View from Within: In Real Time Mode

Modern trends in the field of gastronomy and the interiors of restaurants come to Russia from abroad - both from the West, and from the East. The kitchens of Singapore, Thailand, China and Vietnam are rather original and unusual for Europeans. They try to adapt them, while keeping their own products and tastes. And this is how the fashionable term "Pan-Asiatic kitchen" was born. The central element of the interior in such an establishment is a large fryer – Tympan, where the cook vigorously and temperamentally prepares some of the dishes. Cooking directly behind a counter frequently occurs in sushi-bars and in Japanese-style establishments.

In Europe open kitchens were typical for fast food. In Italy pizzerias with wood furnaces on view have been popular for a long time. An open kitchen became bait for tourists. In Europe there are also restaurants with show kitchens that combine ancient traditions with the ultramodern design of Asian megacities. London, with the appearance of the following restaurants: Nobu, Hakkasan and Zuma, became the capital of this new trend. In Moscow there were no such restaurants until the beginning of 2007 when Arkady Novikov opened Nedalny Vostok.

"The concept of the project is quite ambitious. I wanted to try to do something with a Russian kitchen, to make some mad design and present it in a new form, to play with products, with traditional dishes, but to do it in a new fashionable way," says the restaurateur.

Cooks behind windows

In the center of the restaurant there is an open kitchen that is totally transparent. The kitchen is located one step lower than the floor in the restaurant so that visitors can see the cook’s every move. Everything that happens in the restaurant can be seen from any table. In huge wooden tubs there are chillies, bay leafs, ginger and lemons. In the window display in front of the kitchen there are oysters, mussels and lobsters, and the shells of Kamchatky crabs laid out on ice. Live crabs float in a big aquarium.

The kitchen is surrounded with glass cubes inside of which are pyramids of a red persimmon, Chinese lychee and huge coconuts. In the grill zone under a transparent cap of ice is a flounder from Australia, a scattering of oysters and, of course, a Kamchatky crab, the hero of local culinary experiments. Everything is a working equipment – the lay out of the tables, the rack for making sushi – everything is designed specially for the restaurant and grouped so that it seems like a uniform futuristic canvas. All dishes on wokked, fried and grilled directly in the restaurant. The style of the kitchen – pan Asian - has united kitchens of the Asian continent. A cold store is located in a separate premises, as is a confectionery room. "To place all the production in the restaurant is impossible, as otherwise there wouldn’t be room for the tables," specified the press-service of the restaurant.

The interior of Nedalny Vostok is an art for Moscow. It is the first restaurant in the capital decorated by Superpotato, professional Japanese designers, and one of the most well known companies in the sphere of industrial design in the restaurant and hotel business. The same architect-design bureau decorated London’s Zuma and Roka restaurants. The kitchen was designed by designers at well-known company Creative Kitchen Planners (this company is engaged in the designing of kitchens for the Hyatt chain of hotels in Singapore and Shanghai).

The tables around the kitchen are made from solid wood, the wall from dense files of fabric, and there are glass racks filled with glass vases, bottles filled with vegetable oil and glass cans with multi-coloured water. The floor-to-ceiling transparent glass wall is filled with of cinnamon sticks, bows of pasta, dry peppers, chillies and bay leafs. The zoning, ventilation and lighting solutions were all calculated to within a millimeter to the pedantry peculiarities of the Japanese.

Singapore-Japanese company Lightening Technology was engaged in the lighting of the restaurant. There is a 100 diametric system of lighting, which allows the brightness of light in the restaurant to change depending on the time of day and the weather outside. Even if the restaurant has dim, romantic lighting, each table remains well lit and comfortable enough for visitors to read the menu and eat.

“The idea of creating such a restaurant is important for Moscow,” says Glenn Ballis, executive chef at Nedalny Vostok. “It allows visitors to generate and develop good taste. Moscow gourmets precisely feel the quality of products, are able to enjoy the tastes and are not afraid to try something new. Moscow, I think, will soon become the new Shanghai. The city is having amazing success in the development of restaurant culture."

