The roundtable took place at Icho, a Japanese restaurant located on the 49th floor of Radisson Royal Hotel Dubai.
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.
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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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