The Shoreline Restaurant at Sea World Resort offers a buffet breakfast and nightly themed buffet dinners which serve up to 500 people on weekends. The challenge for Executive Chef, Klaus Keller and his team is to consistently produce fresh and tasty buffet dishes in a relatively short service window, with the restaurant at its busiest from 7am to 9am and then again from 6pm to 8pm.

Klaus contacted Comcater to help increase productivity and consistency in his kitchen, having worked with us previously to install his Garland open burner cook tops, Frymaster commercial fryers and a RATIONAL in his kitchen. Comcater installed a RATIONAL VarioCookingCenter® 311, and has already resulted in a massive increase in productivity resulting in resource savings across other dishes that benefit both chefs and the customers.

It all begins with breakfast, says Klaus.

“Our pancakes are now cooked to perfection. The alarm even sounds advising the chef to flip the pancakes which produces consistent, perfect results every time with less wastage.”

Klaus explains that with the RATIONAL VarioCookingCenter® there’s now three to four braised style choices on the buffet, instead of just one because of the Sous Vide cooking style that produces the perfect braise. Pasta cooked in a pot on the stove is now history. The RATIONAL VarioCookingCenter® unit cooks six different types of ‘al dente’ pasta in half an hour.

Whilst Klaus is impressed by the water and energy savings, it’s the labour savings valued most. “The chefs are now able to be out on the restaurant floor entertaining guests with live and interactive cooking, and can spend more time focusing on the presentation of food on the buffet.”

While time, labour and resource savings are important, for any chef it comes down to the finished product. “Duck confit is beautifully cooked to perfection and beef cheeks are succulent, juicy and gelatinous,” says Klaus.