Gauging the Latest Gear
An independent panel of judges deemed 17 pieces of equipment some fo the most innovative in the world at this year's National Restaurant Association Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show. Food Arts equipment editors weigh in on the NRA's "Kitchen Innovations Award" recipients and some other gee-whiz equipment.
Nelle Bauer & Dave Arnold reports.
A.J. Antunes & Co.
Total Assurance Package (TAP)
Nelle Bauer: The innovation here is not so much product but process (and a cute name). A mechanical filtration followed by chemical treatment leaves water ultra-filtered. If you're working with great product and great equipment, you should use great water.
Dave Arnold: Breaking filtration into two separate problems is a smart idea. Removing particles and removing chemicals are different. Why throw away a filter that should still be working just because it gets clogged? If you find your filters need replacing faster than they're supposed to, this item could be your solution.
Beverage Air/Carrier
Miracool Series Cooler
NB: Service and maintenance are always worries when purchasing new equipment. The salesperson will inevitably convince you that you won't need to service his product, but you will. This cooler is remarkably not innovative; it just utilizes common sense (which, the more I see, is actually quite innovative). What's the fun here? This refrigeration system has conveniently integrated the condenser and the compressor into a single removable cartridge at the bottom of the unit, meaning shorter service calls and less downtime.
Cleveland Range
Convotherm Combi-oven Steamer
NB: The beauty of sous-vide cooking is that a constant temperature and constant level of moisture are maintained. But since plenty of people want sous-vide results without sous-vide dangers, we see lots of sous-vide that actually isn't. Since Cleveland Range isn't exactly in the sous-vide cooking business, they've found a rather clever way to throw their two cents in with the Advanced Closed System +3 design, which tailors a specific amount of humidity to whatever you're cooking, depending on how much and what it is, and then maintains a consistent humidity level throughout the cooking process.
DA: It's very difficult to sort out the different claims combi-oven manufacturers make about their products. Most reps have something negative to say about the other guy's "hot new feature." Because combi-oven cooking has a lot to do with sophisticated microprocessor controls and built-in cooking algorithms, it's almost impossible to know what oven to buy without using the equipment yourself. The Convotherm's "crisp and tasty" function, for instance, is a program that the engineers have written for crisping food. Is it better than similar programs from other companies? Who knows? That said, Cleveland's new oven does have a verifiably different feature: a door that swings open and slides out of the way. No more problems with the door smack ing into people when loading or unloading. I like the idea, but a lot of stress is placed on it if you try to shut the door prematurely.
Cooper-Atkins
Coolit-Rite
NB: According to HACCP guidelines, you get four hours to take hot product through the danger zone to a safe temperature of 40°F or less. But when you're multitasking, the last thing you want to have to do is keep checking the temperature of a cooling bain-marie. This ingenious gizmo takes the guesswork and the fumbling out of cooling down product fast enough to meet HACCP standards, even if it's a full hotel pan or bain-marie. The thermometer sounds a 70 decibel alarm when the temperature drops below 41°F. More importantly, the alarm will also sound when the time period to safely cool the product has elapsed, recording and storing the lowest temperature reached for proof of HACCP compliance. This leaves you free to do other things—like cook.
DA: How are you supposed to know if your food got chilled to a safe temperature fast enough? What if you forget to check after four hours? The Coolit-Rite takes the guesswork out of this process. While not nearly as full-functioned as a logging thermometer, it has the advantages of being cheap and easy to use. The Coolit-Rite sounds an alarm when your food has reached a safe temperature or when your time runs out. That's it. If you forget to check the Coolit-Rite for a couple of days, the thermometer still displays the temperature you reached after four hours. At first, the Coolit-Rite may seem limited, but that's the point—simple means you won't make mistakes. As a plus, the extra long probe will reach all the way to the center of a hotel pan. It's not a bad way to start verifying safe HACCP procedures in your restaurant.
DayMark
Food Safety Systems
NB: By far one of the neatest things at this year's show was the innovation in kitchen safety. DayMark has come out with various gloves designed to protect the user in a number of situations. The HexArmor gloves are designed to be worn when prepping with knives, oyster knives, and other sharp objects that could pierce, not just slice, a hand. They come both left- and right-handed and are available in two- or three-finger models (FingerArmor), four- and five-finger gloves (HiDex), and oyster specific HexArmor gloves. They can be worn over latex or vinyl gloves and are machine washable. SteamGloves are mid-arm length gloves specifically designed to be worn when working over a steam table, or similar hot/wet applications, to keep the user from getting burned by steam that escapes during pan changes. Enough said. SiliGloves look ridiculous, with a space for thumb, index finger, and a three-finger mitten, the wearer has the appearance of a mutant lobster. However, the design is very functional. Instead of being a flimsy latex glove or a rigid silicone oven mitt, they are flexible, mobility-enabling, and highly resistant to heat—perfect for working with steamers and hot oil.
