Midsummer House

Daniel Clifford’s quest for culinary perfection has taken the restaurant to another level since he took over; his cooking has a modern focus underpinned by classical French technique offering seriously sophisticated food with dishes arriving ‘dressed to thrill’. Superb, quality ingredients, advanced technique and technical prowess add the wow-factor to the menus and allow flavours to shine, while offering unexpected texture contrasts and combinations to guests.

Paul Neville of CHR explains: “As we know, bespoke stoves have a long shelf life of 15 years plus so it is entirely credible to rebuild one as an Eco-chef. It is an incredibly sustainable solution – re-use, recycle, minimise energy use! We retained the shell of the cooking block, but removed the top and components from the stove and refitted with energy efficient induction units and planchas and remade the topwork to complete the newly configured cooking suite.

“Every chef would like to be using induction and by following the Midsummer House initiative they could achieve that goal in a cost effective and eco-friendly manner;” The other bonus to the client is that we don’t need to stop the operation to do this; it actually took us just two days to deliver the changes at Midsummer House.

“The overall cost to Midsummer House was approximately £35,000 (less than one third of new cost). The installation took place on a Sunday and Monday with normal service resumed on the Wednesday. Daniel Clifford is extremely happy with the result – he had approached Bonnet initially and been told that it wasn’t possible to do this. And, in the year since the Eco-chef went in, Daniel reports staggering energy savings of £4,000.”

The British-made CHR Eco-Chef suite, including its in-built SMART energy monitor, is designed to keep running costs down and standards high and started proving its worth from day one at Midsummer House.

Ron Neville, founder of CHR, says: “When we set out to develop Eco-chef it was about reducing the energy use, not specifically making a cash donation back into the business. However, what we are actually finding is that in all of the jobs that have gone in we are saving a minimum of £250 net a month.”

Eco-chef units, which harness the energy efficiency of induction, are in Aiden Byrne’s Manchester House, Morston Hall for Michelin-starred Richard Bainbridge, Adam Simmonds’ Pavilion restaurant in London, The Castle Dairy at Kendal College, Appleby Manor Country House Hotel , Nelson Hotel Group, Birmingham Metropolitan College, Wellocks’ development kitchen, and Manchester Pub of the Year, The Shoulder of Mutton in Bury and the Michelin starred restaurant Fera at Claridges.