extremely energy efficient. One of the most attractive aspects of using electric in place of gas in my opinion is the reduced risks of burns for my staff, an important health and safety consideration – and there is less heat in the kitchen making it a far more pleasant environment to work in.”
“As for energy used, the suite is already recording very low use, if we take a cost per cover it’s running at around ½ KWH per cover. In a sector that averages at around 5 KWH per cover the early signs are very good.”
The Fishpool Inn installation was recently awarded Runner Up in the Catering Equipment Distributors Association prestigious Grand Prix 2013 awards for best large private sector project.
