ROUNDTABLE: The region's kitchen heroes

In Hotelier’s exclusive executive chefs roundtable, seven of the UAE’s top chefs discuss industry issues, from staffing shortages to supplier standards, and suggest how the industry should be overcoming these common gripes in order to succeed in an increasingly competitive marketplace

Meet the experts

Sebastien Castelot
executive chef, Radisson Royal Hotel, Dubai
A chef for the past 27 years, Castelot has been based in Dubai for eight years. He opened Radisson Royal Hotel, Dubai in 2010, originally managed by JAL, and is responsible for three outlets and a small function space.

Marco de Wildt
executive chef, MÖvenpick Hotel Ibn Battuta Gate Dubai
De Wildt has been based in Dubai for five months, having worked with MÖvenpick for six years. He opened MÖvenpick in Amsterdam but before that worked in boutique hotels and Michelin star restaurants. A chef for the past 24 years, he now oversees five outlets in the hotel plus West 14th on Palm Jumeirah. He will soon be opening Ortega, a tasting restaurant with wines and cheeses.

Sudqi Naddaf
executive chef, Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates
Jordanian Naddaf has worked his way up the career ladder with Kempinski over the past 10 years. Prior to joining Kempinski in Dubai, which has three outlets including a new Spanish/Mediterranean tapas bar opening later this year, Naddaf was based at Kempinski Dead Sea. He has been a chef for 22 years in total.

Sebastian Nohse
resort executive chef, Madinat Jumeirah
With two decades in the business, Nohse has worked at both Michelin star restaurants and prestigious hotels such as The Dorchester in London and Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong. He first moved to Dubai in 2004 as chef de cuisine at Burj Al Arab, then moved back to The Address Downtown in 2009 before rejoining Madinat. As resort executive chef for the complex, Nohse operates 25 restaurants as well as the Souk and CNI complex.

Jean-Luc Morcellet
executive chef, The Palace Downtown Dubai
French national Morcellet, who has 28 years’ experience as a chef, has worked on cruise liners, at London’s Dorchester and Dubai’s Grosvenor House, which he opened. Employed by Emaar Hospitality Group, he’s been the executive chef at The Palace for four years. Outlets include two signature restaurants and the external Palace Cafe and Pavilion Downtown.

Frank Noack
executive chef, Hilton Dubai Jumeirah Resort & Residences
Noack, a chef since his apprenticeship 31 years ago, was based in Germany for the first 22 years of his career. He has also worked in Africa for five years before moving to Dubai, where he is responsible for eight outlets. At Hilton Dubai Jumeirah, Noack is currently developing a rooftop restaurant called Pure.

David Miras
executive chef/F&B manager, Al Maha Dubai
Following his apprenticeship in France, Miras moved to the UK where he worked for 10 years in a variety of places including Clarence House. He then moved to Taiwan and Philippines before joining Starwood at Le Meridien Al Aqah in 2008.

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If you take executive chefs out of the kitchen, one thing’s for sure, they certainly have a lot to say.

Sat together at Icho on the 49th floor of Radisson Royal Hotel Dubai on Sheikh Zayed Road, seven executive chefs from hotels in the UAE prepared to debate a range of issues affecting their roles, with manpower, a discount environment, concerns over the quality of ingredients and ideas on innovation topping the table.

The chefs agree that the potential for the industry to grow is still there, but hotels must refine F&B purchasing systems in order to ensure they are best placed to capitalise on this and stay ahead of free-standing competition.

What are the main challenges facing chefs in Dubai and the UAE?
Jean-Luc Morcellet: Unfortunately when the crisis started in 2008 we had to reduce our teams, because of budget restraints. Now business has picked up and three-four years have passed, but our team budget has remained the same. So our biggest challenge is that the confidence in the market is still not there, they don’t want to tackle the risk of going back to 2006-7. Now our teams are so small and people move around so fast because there are so many hotels opening. It becomes a challenge because you still have to recover the business and now things are more demanding than ever. Things are very tight. And for me this is the biggest challenge because business has been growing over the last couple of years but the team hasn’t grown at all.

