Two restaurants, one kitchen

Nation's Restaurant News, August 26, 1985

TWO RESTAURANTS, ONE KITCHEN

Hotels and institutional feeders long ago found the economics of running two or more food-service facilities out of one common kitchen to their liking. But if two independent restaurants located adjacent to each other but featuring divergent cuisines share a common kitchen, that marriage is unusual and poses special design challenges.

That such a kitchen can work smoothly is shown by the Safari Grill and the Cafe Marimba in New York. The former is a new American style grill restaurant, while the upscale Cafe Marimba specializes in classic Mexican cuisine. Within a few months of their opening earlier this year, they've become two of the most popular and trendy new additions to Manhattan's dining-out scene.

The restaurants incorporate the space formerly occupied by David Keh's, one of Manhattan's most elegant Chinese restaurants when it opened some five years ago. The enterprising Keh, owner of two other successful restaurant concepts in Manhattan, decided to close down David Keh's and try something totally new.

Despite the luxurious amount of space--some 15,000 sq. ft. overall-- the Chinese restaurant had not worked efficiently. Part of the problem was that it was spread awkwardly over two levels. The first floor and entrance to the restaurant fronted on a major avenue; the level below had a large, clumsy kitchen and a 110-seat dining room adjacent to the garden of the apartment complex that housed the restaurant.

The solution came from Sam Lopata, an innovative New York restaurant designer, who suggested two separate restaurants for the space, expanding the total number of seats from 110 to more than 300 and further increasing profit potential of the location by appealing to two separate markets with two different concepts. The plan, though, also meant increased demand on the kitchen, which would be required to turn out up to 700 meals a night.

A chef was the inspiration for locating the classic Mexican restaurant downstairs, overlooking the garden and with its own entrance around the corner from the old entrance to David's Keh's. The style of food--an authentic Mexican cuisine unfamiliar to those brought up on tacos and Tex-Mex--would be labor intensive, requiring considerable space for preparation.

The grill concept was crafted to fit the cooking style of John Terczak, one of the new breed of American chefs, formerly head of the kitchen at Gorden's restaurant in Chicago. The grill menu, which would necessitate last-minute preparation, seemed to complement the refined Mexican fare which allowed for some advance preparation.

To take the pressure off the main kitchen at serving time, a small display kitchen with a wood-burning forced air grill was planned upstairs in the Safari Grill. Refrigerated food storage drawers below work counters, a four-burner range, a hot top, a fryer and a sink were included in the narrow display kitchen. Typical menu offerings to be turned out or finished off here included grilled baby chicken with shiitake mushrooms and leeks, rack of lamb with fresh thyme sauce and pasta and grilled sea scallops in a double mustard sauce.

With plans for the two restaurant layouts and the upstairs kitchen sketched out, all that was left was to tackle the design of the main kitchen.

The duck ovens, 10 woks and all the other specialized equipment were removed and the interior walls torn down. The only elements that remained were the exhaust hoods that had been over the line of woks, five large walk-in refrigerators and a sturdy 30-year-old dishwasher.

"Everything else was changed,' explained Lopata, who designed the kitchen layout with the help of chef Terczak. "We had to totally reallocate the space to incorporate a pastry shop, a butcher shop, a pantry, wine cellar, liquor room, an ice cream room, a chef's office and all the necessary prep areas.' A new wash room for employees needed to be added, and the old exhaust required revamping--a major expense.

But first, traffic flow from the two restaurants was analyzed, and a plan to minimize traffic through the main kitchen during serving hours and promote order and staff efficiency was outlined.

A stairway was cut from the northwest corner of the main kitchen up to the display kitchen. In order to minimize traffic from upstairs, an anteroom at the foot of the stairs was built to act as an intermediary supply station. Four small refrigerators were installed for stocking backup ingredients to resupply the eight refrigerated drawers upstairs as needed.

Placement of the cooking line in the main kitchen was dictated by the existing exhaust hoods, which were directly across the width of the kitchen from the Cafe Marimba service entrance. The new layout allows for a wide traffic aisle leading from the Marimba service door across to the hot food pickup station. The cold pickup station and pastry shop were positioned to provide for easy access from this main traffic aisle. The old dishwasher remained in its original position in a large isolated corner just inside the Marimba service door. An enclosed chef's office was installed near the center of the kitchen; the office has a large window through which all the cooking and preparation stations can be seen and is equipped with an elaborate intercom, paging and phone system.