Banqueting role for cook-chill
Banqueting is very profitable for kitchens. It's less of a discretionary spend than walk-in restaurant customers provide, creative chefs can devise fixed menus that build in added revenue, and above all it's volume business.
The big challenge with banqueting is delivering a large number of courses in rapid time with consistent quality in food, plate presentation and food temperature. Silver service is traditional and good theatre, but hiring good casual staff to serve it is becoming more difficult, particularly in London, chefs lose control of plate presentation and food temperature can be a nightmare to maintain.
Cook-and-serve is far from dead, but the preference for a growing number of chefs is cook-chill, usually in combination with an individual plated service. However, the big issue is: can warmed-up food ever compete with freshly cooked? In the rush to deliver the food more efficiently, is that most basic part of the restaurant experience - taste - being compromised?
Most certainly not, says Lee White, specialist in banqueting systems for combi-oven manufacturer Rational. "To call cook-chill warmed-up food is not to understand what combi-ovens can do in chilled food regeneration," he says. "I would argue that if there's any flavour loss in banqueting meals it's more likely to come from a cook-serve operation where food has been held in hot cupboards.
"Few kitchens have the equipment or staff to produce 200 main-course items so that they're all cooked and ready for plating at the same time. There's inevitably going to be holding time, and that's when the sauces split, the vegetables lose their colour and meat can begin to dry out."
Another charge against cook-chill for banqueting is that it's a one-size-fits-all in the regeneration of plated meals, whereas some items need longer than others. Rational's latest combi-oven, the SCC, is able to regenerate with different cooking environments on different shelves because of the way the hot air is circulated in the oven.
Compass Group has so much faith in cook-chill for banqueting and the huge range of outside events it caters for that it has Circadia, a huge cook-chill production centre in south London. In addition to selling to the internal Compass market, Circadia also has a growing business selling cook-chill to hotels, which find it more economical to have their menus cooked and chilled by Circadia, and delivered chilled to be regenerated close to service time in the hotel kitchen.
Circadia managing director Mick Geraghty says the increasingly desperate shortage of good chefs is a major reason for the switch to a cook-chill banqueting system for hotels. "In some hotels the high staffing cost for banqueting means the kitchen can be seen as a non-profit department, with the profit from drinks sales, not the food."
Buying in precooked food and a switch to cook-chill may be two big steps for some chefs, but the 10 million cook-chill meals produced by Circadia last year is clear evidence of just how widespread the practice is.