Sudqi Naddaf: I totally agree with the part about people moving. It’s a challenge here in Dubai. I’ve been here for one year and in that time I think I’ve changed half the team. And it’s a small city, so when a new hotel or restaurant opens everybody knows about it.

sebastian nohse: We don’t share the same challenge, we are quite lucky in that we are back to very strong business levels, compared to 2007-2008. Last year we matched and exceeded our best years. For us the market has fully recovered. And we’ve been given the numbers in order for us to grow to match these numbers. Staff movement on our end used to be a challenge, however, as Jumeirah we have six hotels here so we have a strong training focus and there’s a large amount of loyalty and career growth among the company. We’re sitting on about 20% turnover for the year, which is acceptable and normal.

Jean-Luc Morcellet: For us we only had 15% [turnover] in the kitchen, which is quite low. But for me it is not about staff movement, but staff numbers. You say that you’ve been given the resources to grow but for us it is a challenge. Last year was back to 2007-8, even better, and this year we want it to be even better than last year.

Marco de Wildt: But the comparison with 2006 and now is that the average spend is lower. So you have to do more volume and work to get the same results.

Jean-Luc Morcellet: The problem now is that there is so much competition. So you can’t put up your prices. You need to make sure you maintain certain numbers and growth. This is where you face the challenge to produce more, because you don’t want to have to put the price up.

Frank Noack: That is surprising for me as we are facing the opposite. Average spend has grown like never before, compared to 2008 the record year, which I think was the same for everyone. Prices have definitely increased since 2007 but not incrementally.

Marco de Wildt: For me it was quite shocking, as when I came here it looked like the city was living on Entertainer two-for-one vouchers. I think it is not good for it.

Sebastian Nohse: At our side, we rely heavily on the voucher system as a tool. We have so many restaurants and we target very specifically where we want to have special offers, so we can drive volume in areas where we are naturally not as strong. So for us it is a very strategic tool to use and it is what Dubai is all about at the moment to be honest. And you can either use that or go against it. It is what the market is expecting and it’s all over the show. 

Jean-Luc Morcellet: For us it is a very strong tool to showcase [our restaurants]. You need to have this because there are so many restaurants in town and you need to find ways to have your restaurant talked about. And this is one part of it and it’s important to be a part of the whole system of Dubai.

Staffing and recruitment sounds very time consuming; why is this?
Jean-Luc Morcellet: When trying to hire lower rate chefs, you can’t find anything on the market. Everyone is taken. So you have to try and hire from other countries because trying to find a commis 2, commis 1, here is not possible.

David Miras: It is difficult as well due to the pay scale rising in other countries. For example, you used to do a recruitment trip in the Philippines or some of those other countries, and people used to be very interested in coming to Dubai. Now people ask what the salary is, and compare with what they can get back home. There is still a bit of difference, but at least at home they are living with their families. Another challenge we are facing is the bans on certain nationalities. So the pool to recruit from is actually getting smaller.

Frank Noack: I’m quite lucky as I have about 12 team members from Nigeria. [When I was there] six years ago I set up an apprenticeship programme. Right now we are living out of this, and I’m coming close to having 12 and the number is growing.

Sebastien Castelot: Five to seven years back there was only a handful of nationalities here. There was India, Philippines, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Now there is staff from Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Eastern Europe, and Africa.

Let’s talk about innovation; how do you approach that and is it a real challenge to try something new these days?
Sudqi Naddaf: I personally believe that old is gold, as long as it is something you believe in. At the most recent outlet we re-opened, Aspen by Kempinski, we tried to base the menu around classic recipes and people are appreciating this a lot. Molecular cuisine is also nice, it’s trendy, but having spoken to our guests, they want the dishes how they are supposed to be made.

Sebastian Nohse: Trends have shifted in Dubai as it very much used to be [about how] fancy and how crazy can you build the food. And along the road what was lost was flavours, textures and a quality sourcing of the product.

Now what the market is demanding is just quality ingredients, comfort food, simple presentation. It’s a trend that has shifted massively over the last couple of years and it’s very apparent what people actually want to see.

Jean-Luc Morcellet: For us, we have successful restaurants because we don’t change much, we don’t try to reinvent the wheel. We just try to make sure we have good products and value for money and keep standards.

So people know exactly where to go and if they feel like a dish they remember they had, then they come back and that’s exactly what they get. Because if they come back and they don’t get the same, if we’ve tried to do something different, it doesn’t work.

