The new Brussels headquarters of insurance giant AXA is not a classic head office. Set in a light-filled building surrounded by greenery, it’s more reminiscent of a 5-star hotel than a multinational.

The extensive spaces on the ground floor, for shared offices and meeting rooms, make way for a large area with catering services intended not only for employees but also outside guests. They include a cafeteria, delicatessen, pizzeria corner and a grill and boulangerie. For corporate events there’s also a high-end brasserie offering a wonderful view over the gardens of the nearby Royal Palace.

The foodservice is provided thanks to the use of three different kitchens, one for large-scale production, a finishing kitchen and an open kitchen designed ad hoc for the à la carte brasserie menu.

The brief

• AXA needed state-of-the-art kitchens. “Ambach is one of the very few companies in the world able to make them with the 3 mm tops further reinforced with 3 mm of steel. In order to best meet the client’s needs we had no doubts about the choice”, explained Jan Vyverman, general manager of Metos, the Ali Group company chosen by AXA for the impressive project.
• “Secondly, it was important to work with a supplier on the same wavelength as the company and its values. Once again Ambach was found to be the most appropriate choice thanks to the vast focus on the client and the ability to create completely custom-made, ad hoc solutions”, added Vyverman.
• The most complex challenge of this project was the open kitchen. “AXA wanted something radically different from the classic staff canteen”, explained Vyverman.

The solution

• Ambach’s extreme flexibility enabled three custom-made solutions to be created for three completely different kitchens. “The special feature of a company like Ambach is the great ability to supply everything, from the central kitchen islands designed and made to measure for the most demanding of chefs to equipment intended for production on a vast scale such as that of hospitals and canteens”, underlined Vyverman.
• For the kitchen situated in the basement and used for canteen service Metos chose the robust and high-performance Ambach System 900 line. The kitchen is made up of separate areas for preparing hot and cold dishes and is equipped with cold rooms, bratt pans and pressure and induction cookers.
• On the upper level the open kitchen represented a more complex solution. A custom-built block from the Ambach System 700 was designed, with its considerable length of 4.4 metres which perfectly fits the size of the room. “We couldn’t use the standard System 700 block as it had to be 1300 mm deep instead of the standard 1400 mm”, explained the Ambach area manager, Georg Dissertori. For this reason we had to create an extension on the back and a custom-made base unit”.
• Despite the fact the benchmark line was the System 700, the open architecture of Ambach and its great flexibility enabled a plancher from the System 850 line to be installed with larger cooking surfaces, perfect for meeting the high productivity needs of the chefs. The team also wired all the electrical connections for the whole block into a single connection point.
• The smaller finishing kitchen on the first level is from the System 850 Ambach modular line, complete with hygiene joint.
• Given the complexity of the project, the excellent team work by the architects, engineers, design office, general contractor and the subcontractors was crucial for the success of the project. “It was interesting to see that we were all well trained”, recalls Vyverman. “We worked together to achieve a truly excellent result. Everything went very well and, when work had finished, we were all surprised at the result. Often projects look great on paper, but then in fact turn out very different. In this case the exact opposite happened”.

A famous events location in Neu-Isenburg, Hugenottenhalle is also a restaurant very well known throughout Germany and seating up to 1,000 people. Alongside events, festivals, plays, cabarets and fairs, its main room is used also by the Neu-Isenburg town council for meetings and political debates, school and Christmas celebrations.
The Tonino restaurant, located inside the Hugenottenhalle space, has for over 15 years been well known and well-loved for its renowned Italian served up by Antonio Avato, better known as Toni.
Every day, with his team, he prepares dishes for the restaurant’s 200 covers and the catering service for events hosted by Hugenhottenhalle. Whether buffets or gala dinners, the dishes are always fresh and high quality and accompanied by an excellent selection of wines.

The requirement

• The kitchen of the Tonino restaurant had to be remodelled, choosing a new, more efficient and higher-performance cooking technology to meet the chef’s demands.
• The new kitchen had also to be easy to clean and ensure maximum hygiene. For this reason it was necessary for all the equipment to be integrated in a hygienic top and fitted on both sides with H3 hygienic open undercounter units.
• There were several critical factors in this respect as the island had to be positioned on the same base in concrete on which the previous one had been fitted and the height had to be 950 mm. An entirely made-to-measure design was therefore needed.
• Installation too was not the easiest: before reaching the kitchen the island had to be brought through the restaurant and then the door of the kitchen itself.

The solution

• In order to make their decision the management of Hugenhottenhalle and Avato relied on advice from the longstanding partner Brauneis Großküchentechnik and precious support from its designer Benjamin Fischer.
• Without any hesitation a solution with the Ambach name was chosen, a guarantee of high quality and great flexibility in the creation of totally unique made-to-measure solutions.
• A double cooking island was therefore devised: on the one side System 700 and on the other System 850. The combination of the two lines enabled the client’s needs to be met in full, overcoming all the technical limits imposed by the structure.
• In particular, in order to reach the height of 950 mm required for the worktop, Ambach shortened all the understructures and added a frame in stainless steel to the existing base.
• There were only three weeks available for dismantling the old island and installing the new one. The Ambach island was delivered in one piece and rotated in order to be transported into the entrance hall and finally through the door of the kitchen. “Moving was very complex, a really painstaking job with millimetric precision”, explained Benjamin Fischer, project manager with the company Brauneis. “Thanks to the great cooperation between all those involved we succeeded in managing everything without problems”.
• Each side of the island was equipped with a bain-marie, two electric induction hobs and a grill. In one of the two sides a grill was also added.
• The chef also requested a bratt pan from the System 900 line, particularly suitable for productions in the area of catering.
• Everyone was very satisfied. The management of Hugenhottenhalle and the restauranteur Antonio Toni were enthusiastic about the two partners, Ambach and Brauneis: “great technology, great design, maximum support!”

