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The Fishpool Inn

Cheshire

When the Nelson Hotels Group, owner of four hotels in the north west of England, renowned for their delicious British gastro food offering, needed a new kitchen for the historic Fishpool Inn in Cheshire, a sustainable cooking range was top of the wish list.

After seeing Tweets from satisfied chefs who had already invested in CHR Equipment’s British-built, bespoke Eco-Chef range, a former head chef at the Fishpool Inn alerted the Nelson Group owners, who rather reluctantly, because of loyalties to previous suppliers, allowed the company to put forward a proposal for an all-electric kitchen. The brief CHR tackled was to deliver a state of the art, environmentally friendly open kitchen for the 17th century building. The kitchen was to be sustainable, economical to run and easy to clean and maintain serving a 180 seat restaurant with a diverse British menu. It was also stipulated that installation was to include an Inka charcoal grill and a Jestic Wood Stone pizza oven. The decision having been made to exclude gas from the mix, CHR’s bespoke Eco-chef cooking suite took centre stage. CHR had developed the all-electric, energy efficient Eco-Chef concept to deliver a turnkey cooking operation offering maximum versatility, efficiency in operation and amazing fuel-savings.

Eco-Chef is a bespoke cooking suite built to handle heavy demand in professional kitchens. Each range is specific to each application and is specifically designed to substantially reduce energy consumption. Individual components can be added to Eco-Chef as required and each suite is designed to fit perfectly within an establishment’s food operation – whether as a wall suite or in a single-island or double-island configuration.

Each range contains a built-in smart meter that monitors and records exactly how much energy is being used.

The line–up uses induction technology and a plancha for top cooking, and Paul Prescott, Nelson Group Executive Head Chef, says: “The induction hobs are so easy to operate simply by pressing a button and are extremely user friendly. And induction is twice as fast as gas, much speedier. As for the plancha, which is the size of five frying pans it has completely cut out their use.

“The Jestic Wood Stone oven is perfect for producing authentic Italian style pizzas with a crispy base and is quite a talking point with customers. The other piece of kit I really like is the Inka grill: because we are cooking over charcoal so you get that lovely smokey flavour that nothing else can replicate.”

When it came to installation time, the cooking suite and fabrication were broken down like Lego at the factory to facilitate easier access and reassembled on site. “The cooking suite alone weighs over 3.5 tonnes and with the Inka grill and pizza oven the combined weight on the front cooking line was over 4700kg. I have to praise CHR for their work. It was a pleasure and a privilege to work with them. The installation went without a hitch – one minute the Eco-chef wasn’t there, the next minute it was.

“And post installation there were no problems with the changeover from gas cooking to induction. The team took to it in just a day. The first week we delivered over 3000 covers, which is testament to the skills of the chefs, and the overall training and support provided by CHR.

“The CHR Eco-Chef has enabled us to produce a more bespoke menu and it has made the whole process of serving for 450-500 covers a day so much easier. The customers love being able to see what is going on in the open kitchen as their food is cooked and we get comments daily on how good the line up looks; it really is striking and very easy to keep clean so the stainless steel is always sparkling,” says Prescott.

“An all-electric kitchen is great to work in and the Eco-Chef is also extremely energy efficient. One of the most attractive aspects of using induction in place of gas in my opinion is the reduced risks of burns for my staff, an important health and safety consideration – and there is less heat in the kitchen making it a far more pleasant environment to work in.”

The Fishpool Inn installation was recently awarded Runner Up in the Catering Equipment Distributors Association prestigious Grand Prix awards for best large private sector project.

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