Culinary islands

In March 2007 Novikov opened GQ-bar - another restaurant with an open kitchen. It is possible to watch the process of the preparation of dishes in the Mediterranean hall. “We want to be honest with our visitors and we do not hide the conditions in which the lunch of a real gentleman are cooked," says Novikov.

The first things diners see in the restaurant are two huge culinary islands each measuring 60 sq.m with 40 cooks. On the left they make sushi, salads, and desserts. On the right is the hot shop where there is a big grill, fryer, wok, and furnaces for making pizza. "It is like in a movie - everyone is doing something, something is boiling, something is being fried. A center of activity in which there is strict and logic discipline. In seeing all this, diners understand that everything is done to please them," comments head chef Konstantin Ivlev.

The Mediterranean restaurant is decorated in modern style with hints of retro. In the middle of the restaurant there is an open kitchen made of steel and black granite. The interior is decorated in black and white: charcoal marble table-tops, metal work surfaces, and black uniform for the chefs. It is possible to sit on a high stool at the kitchen table like you would at a bar.

Natural onyx and marble is combined with maple furniture in the spirit of the 1950s. In the Asian restaurant, the walls are finished in teakwood, as in Southeast Asia, and the lotuses are carved into the oak, like in Thailand. There are photos of exotic flowers on the walls, live orange trees and blossoming orchids. Water in fountains slightly flow and there are flat ventilation fans on the walls.

Novikov explains the popularity of such restaurants all over the world by their openness. “The kitchen as directly and figuratively the most interesting part," says the restaurateur.

Open kitchen restaurants have opened in St. Petersburg. In 2007 the Bul-Var restaurant complex opened. The restaurant is located in a separately built building and unites several formats: a coffee house, restaurant with an open kitchen and banquet halls. On the first floor of the complex is a restaurant in which diners can watch the preparation of refined Mediterranean dishes. Diners pass along a special conveyor belt and choose the food they like.

The restaurant has designed by a well known designer in St. Petersburg, Natalia Mikheyeva. The interior of Bul-Var is like a small Mediterranean town: huge panoramic windows, hand made furniture, a stone/cobbled floor, decorative fountains and real flowers...white creates an atmosphere of luxury in the interior, and the white stone columns make the premises ceremonial and cosy at the same time.

For informal socialising

“Of course, these elements of a show kitchen add value to the general gastronomic experience of the diners as they come to such a class of restaurants not only for a meal, but also for emotions," says Eleonora Scholes, a famous in Russia wine critic. Working in the US, Elena Shilina, senior vice president of IpoTeka Bank, often happened to go to ethnic restaurant Korean grill. There is a round table in the middle of the restaurant where the diners sit. Waiters bring raw products - vegetables, salads, meat, sauces, and the diners cook the food themselves.

“On one hand, this idea is interesting, but only for a specific format. It ideally suits a meeting with close friends. The party should be informal as there is smoke and oil splashes from the food. Everyone cooks food for each other, such suppers pull people together. However this type of restaurant is not suitable for business meetings, people feel uncomfortable," says Shilina. The design and decor correspond to what’s happening: precise geometrical forms, the furniture is wooden and metal. The light smoke from the preparation of food in the restaurant creates a relaxed atmosphere.

An open kitchen to a different degree suits other types of establishments. For example, it is perspective for fast-food establishments. However, the varying flows of people during the day means that some food has to be prepared in advance and the dishes need to be updated from time to time and a significant share of success depends on this. Such a type of kitchen is practically completely incompatible with a night club: an open kitchen is unlikely to become an additional service. It is almost always the core of the concept of the establishment.

Open kitchens can be found in restaurants of absolutely various classes.

