A busy kitchen must have a sensible layout. A busy kitchen must have a sensible layout.

Cost notwithstanding, from designers to construction companies to kitchens suppliers to chefs, the verdict is unanimous: get your chef involved as soon as possible.

Malcolm Webster, executive chef of St Regis Saadiyat Island, gave a case in point earlier this year while speaking at the Chef & Ingredients 2015 advisory panel: “Hotels are designed without an operational team, which then comes in with different ideas, and by then the plans are already outdated.”

He continued: “When you’re a kitchen consultant, it’s probably easier to design a kitchen with a bratt pan rather than a pressure bratt pan because it’ll get assigned straightaway. You don’t have to educate an owner’s representative on why a pressure bratt pan is better. Yes, it’s going to cost you X amount of thousand dirhams more, but it’s multi-functional. It’s efficient, it’s energy–saving.”

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For the designers, he says, “A bratt pan is cheaper, it’s easier to sign off, you don’t have to redesign, do any more work, you don’t have to explain the benefits. So owners need to be educated about this.”

Webster says that a previous kitchen he’s worked in felt like it was designed by someone who has “never worked in a hotel kitchen before”.

“If a chef is involved it’s always better,” he explains. “The kitchen is good, but did they [the designers] waste a lot of the owner’s money? Yes. Could I have saved the owner some money? Probably, yes.”

Salah agrees, saying that it’s imperative for hotels and outlets to consider long-term value over upfront cost.

“Equipment carries a high portion of the capital expenditure on the overall kitchen so if value engineering is required, then that’s a great starting point,” he explains. “It is, however, imperative to consider the preventative maintenance plans for the kitchen equipment and the service coverage in the Middle East.”

He added: “You can easily find yourself trying to save money by purchasing cheap equipment only to find yourself forking out the costs in maintenance.”