Opened just under a year ago in March 2017, the Five Palm Jumeirah hotel in Dubai soon became an iconic location in the city thanks to a combination of its unique design inspired by ancient Roman amphitheatres, its vast and luxurious wellness centre covering 1,675 square metres and its wide range of exclusive restaurants serving international cuisine. The hotel’s diverse culinary offer includes authentic Italian dishes at Quattro Passi, founded and led by chef Antonio Mellino, contemporary Chinese dishes at Maiden Shanghai and the lively BLVD On One brasserie.

The requirement

• Five needed a horizontal cooking specialist able to meet the needs of all the hotel’s restaurants and their different menus.
• When it came to front of house, the islands had to combine design and technology, as well as being able to serve a high number of covers every day.
• The islands had to be made to measure with parts developed around the architectural restrictions of the spaces available, including a load-bearing column.
• Because of the wide variety of menus available in the various restaurants, it also needed to be possible for special pieces of cooking equipment to be inserted into the islands.

The solution

• When the time came to choose the equipment, Commercial Catering Equipment LLC and consultant Michael Chabowski of MCTS Dubai had no doubts about proposing Ambach solutions.
• A combination of three cooking lines was chosen: the System 900 series for the preparation, storage and single cooking operations area), the System 700 line for preparation in the poolside bar and System 850 for all other areas.
• Ambach supplied practically its entire product range for the Five project, from pasta cookers to induction hobs, multifunctional bratt pans to charcoal grills, griddles to fryers, salamanders and boiling kettles, just to mention a few.
• As requested, in order to meet the needs of widely differing kitchens Ambach integrated some special pieces of equipment into the islands, including high-powered gas woks, a Tandoori oven and a Robata grill. “Ambach is definitely a step ahead of the competition. Our capacity for perfectly integrating any special equipment into our kitchens is a huge advantage for the client. It means they have maximum flexibility and can observe local culinary traditions and include them in the best possible way in the menu”, said Ghassan Chbeir, Ambach sales director for the Middle East.
• “The way in which our equipment is made can be compared, in some respects, to Lego blocks. With us, clients can give free rein to their creativity and build their kitchens according to their specific needs. For Five we covered both the back and front of house kitchens. This is a great advantage for the end user in that, by using a single brand for all horizontal cooking equipment, it can reduce the number of spare parts in stock and greatly lower service costs”, Chbeir went on to say.
• Hassan Bou Hamzy, GM of CCE Dubai, credited the success of the project, which received excellent feedback from the hotel, to the teamwork of all involved.
• FIVE is not the first project that has seen joint work by Ambach and CCE, now longstanding partners. “As well as offering a high-quality product we always had excellent after-sales support from Ambach and this was also one of the reasons why the company is still my first choice for kitchens”, