Chef designs city centre hotel kitchen

A 29 year old head chef has been handed the task of designing his own purpose-built kitchen from scratch. Rising star Alan Dickson – who is Scotland’s reigning Hotel Chef of the Year – will fit out the new premises at the expanded Ten Hill Place Hotel with around £150,000 worth of equipment to be installed. The new floorplan will be around six times larger than the current facility, where Alan and his team of 15 chefs and kitchen porters can be required to regularly cater for 400-person conferences, weddings and private parties - as well as food for the hotel’s popular restaurant. Alan, who is originally from Portobello, said: “Many chefs wait a lifetime for an opportunity of a blank canvas and a budget like this, to design their perfect kitchen. “It is not your typical kitchen either – we can go from cooking for hundreds of people during the major conferences – right down to a quiet lunch menu at the restaurant. “Because of this I felt passionately that we look to install some of the most technologically advanced equipment out there that will make it an amazing, clean environment for the team to work in.” The new facilities will be entirely electric and include induction hobs that are completely cold to touch but can boil 20 litres of water in just 90 seconds. Mindful of the environment, power for the hobs is only on when in use while it also creates a safer setting without naked flames for staff and guests. A £20,000 self-cleaning cooking “suite” by Rational will also be installed. It is due to be complete by summer 2018, as part of the multi-million pound expansion that will see the four-star hotel go from 77 rooms to 129. Scott Mitchell, commercial director with Surgeons Quarter, said: “Alan deserves all the plaudits he gets – and it is testament to how he is rated here that he’s been given free-reign to design this kitchen. “His age really is irrelevant as what he has achieved is remarkable – and at the end of the day, he knows what is required better than anyone. “I don’t doubt that when the kitchen is complete, it will provide him and his team with the perfect base to provide the best quality hotel restaurant and conference food in the country.”