All systems go

Banqueting is one of the last areas of catering to be "systematised". In most hotels, cooking techniques are traditional and labour-intensive, with food prepared by the banqueting brigade immediately before events and then served by battalions of silver service casuals.

Specialist banqueting equipment tends to centre around mobile heated cabinets. These keep food warm and minimise drying out because they are well sealed. Foster, Williams, Regethermic, Alto-Shaam and Wittco all supply such equipment. Otherwise, most establishments use traditional kitchen equipment plus ranks of hotplates for service.

But there are signs of change. A number of banquet venues are switching to plated service - thus speeding up delivery, reducing the numbers of waiting staff and allowing chefs rather than waiters to do the final presentation.

Cook-chill is also being used more frequently, or at least elements of it. Techniques such as blast chilling that enable some food to be prepared days in advance and held safely until needed are gaining in popularity.

Equipment suppliers have noticed these changing practices and are beginning to put together banqueting packages, typically including combination ovens with compatible blast chillers and trolleys that fit both. Companies involved in this area include: Convotherm, which combines Irinox refrigeration with its own combi-ovens and trolleys; Rational, whose ovens are compatible with Williams blast chillers, and Hobart Still with Foster Refrigerator.

One hotel that has installed such a system is the Novotel in Hammersmith, London. "Our banqueting service is now calm, whereas it used to build to a crescendo of panic," says Jonathan Main, hotel services manager. He was responsible for introducing the new Juno banqueting system last year.

The hotel operates a cook-chill system for banqueting. It can now prepare food on Thursday or Friday for service at a Saturday night function. Rather than being dished up from multi-portion containers by silver service waiting staff, food is now individually plated.

Central to the system are three 20-grid Juno Air-O-Steam combination ovens that are used for virtually all cooking tasks - from vegetable steaming to meat roasting. They are also used for regenerating the chilled plated meals - a process that takes about five minutes for a full load of 80 plates.

Eight trolleys are used for both transport and cooking, together with thermal insulation hoods that keep food hot until service. A Williams blast chiller is used which, Main says, slows the process down because it is not compatible with the rest of the system.

The next phase of development will include the installation of a Juno blast chiller that can accommodate the trolleys, plus a purpose-built cold area for dressing the plates.

Main says a great benefit of the system is that food is served hot because the plates retain the heat from regeneration. More attention can be paid to presentation too because chefs have time to work on it in advance. "It enables you to spread your labour out and use it at times when you've got dips in business. It means you can plan much better and buy much better," Main says.

Dishes are sauced immediately before service by chefs using a special piston funnel bought in France, with sauces kept hot in a bain-marie. Waiting staff then load four plates to a tray to take them to banquet tables.

Main says: "This system means you don't have to pay for silver service skills - just someone who can carry a plate. We can serve 15 guests per waiter, compared with 10 with silver service."

By saving waiting staff costs and making better use of chefs' time, the Novotel has been able to cut its banqueting costs and set its sights firmly on the price-sensitive middle-market. And because the quality is now consistent, the hotel has felt confident enough to increase its prices from about £22 per head to £24 and has found it still gets repeat business.

At the Regent London, opened three years ago, the approach has been to cook food immediately before service rather than cook-chill. A special system has been installed to keep food really hot from the time it is cooked, during plating and through to service.

Duncan Graham, director of conference and banqueting sales, says: "I think we manage to get food out hotter than you can with silver service, where often the plate is going cold by the time the vegetables are being dished up.

"Much banqueting is still stuck in the 1960s, but when we opened we wanted to do a new style of service. We feel that plating food should be the responsibility of the kitchen because it is for every other food outlet in the hotel."

The Regent London cooks food in its main kitchen, then transports it in Alto-Shaam cabinets to the finishing kitchen. "You can control the temperature precisely in the cabinets," says Graham. "We do all the plating up in the finishing kitchen under strips of heated lights - and from there it is only seconds to the tables."

Waiting staff operate in teams of five, each carrying two plates, so they can serve an entire table at once. They use a specially choreographed routine when placing the plates on the table which, says Graham, has been known to draw a round of applause from guests.

Another big bonus of the Regent London's system is that chefs can exercise their creative skills when plating up food.

Most hotels, however, still use traditional banqueting techniques for cooking and service. Typical is the Cumberland in Marble Arch, whose kitchens in the 1960s were also production kitchens for the Regent Palace and Strand Palace hotels. Banqueting capacity at the Cumberland is up to 1,000 guests in two rooms.

Conference and banqueting manager Russell Bodycomb explains that food is cooked immediately before service using a conventional line-up of kitchen equipment and masses of hotplates to keep dishes warm. Some starters and desserts are individually plated, but most food for banquets is silver service, with casual staff being used for waiting and sometimes cooking, too.

Bodycomb says the hotel is planning a new banqueting system: "Within a year we want to convert to smaller kitchens because our present ones are absolutely massive. For the moment we are sticking with what we have got, but there will be a lot of changes in future," he says.

Independent design consultant David Stroud has specialised in hotel and banqueting kitchen design for the past 38 years. He believes more hotels will switch to cook-chill and plated service techniques. But, he adds, such developments are sometimes held up by a lack of capital and resistance from both management and chefs.

"Many people are stuck with premises that are uneconomic and they don't really know which way to go because it costs a lot to make staff redundant and to make kitchens smaller."

Stroud also believes that banqueting venues should look at buying in more ready-prepared food. Many hotels buy in items such as pastries, sauces and part-baked bread but some take the concept further and buy complete chilled meals. These hotels are reluctant to go public because of the impact it could have on their customers.

Stroud believes the buy-in approach will grow, however. "At the moment it is in its infancy," he says. "There is no reason why it should not work well; you can buy in food from Marks & Spencer for use at home that is in many ways as good, if not better, than some banqueting food.

"I think that there is a real market for food manufacturers to set up production lines so chefs can just finish off the dishes or give them a slightly different presentation."