Leading the F&B department at Sheraton Grand Hotel, Dubai is director of food & beverage Antonio Ostuni. When he joined the hotel in April 2014, Ostuni says his first task was fixing major issues such as operating supplies.
“We started talking about culinary concepts a little bit later because many of the operating supplies had already been ordered and we had to revise many of them, and revise the purchase of the outstanding operating supplies.
“We also had to revise some of the capacity charts because something new would keep coming in — a marble column out of nowhere, there was a wooden surface we weren’t aware of. But it ultimately tied up in the right way,” he laughs.
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Sheraton Grand Hotel, Dubai opened with three F&B concepts — all-day dining restaurant Feast, lobby café Link@Sheraton Café, and rooftop pool bar Dawn & Dusk. Leading the kitchen team is executive chef Malcolm Webster, who moved to Dubai from the UK for his first hotel pre-opening.
The hotel also incorporates Starwood’s ‘Colour Your Plate’ philosophy, which offers guests healthy dining choices.
“It’s about maintaining a healthy lifestyle, especially for travellers throughout the hotels, different time zones, using the gym, and then eating healthily too.
So some of the dishes that are developed are no more than 500 calories, lean meat and three different food colours. So you have that well-balanced meal. It’s a Sheraton brand differentiator,” Webster explains.
“Feast is turning out way better than we ever expected. What strikes me about Feast is that we had the marketing team tailor the product to a fast-paced business-oriented hotel. Feast is not only a buffet restaurant, but it has live cooking stations, it epitomises the essence of personalisation that we want to serve to our guests by letting them tailor dishes according to what they want.
The additional component is à la carte. Given the live cooking stations and the fact that there is no kitchen in the back, the guests can really swap the ingredients around to make the dish the way they like. The à la carte is then matched up with Feast Express, which we will launch in a few weeks,” Ostuni enthuses.
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