Tampa's snazzy soup kitchen: with the help of outback steakhouse, metropolitan ministries built a state-of-the-art kitchen, which it uses to feed the needy

Nation's Restaurant News, Sept 9, 2002

A stove sits quietly in the busy kitchen at Metropolitan Ministries in Tampa, Fla. It's a good stove: four burners, cooks evenly, can stand up to its fair share of abuse. But the chef and his staff have little use for it. With 4,400 meals to turn out on an average day, they've found that the otherwise mighty stove just doesn't do the trick.

On the other hand, enormous steam-jacketed kettles can handle the kitchen's big orders. Along with tilting skillets by Groen that can handle 15 to 20 gallons of food at a time and Vulcan Combi ovens that can brown 24 sheetpans of potatoes in 45 minutes, those 120-gallon, 60-gallon and 80-gallon kettles are the backbone of Metropolitan Ministries' kitchen operation.

Metropolitan Ministries is a soup kitchen, residence for the homeless and much more, and its kitchen has been designed to feed Tampa's needy. And "designed" is definitely not too strong a word for it. Tim Gannon, a founder of the Outback Steakhouse chain, headquartered nearby, personally undertook the project of getting the Ministries' kitchen put together. He used Outback's expertise to design the 1,800-square-foot space and Outback's clout to get supplier assistance. All told, 24 suppliers donated equipment or services or provided them at reduced cost - which is why Vulcan stoves and Hobart slicers are found above an epoxy grout floor.

Gannon based the kitchen design on one he created for Reunion Hall restaurant at the 1984 World's Fair in New Orleans. His latest design, however, features some modern touches. Like the original, which served 10,000 people a day out of the 1,800-square-foot space, the Ministries' kitchen can churn out astounding quantities of food with its small staff. The Metropolitan Ministries' Majik Kitchen can provide up to 15,000 meals a day, if it has to.

"I wanted to use the organization, technology and recipes from that World's Fair experience so I could see it live on, so a six-month project was good for more than just six months," Gannon explains.

Majik Kitchen does more than just allow for the preparation of large quantities of food. It has a state-of-the-art cook-chill system in place, allowing the staff to prepare lots of spaghetti with meat sauce, for example, and then store it safely for future use. When the food in the kettles is ready, explains Joseph Rooksberry, director of food services, he and his staff attach hoses to the bottoms of the kettles and pump the food into clear plastic bags while paddles keep the food mixed together. The food is stored in 2 1/2-gallon increments, which allows it to chill in just 45 minutes - though for food-safety reasons the team gives food four hours of chilling time. The food is good for 30 days and, if frozen, will hold for up to a year.

What's more, the kitchen was designed so that the kettles would be easy to clean. "Twelve-inch drains run underneath each cooking line, big hoses are above the lines and drains are right in the floors," Gannon explains. "The tilting kettles and skillets can tilt right into the drains, so workers can hose them down without moving them.

"We wanted a kitchen that could always be ahead of itself. We could have just built a traditional kitchen, but this way the kitchen can take care of a lot of people, and the technology will be there for a long time to come."

When it comes to taking care of people, the phrase "a lot" is key. Already the Majik Kitchen feeds three meals a day to the 218 people who live on the premises. Also served are children in the K-5 charter school located on the premises, as well as the hungry at 19 other feeding stations in the Tampa Bay area. All told, Majik Kitchen churns out about 1,900 meals a day. Using Cambro carriers that were bought by Rooksberry for $200 apiece, food is delivered to various churches every day, and kept at 212 degrees Fahrenheit for four hours to ensure that the food stays safe.

The steam-jacketed kettles take care of the pasta, soups and stews, but the Groen tilting skillets get major workouts, too. "We can cook 15 to 20 gallons of food at a time in these electric skillets," Rooksberry says. "We can saute and fry in them, we can cook eggs on them, we'll boil pasta in them--we can cook almost anything in them that would normally be done on a stove, but in huge quantities."

For the remaining major tasks, the aforementioned Vulcan Combi Ovens are the choice. "They use a combination of hot air and steam, so people in the U.S. are still leery of them," Rooksberry admits. "We use them all the time, though. We can steam eggs for egg salad for 6,000 people. We steam all our vegetables in them. They cook quickly and well. They reheat food without drying it out."

The Majik Kitchen's Vulcan fryers also are in use often. The shelter receives many donations of fried food, such as french fries, jalapeno poppers, fried chicken, rolled tacos, egg rolls, chimichangas, fried cheese and fried fish. Singleton donates fried shrimp. Sometimes Rooksberry will plan "Fried Food Night" and cook up a variety of such products for dinner.