Meal as an attraction

The possibility of opening the kitchen to diners is provided for at the design stage of buildings. In the interior of a restaurant such a kitchen, as a rule, is accented. The restaurateur defines how much he would like the diner to know the sacrament of cooking. However, usually only the most effective attractions are shown. The necessary, but less aesthetic operations (like cutting meat or washing saucepans) remain for the staff. Watching dishes being cooked and the work of the chefs should cause exclusively aesthetic pleasure. And then this performance substantially forms the concept, the script of the establishment.

As an intimate part of the flow process is put in public view in an open kitchen, special requirements are shown to the appearance and cleanliness of the kitchen, and also to the personnel. Therefore in famous restaurants food is prepared by people who have wide experience of work in elite establishments. For example, Ballis has been in the hotel restaurant business for 25 years. For eight years he worked in Australia, and for two years he supervised the kitchen of his own restaurant. Then he worked in Thailand for four years where he worked as head chef at the hotels owned by Banyan Tree Hotels. He has also worked at the Shangri La hotels in Shanghai, Malaysia and Guadeloupe. He headed the kitchen in New Hilton Hotel for two years and supervised all restaurants of London’s Harrods department store for two years.

Special attention should also be given to air conditioning and ventilation. A light aroma of food being prepared is certainly capable of stimulating an appetite, but strong smells will only frighten off diners. And a fryer in a restaurant should not influence the temperature. If working with an open flame (for example, with a char grill) safety systems are installed.

Modern kitchens have higher temperatures for frying in oil, and also slowly cooling down devices. All these present higher requirements in fire prevention. The existing systems of gas fire fighting are calculated by volumetric suppression. Flames are put out after the evacuation of people, and all doors in the premises should be closed as the gas is dangerous for people. Considering the specifics of modern restaurants where there are people constantly working, to install such systems are expensive and inconvenient.

Automatic fire fighting systems solve this problem. Experience shows that these systems are effective. More than 90 per cent of the 200 best restaurants in the Starogo and Novogo Sveta chain are already protected by such fire prevention systems, and in many cases it is a requirement of insurance companies.

The fire fighting system of kitchen and ventilation equipment puts out the fire by dispersing a special liquid structure. Where there is a fire the detection system reacts to the raised temperature of thermal energy, and when the temperature reaches a certain level, the fusible lock opens and the mechanism of a cylinder with compressed gas switches on. The compressed gas (nitrogen or carbonic acid) goes into a tank with fire-extinguishing liquid and simultaneously into an air cylinder with a trip valve, which blocks the gas coming to the fryers in the kitchen.

The system also has a trigger to switch off the electricity supply and send a signal to the nearest fire station. Fire-extinguishing liquid goes through the pipes to nozzle sprays, and quickly puts out the flame. As the structure has a neutral PH-factor, it does not damage the kitchen equipment. To prevent the fire reigniting, the structure forms a dense cooling covering of foam on the protected surface, preventing further distribution of fire.

Due to the use of kitchen equipment and especially ventilation systems, fat and dust accumulate. Therefore the occurrence of a fire from a small ignition with these particles is common. This type of fire is impossible to extinguish with a normal fire extinguisher and especially with water. System R-102 with Ansulex fire-extinguishing liquid was created for putting out such fires. R-102 is already installed in the Holiday Inn and Hyatt hotel chains and at GQ-Bar. R-102 is made of stainless steel, and therefore completely matches the interior of the kitchen.

An open kitchen requires a large premises. For example, the area of Nedalny Vostok, with its 220 seating places, is 1,600 sq.m. The restaurant is located in an old building, and therefore no architectural innovations are present.

Restaurant complex Bul-Var is located in a specially constructed 3-storey building. Bul-Var has a seating capacity of 300 visitors. The total area is 3,000 sq.m. The building of Bul-Var was initially designed for a restaurant complex, and therefore everything is stipulated for the convenience of visitors and staff: special subsidiary premises for the storage of products, the most modern systems of ventilation and air conditioning. There is also a special room for children.