Sudqi naddaf: You have to be clear what the identity of the outlet is. Successful restaurants are those that have their own identity. Promotions should be themed to match.

Sebastian Nohse: Sometimes when you have many restaurants it’s important to realign and reinforce that again. Last year at Jumeirah we went through a project called Gold Standard, in which we identified our successful restaurants, like MJ’s which is one of the successful steak houses in Dubai, and we broke it down into exactly what is its identity, what are our service standards, what is the food we want to serve. What is the creativity level we want to build around? And then we got in a very talented service trainer called Bob Brown, and we really started as if it was a new opening. We went through one-month extensive training with what is really expected with all the service. That is something that Jumeirah drives very strongly; instead of investing new concepts, we go into our existing ones and we want to make them great. We align our menus and presentation into what we feel is appropriate and we reopen that outlet. And that has been a tremendous success. We’ve done three so far in Madinat with Zheng He’s, MJ’s and Bahri Bar. And at Emirates Towers with The Rib Room we went through the same thing.

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How would you describe the F&B supplier market at present?
Jean-Luc Morcellet: When we are talking about product, everyday [I need] to keep the same standard of product to make sure that I don’t miss out on orders. Because I don’t like to have to say we are out of stock of something. This is not acceptable. This is a big job because with all these openings, suppliers are starting to be stretched more and more. For example, Argentinean meat is very hard to get. Luckily now there is another Argentinean restaurant, Gaucho, so now the supplier has more to work with. Otherwise they give up if they only have one restaurant to supply because they have to do so much work to get that meat into the country. We almost had a big problem with Argentinean meat, and we were lucky that we always keep a lot of stock. The suppliers said in December that they couldn’t send anything from Argentina to Dubai, because everything was sold in Europe. Because Europe is the first market for them, they make most money there so they send everything there. Here it is still a small market for suppliers.

Frank Noack: I totally agree. First I lived in Europe and Germany, and there are suppliers everywhere and then I went to Africa where I had to set up my own supply, then I came to Dubai where I thought it would be a wide market like in Europe, I was shocked. First of all there are very few very good suppliers. It is not very wide, which is moving the price in the wrong direction. The variety is just not there. Obviously I realised that nothing is really produced here, and everything has to be flown in, and we are moving the market because they can meet our demands as long as the demand is there. I had the same challenge at trying to get Latin America meat. But finally after six months we found a supplier. But it was quite a challenge and still is. Sebastian Nohse: The problem for me is not variety, because if you push hard enough as chefs you get whatever you want. The problem for me is the quality of what arrives here and the inconsistency of what we receive on a daily basis.

Sudqi Naddaf: Dubai has all the Asian products, Middle Eastern, European products and American products. I’ve never seen that before because it’s not available anywhere else.

What other issues do you find with the supply chain in the UAE?
Sebastian Nohse: There are too many suppliers, and they all only have little things. They don’t specialise. They supply everything and nothing. There are four or five suppliers in Dubai that know what they are doing.

Frank Noack: It’s a patchwork of suppliers coming in with only 15-20 products. In Europe you will be able, even with your back-up suppliers, to get by with 14-15 suppliers and you can get pretty much everything you need. Here, you have to run around 50 suppliers, more or less.

Sebastien Castelot: Sometimes they don’t even know what they are selling. They are selling food like they are selling shoes or a t-shirt.

Marco de Wildt: In Holland I had four suppliers and here, 40-50. If you look at meat, the more varied cuts are very hard to get here; there are only the prime cuts.

Jean-Luc Morcellet: I don’t know how many suppliers of beef in this town. And smoked salmon and olive oil, I’m sick of olive oil.

David Miras: I was going to say about olive oil. In this town, no matter who the supplier is, before they leave they all try and sell you a bottle of olive oil and I don’t understand it.

Frank Noack: There are certain products where they have a larger margin where they can earn, like olive oil.

Sebastien Castelot: Somebody tried to sell me frozen smoked salmon; unbelievable rubbish.

