Accessible Concepts
One of the directions the hotel is taking, Gache explains, is to move away from the idea that it is a fine dining destination, instead choosing to reinvent its image as that of an accessible F&B venue.
“It’s the new vision of Ritz Carlton in the culinary and food & beverage sector. What the company is looking at in F&B is simple ingredients, but of good quality. The best that you can afford on the market, cooked and presented in a simple way. So by having this technique and using really fresh, good products, 50% of our job is already done. And the other 50% is just the technique of the chefs,” says Gache.
He adds: “We’re not fine dining; that is really not the vision anymore — we want to have good, friendly, fresh food and make it more accessible to everybody. For example, when you see the menu you understand right away what will be on the plate; we stopped using big words that nobody even understands. A tenderloin is a tenderloin, there is no need to use some French word in the middle. This is what defines all the outlets in the hotel.”
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But with 10 outlets in one venue, I wonder if there’s a danger for one to overshadow another. Gache denies this and says such concerns can be averted through clarity of concepts, something which the hotel is keen to promote.
“The restaurants are totally different, so there is a different demand for each one of them. You will have people who will prefer to go to a steakhouse, and then you will have some people who will go to an Asian place.
“It was easy because the concept was already well-balanced from the beginning. It’s not like if you open an Italian restaurant and then you open a Spanish restaurant in the same venue — then it will be difficult. They are not the same food but we call it ‘Mediterranean food’ and that uses the same products and techniques.
“But having a steakhouse and an Asian is totally different, and having a Lebanese is different. So it was easy because the concept was really well planned from the beginning, and they don’t overlap.”
Speaking of well-defined concepts, how much input did Gache have? He reveals that when he joined the team, while the concept was already outlined, it was just a rough approach.
The idea that there would be a steakhouse and an Asian restaurant, for example, already existed, but it was down to Gache and his trusted colleague, Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi’s EAM – F&B, Tabish Siddiquie to iron out the details. “Yes we knew we were going to have a steakhouse.
But do we go to something like fine dining? Do we do it more like an American steakhouse? There are categories. The Asian restaurant can be Thai, can be Indonesian, can be Chinese, it can be a lot of things. The concept was there, the vision was there, but we really nailed the concepts.”
While creating concepts, Gache says there are a few things every F&B team needs to bear in mind. Researching what is available in that particular market is important.
And while creating the right menu is important, it’s also necessary to ensure the chefs as well as the front of house have the products and equipment necessary to produce and present the food. He says: “It’s to have synergy between your ways of thinking, how you create the menu and the equipment to dish out all of that.”
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