To celebrate Cutler & Co’s fifth birthday, Executive Chef Andrew McConnell and his team saw the opportunity to renovate, creating an open kitchen at the front of the venue, as Andrew explains.
“I wanted to change the ambience but not the aesthetic of the restaurant. Now when guests arrive, they are walking into a kitchen where the sights, smells and sounds combine to create a multi-sensory experience. It also brings a human touch to what we do, instead of the food coming out from behind closed doors guests have an understanding of how many people it takes to create one’s dinner. That has been really important.”
Andrew was instantly drawn to the Mareno Cooking Range for both its aesthetic and functional appeal.
“For the new kitchen I wanted a cooking range that was not only extremely functional and top of the line, but was also really aesthetically beautiful, and that’s why I went with the Mareno range. It’s minimal and contemporary which works with our aesthetic, but at the same time it’s quite a timeless design. It’s beautiful to look at, really easy to clean and we get a lot of compliments on how clean it is. The range has great power; the burners themselves have got incredible grunt but the actually temperature mechanism is quite sensitive, so you can quite easily cook at extremely high or low temperatures. I love the quality of the stainless steel as the gauge of steel that is used is quite thick, so heat transfer is really efficient. That’s how we like to fit out our restaurants now; with quality materials right from the start and that goes with our cooking and the produce we use. Yes, sometimes it costs a bit more, but long-term I think it’s worth it”
Not only does Andrew love the stunning Mareno on show in his new open kitchen, but his team have responded positively too.
“It’s also been a very positive change for the chefs. Most of our chefs had never cooked in an open kitchen; they were used to slugging it out the back for 12 hours and never seeing a single customer. They can now see with their own eyes the guests enjoying what they have created and building a connection with their customers has been really rewarding.”
