Chef given six figures to cook up new hi-tech hotel kitchen
A head chef has been given free rein to design his own kitchen in an Edinburgh hotel with £150,000 for equipment.
Alan Dickson, 29, who is Scotland’s reigning Hotel Chef of the Year, will fit out the new premises at the expanded Ten Hill Place Hotel. The latter is operated by Surgeons Quar- ter, the recently rebranded commercial arm of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, with profits going back into the institution.
The floorplan will be about six times larger than the current facility, where Dickson and his team regularly cater for 400-person conferences, weddings and private parties, in addition to the restaurant.
The new facilities will be entirely electric, and the revamp is due to complete by this summer, as part of the multimillion-pound expansion that will see the four-star hotel go from 77 rooms to 129.
Dickson said: “Many chefs wait a lifetime for an opportunity of a blank canvas and a budget like this, to design their perfect kitchen… I felt passionately that we look to install some of the most tech- nologically advanced equipment out there that will make it an amazing, clean environment for the team to work in.”
Scott Mitchell, commercial director with Surgeons Quarter, said: “I don’t doubt that when the kitchen is complete, it will provide [Dickson] and his team with the perfect base to provide the best quality hotel restaurant and conference food in the country.”