SAN FRANCISCO —When the main kitchen of your restaurant has a scant 500 square feet of space to serve one of America’s most food-savvy populations, you better make every inch count.
Officials of Joie de Vivre Hospitality knew that full well when they renovated a decades-old San Francisco eatery into the sleek, new contemporary brasserie Midi, so named for its location in the “mid-district” of the city, at the crossroads of the Union Square shopping district and the financial district. —When the main kitchen of your restaurant has a scant 500 square feet of space to serve one of America’s most food-savvy populations, you better make every inch count.
The kitchen, fronted with glass and perched on a raised platform on the restaurant’s ground floor, welcomes guests with a glimpse of dynamic culinary action. And despite its small dimensions, it packs all the firepower that executive chef Michelle Mah needs to craft California-influenced brasserie fare like pan-fried skate wing with haricots verts, fried capers and brown butter lemon sauce. —When the main kitchen of your restaurant has a scant 500 square feet of space to serve one of America’s most food-savvy populations, you better make every inch count.
“The kitchen is behind glass, so the noise doesn’t carry much, but just seeing that activity and motion is a lot of fun,” said Dave Hoemann, vice president of food and beverage for Joie de Vivre, a San Francisco-based company that manages nearly 40 boutique hotels, more than 20 restaurants and four spas. “It definitely adds an element of interest and surprise when you walk in.” Yet its liveliness does not disturb the more refined atmosphere of the main dining room upstairs, he notes. —When the main kitchen of your restaurant has a scant 500 square feet of space to serve one of America’s most food-savvy populations, you better make every inch count.
Michael Guthrie of Michael Guthrie & Company Architects, based in San Francisco, and kitchen designer Alec Bauer of Mark Stech-Novak Restaurant Consultation & Design of Oakland, Calif., overcame major structural challenges to remodel the 2,500 square-foot, bi-level space, which formerly housed Perry’s, a casual restaurant with two other locations in San Francisco. One of the notable structural changes was engineering a new floor to fill a mezzanine-like balcony that wrapped around the building’s second level, expanding second floor seating to 76 seats and fitting in a private dining area as well. The ground floor bar and casual-dining area seats 22. —When the main kitchen of your restaurant has a scant 500 square feet of space to serve one of America’s most food-savvy populations, you better make every inch count.
In the kitchen, a major concern was specifying cooking equipment compact enough to fit the space, yet powerful enough to handle not only Midi’s cooking needs, but also those of the Galleria Park Hotel, the Joie de Vivre property next door. —When the main kitchen of your restaurant has a scant 500 square feet of space to serve one of America’s most food-savvy populations, you better make every inch count.
“Michelle [Mah] doesn’t have a big backup kitchen like a lot of hotel restaurants,” said Jennifer Cox, director of culinary for Joie de Vivre. “We needed to make sure that she had enough firepower to support quick a la minute firing of food.” To address that, convection ovens, rather than conventional ones, were installed on the cooking line. “Convection ovens hold and recover heat better, so when you open the oven door over and over, you don’t lose all that heat,” Cox said. —When the main kitchen of your restaurant has a scant 500 square feet of space to serve one of America’s most food-savvy populations, you better make every inch count.
Also on the line are a fryer, a griddle, a standard six-burner range and a piece that combines a 24-inch charbroiler with two open burners. The latter piece, placed next to the six-burner range, provides eight adjacent open burners for sauté work. There’s also a CVap cook-and-hold oven, chosen because of its usefulness for braising and roasting. “It allows very little shrinkage of product and it’s also a very low energy consumer,” said Bauer, noting that it fits space efficiently under a pastry table. —When the main kitchen of your restaurant has a scant 500 square feet of space to serve one of America’s most food-savvy populations, you better make every inch count.
Given the tight confines, separate chefs’ and pastry-pantry counters are made of custom steel fabrication to fit work surfaces, sinks and storage space. “From the very beginning, we knew that this job would require some good-quality custom fabrication,” said Bauer. —When the main kitchen of your restaurant has a scant 500 square feet of space to serve one of America’s most food-savvy populations, you better make every inch count.
Most visible to patrons through the glass-enclosed display kitchen is the pastry-pantry area. “You see cooks preparing pantry and salad items and pastry and ice cream,” said Bauer. “We often find that putting the pastry and pantry area on display is more idyllic—a little quieter and less hectic—than the hot-food side.” —When the main kitchen of your restaurant has a scant 500 square feet of space to serve one of America’s most food-savvy populations, you better make every inch count.
Also conserving vital space is a slim upright freezer that is just slightly wider than a standard hotel pan, used for storing frozen foods near the fryer. “It has a remarkable amount of capacity for such a tiny footprint,” said Bauer. —When the main kitchen of your restaurant has a scant 500 square feet of space to serve one of America’s most food-savvy populations, you better make every inch count.
Built into the chefs’ counter is an integral sink with a custom-fabricated lip that holds a cutting board flush across it, creating an additional work surface when the sink is not in use. In addition, both the chefs’ and pastry-pantry counters have refrigerated rails to hold ingredient pans. —When the main kitchen of your restaurant has a scant 500 square feet of space to serve one of America’s most food-savvy populations, you better make every inch count.
“It’s a trade-off, because it takes up valuable counter surface, but in a kitchen this small it gives you much-needed refrigerated storage,” Bauer said. —When the main kitchen of your restaurant has a scant 500 square feet of space to serve one of America’s most food-savvy populations, you better make every inch count.