What’s the solution to these issues?
Sebastian Nohse: Every month we meet with all the Jumeirah executive chefs in Dubai and we have a CAM project, which is a centralised purchasing project, where we then select with our purchasing team certain products and lock them in for six months. So we can guarantee quality and the best price available on the market. It used to be that this was structured by purchasing, and they would just select the best price on the market. Now it’s lucky that we have very involved executive chefs at Jumeirah and we meet once a month with the purchasing team. We have a yearly structure plan which is for our top 25 items, for example beef, we partner with a farm in Australia, we lock it in for all six hotels and then we specify our aging procedure because with beef that is a challenging thing. So we are lucky that we are locked in with our main suppliers, for things like olive oil, which I agree can be a tiring process. However, we’ve managed to lock that into a six-month contract. Our dairy products are all locked in. The chocolate that we use in all our pastries is locked in. So there are ways that you can make the system work, if you have volume and if you have the right structure and focus on it from a company perspective.

Jean-Luc Morcellet: If you have volume you can play with so many things — from the importation to the price. At least the supplier knows they have this volume so it is good for them as well. It’s very important to look after the good suppliers, not to order too late, there has to be a good partnership with a supplier where you help each other out.

Sudqi Naddaf: Our purchasing manager is out of this world, everything we want we can get.

Sebastien Castelot: But does he really know the product? Have you ever seen a purchasing manager based here in Dubai who knows what he is talking about — all he knows is the numbers?

Sudqi Naddaf: That is why we are both there. At Kempinski we have a centralised purchasing office which is called Kempinski Trading. They have a VP that is based here in Dubai. He purchases here in Dubai and supplies us here as well as our hotels in Europe. I asked for beef and they organised me a trip to the States and Australia. I was able to choose the cut I wanted, the age I wanted, and organise the delivery on a standing order. But then we also have to agree on a group level for the emirates. For example, Emirates Palace, the Dubai properties and Ajman, we are all able to agree on the challenging products so that we never have problems. 

Frank Noack: We started setting up a similar system a year ago. But it has challenges as well. Even having a contract, supply can go up and down because of the seasons. And then rubbish turns up on your receiving bay that is not of the agreed quality. And it can still be a day’s work to patrol that.

Sebastian Nohse: We can break our contract at any time. If the quality and price commitment changes they know we won’t stand for it. It’s still hard work every month for all the executive chefs to meet, and we’re in constant email contact when we have challenges on our loading docks. For example, when we’ve committed on tomatoes from a certain supplier for six months, and we’re having quality issues, we all know about that immediately when it hits our loading docks. So then we change, we have a back-up supplier, and when the supplier knows that we’re prepared to do that then they make sure they deliver.

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Who would you most like to cook a meal for?
Frank Noack: I once had George Bush, Tony Blair, and Condoleezza Rice in together, that was very exciting...I think it would be hard to top!

Sebastian Nohse: AC/DC — Angus and Malcolm Young.

Jean Luc Morcellet: If there is one person I’d most like to cook a meal for, it would His Excellency Nelson Mandela, the former President of South Africa.

David Miras: The cast of The Sopranos.

Marco de Wildt: I have cooked for some celebrities but I think it would be my total family, all together as a group.

Sudqi Naddaf: I would love to cook a meal for the Real Madrid football team because I am a big fan!

What one thing would make your job easier?
Frank Noack: Starship Enterprise food replicator!

Sebastian Nohse: A 32-hour day!

Jean Luc Morcellet: Things would be far simpler if we had easy access to a large market for fresh meat and vegetables that sold international products like Rengis of Paris, which is made specifically for professionals.

David Miras: A secretary!

Marco de Wildt: Noon Pro, it’s a slow cook machine, there are several brands of it.

Sudqi Naddaf: It would be great to have shorter delivery times where possible, as this would give us a lot more flexibility in the kitchen.

How many people in your team?
Frank Noack: 110 chefs and 38 stewards in both properties, Hilton Dubai Jumeirah and Residences.

Sebastian Nohse: Between 550 and 604 colleagues within the stewarding and culinary team in Madinat Jumeirah.  

Jean Luc Morcellet: I oversee 76 chefs across all our restaurants, in addition to a team of 32 stewards.

David Miras: 50 in total, 15 chefs, 10 stewards, 25 waiting staff.

Marco de Wildt: 130 chefs and stewarding.

Sudqi Naddaf: I have 77 people in my team, including the stewarding team. I have 56 chefs working with me at the hotel.