DA: I had a pair of the three-fingered silicone gloves. I loved them. They were slightly cumbersome and quite long, but I was so excited to be able to pull huge items directly out of hot grease. Unfortunately, relatively soon after I purchased the gloves, I tore a huge gash in one of them on the fin of a striped bass, rendering it useless. They offered to replace the glove and said they hadn't had similar problems, but don't expect the glove to be infallibly puncture resistant.
Electrolyzer
ElectroCide System
NB: Inexpensive and innovative, the ElectroCide system passes diluted salt water through an electrical field and two separation membranes to generate two solutions: alkaline water that can be used as a cleaner and a degreaser, and electrolyzed acidic water that can be used for disinfecting and sanitizing. The solutions don't require any special storage or handling, and the sanitizing solution can be stored in an opaque container for up to two months. It works on work surfaces, floors, walls, gadgets, appliances, ready-to-eat food, and hands. Great for large operations that need large quantities of cleaning and sanitizing solutions.
DA: Electrolyzer has figured a way to turn your ordinary tap water into an endless supply of sanitizer solution. Even better, the solution is environmentally friendly and nontoxic if accidentally ingested, so you can wash all your food in it (no off tastes or odors were detectable), wash your hands, your cutting boards, etc. What does it run on? A small amount of electricity and some ordinary table salt. Cool.
Leggett & Platt
FreeStyle Shelving
NB: Geniuses when it comes to storage solutions, L&P have topped themselves with this modular shelving solution. It combines the durability and strength of traditional fabricated stainless-steel shelving with the convenient adaptability of wire shelving. Cantilevered off the wall, the shelving system has no front posts, so it can increase workspace or usable storage area immensely. It's just as strong and stable as you need it to be, but it's completely customizable, fully adjustable, and it even works in a retrofitted space.
DA: Blows others away.
Lincoln
Infrared Conveyor Toaster
NB: Aside from the color jolt this toaster adds to a kitchen, this unit is constructed to trap some of the hot air lost in the cooking process with its parabolic cooking cavity, focusing heat back into the toaster, not surrounding counter space. Yea! for trying to keep energy costs down.
Nu-Vu
Rhapsody ComboBake
NB: This oven proofs and bakes all in one. But the innovative thing about it is that it has a door on both sides, so you can get into the unit from the front and the back.
DA: The front/back feature of this oven is useful if you're a sandwich shop or a supermarket—anywhere you want a server to pull products out of a hot oven directly in front of the consumer. Other manufacturers also make ovens with this feature, but with more of a safety spin. BKI has a full-feature combi-oven with a pass-through feature so the raw side workers never handle cooked product.
Rational USA
Banqueting System
NB: With the push for faster and more efficient service, Rational's banqueting system offers a worthy hand. Assuming you have the front of house staff to support this sort of equipment (now that's a shocking thought: equipment before staff!), you can pick up a 300 top at once. It enables the operator to prep huge parties days in advance, hold the plates at HACCP approved temperatures, and then, in eight minutes, bring them all up to service temperature at once. And you're still trying to get your line to manage the eight tops?!
DA: The importance about this new system is that you can load it full of cold plates and heat them without getting condensation on your plates and without drying out your food. If that's a problem for you and you have the cash, check it out. Other manufacturers, like Electrolux, explain that they do the same thing using a different set of programs. Your results may vary.
Sani-Floor
Self Washing Floor Systems
NB: Sani-Floor is an automatic high-pressure self-cleaning recessed floor system tucked under lightweight no-skid warewashing machine–friendly fiberglass/resin grates. So instead of picking up the filthy heavy traditional no-skid mats at the end of service, dragging them outside to be hosed off, and hauling them back inside once they're dry, you just pick up the grates and run them through your dishwasher. Solid debris and liquids are swept or squeegeed through the grates into the recessed basins to be washed away by high pressure cleaning jets at the touch of a button; solid particles are trapped in filter trays that can easily be removed and emptied into any solid-waste receptacle. Neater still, the system can be programmed to wash itself down hourly.
DA: This is not a flooring system you can just drop into your current kitchen (it requires a large hole, etc.), but if you have the ability to put one in, it seems to be a very functional, if very industrial looking, solution to a persistent kitchen problem.
Winston Industries
CVap Technologies
DA: This technology was developed in response to a major restaurant chain's need to better hold hot foods for service. By controlling the difference in temperature between the water bath and the air temperature, you can precisely determine the humidity in the holding cabinet. Winston now offers a cook-and-hold; one of the most exciting benefits of this product is its ability to do slow, low temperature cooking in a 100 percent humidity environment—perfect for sous-videlike cooking—replacing a combi-oven at a much lower price. The units require no venting, consume far less power than combi-ovens, and come in a variety of sizes, including drawers, so you can work with multiple temperatures in a small footprint. This advantage is helping the equipment cross over from fast-food chain to fine dining.
