Case study: Boodle’s, London gentlemen’s club
Grande Cuisine recently supplied one of the world's most prestigious clubs with a bespoke Athanor kitchen solution.
Customer’s business:
Founded in 1762 by Lord Shelburne (the future Marquess of Lansdowne, who would go on to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom), Boodle’s is one of London’s most prestigious clubs, as well as the second oldest gentlemen’s club in the world.
Named after its original head waiter, Edward Boodle, Boodle’s can count historically significant figures such as William Wilberforce, Adam Smith and Ian Fleming among its members, with Sir Winston Churchill being awarded honorary membership.
It has been located at 28 St. James Street, London since 1782.
With a proud tradition of excellent quality and service to a select client base, Boodle’s reputation and specialities are renowned.
Motivation for investment:
Boodle’s sought to revisit their kitchen capabilities, engaging the services of Sefton Horn Winch to look in to refurbishing the kitchens, which had not received an upgrade in more than 20 years.
Sefton Horn Winch performed work across the kitchen area, including specifying and upgrading the ventilation system, providing design and specifications for the stainless steel fabrication preparation and service areas, and contacting Grande Cuisine about a new bespoke cooking suite.
Initially, the design Grande Cuisine supplied was based on a generic schematic, however, after discussing the needs of the Club, Grande Cuisine went beyond the ‘like-for-like’ replacement to provide an optimised suite to exceed Boodle’s expectations.
Executive Chef Stephen Carter had undertaken market research on the different suites and ranges offered by manufacturers and, after checking on reputation and market references, asked Sefton Horn Winch to consider the Athanor range as a potential solution for the site.
Challenges identified:
Having made a long term commitment to cut their carbon footprint, energy efficiency was considered alongside performance when it came to the kitchen update and refurbishment.
Carefully considered equipment that would minimise energy use, lessen residual heat and allow for easy maintenance was prioritised, with improvements to the working environment being a definite end-goal in the process.
Solutions:
With these needs in mind, the original suggested solution was customised further, from 70% gas and 30% electric to a 95% electric suite. This shift to more electric cooking mediums within the cooking suite was achieved by replacing the traditional gas solid tops with Plaque Athanor planchas. The planchas offer the same high performance of traditional solid tops - providing significant reductions to energy consumption and residual heat, while offering increased flexibility of use and operation.
Benefits for the customer:
The new Athanor cooking suite provides a modern kitchen solution to a stalwart of London’s exclusive landscape, ensuring that Boodle’s reputation for excellent service and quality will be maintained for another 20+ years.
“The Athanor suite is a joy to work on,” said Carter, “its precise temperature control, versatility of products and flexibility is ideal for our environment.”
Athanor’s additional benefit, over and above its contemporary good looks and ease of maintenance and cleaning, is its energy efficiency credentials.
“Furthermore, the energy savings are considerable. I’m glad we chose to go this route with Plaque Athanor cook plates replacing all the old style solid tops” he concluded.
The suite was provided with several additions, such as stainless steel gully in-fills to surround the moat section of the Plaque Athanor - optimising pan use during mise-en-place and service, removable ribbed cast iron searing plates for the grill, Multicookers and water baths were also integrated within the suite for use as bain-maries and chaufont cooking.
Steve Hobbs, Managing Director,
E-mail: steve@grandecuisine.co.uk
Tel: 01908 745540
About Grande Cuisine
Formed in 2013, Grand Cuisine builds upon director Steve Hobbs’ 20 years in the commercial catering industry. Steve previously built Signature FSE Ltd into one of the leading influencers in the marketplace.
Grande Cuisine is the exclusive UK distributors for specialist manufacturers
- Adventys - Every day – plug and play, table-top induction hobs range;
- Athanor - High end – bespoke cooking suites for master and aspirational chefs, high end domestic customers;
- CAPIC – leading manufacturers of Heavy duty modular prime cooking equipment.
All supported by a national network of service engineers.
With over 50 years of combined experience the team behind Grande Cuisine can assist you with design and specification whilst harnessing the quality and environmental credentials of their products.
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