Patrick Guilbaud is the only restaurant in Ireland to have two Michelin stars. Located in the heart of Dublin, it bears the name of the Paris restaurateur who founded it in 1981 and has in time become one of the best known restaurants in the country.

In 1997 the restaurant relocated to the Merrion, a luxury 5-star hotel and an enduring byword for elegance and exclusiveness.

Cooking in the restaurant is in the expert hands of the French executive chef Guillaume Lebrun, who has used Ambach for years.

The brief

• An integral part of the extensive plan for renovation of the hotel was the creation of a new restaurant and a new building. The Patrick Guilbaud restaurant was located in the old building which had to be demolished to make room for the construction of three basement floors.
• A complex situation to handle for the restaurant team but one to which a solution was found immediately.
• Throughout the works, lasting 18 months, Lebrun and his team moved into the garden where a temporary kitchen, identical to the original one, was set up. “In this way all the equipment in the old kitchen could be disconnected and moved to the temporary one”, explained Gerry Kane, joint owner of Kaneco, a company specialising in food service equipment and a partner of the restaurant for almost 20 years.
• “Although he realised he would not have worked for much longer, the chef wanted to leave the best kitchen possible for his team”, added Kane. No doubts about the choice: like the old kitchen, heavily used for as many as 14 years, the new one also had to have the Ambach name.

The solution

• In order to best meet the needs of the Guilbaud, the choice went to the Ambach System 900 Exclusive Range, with polished black steel finish for the utmost in elegance and exclusivity.
• Together with Kaneco, who had also dealt with the old restaurant kitchen, Ambach therefore redesigned the kitchen in a more modern style, aiming at the number one priority: temperature.
• “One of the most important features of a kitchen is the quality of the air. In order to provide a healthier working environment we tackled and solved the problems that have always been linked to ventilation, cooling and the flow of air, advising the chef to change from gas to induction”, said Kane.
• The chef and kitchen team are enthusiastic. “I should have changed to induction a long time ago!”, said Lebrun. “The air quality in the kitchen has definitely improved. There’s no heat, we can control the cooking better and cleaning is much simpler and faster. It’s fantastic”.

The recently opened “Henninger am Turm – brewery in Frankfurt” is already a city landmark, thanks to its strategic location close to Henninger Turm, once a factory producing the beer of the same name and today one of the more iconic buildings in Frankfurt.
Managed by the MoschMosch group, the brewery offers some of the city’s most famous and historic beers, such as Henninger and Binding, served as an accompaniment to a wide choice of typical regional and national dishes.
The brewery has a seating capacity for up to 280 people in its inside and outside areas.

The requirement

• The old kitchen in the brewery was very long and narrow, running along the two sides of the pass-through area to allow dishes to be passed from the kitchen to the restaurant.
• For chef Thomas Hirschfeld, and for Tobias Jäkel and Matthias Schönberger, the two managing directors of MoschMosch, it was essential that the new equipment be of very high quality: rugged, resistant, reliable, easy to clean and extremely high in performance for problem-free management of the constant workflow in the kitchen, from midday until late at night.
• The equipment also had to allow simultaneous work on both sides for fast preparation and equally fast service at the tables.

The solution

• The chef opted to continue the longstanding collaboration with the company Zilg-Brauneis Großküchentechnik, with which MoschMosch had already worked in the past on Frankfurt airport.
• Zilg-Brauneis, managing the project, recommended the System 700 Ambach line. “We had no doubts about the choice of this line, thanks to its linear and minimalist profiles, it allows kitchen space to be used in the best possible way. All the team members can now finally work together well without cross-over but instead ensuring a regular and unhindered workflow”, said the chef.
• The equipment supplied includes induction hobs with 4 cooking areas, griddles, fryers, bain-maries and a large worktable in the centre of the kitchen. The H3 bases are open and hygienic allowing great storage flexibility.
• Thanks to the Ambach Seamless Joining System the modules can be joined together perfectly and allow maximum freedom of configuration and easy cleaning. The equipment allows for individual components to be replaced in time according to future menu requirements.
• Opening the wall for the pass-through area connected to the cooking island was a real challenge when building the kitchen and meant structural changes had to be made at the design and construction stages.
• Along with Zilg-Brauneis and the various partners involved in the project, Ambach was able to build a link between the two cooking islands perfectly, creating a worktop designed specifically to meet the structural features.
• The work crew showed great skill and team spirit, bringing huge satisfaction for everyone involved in completing the project.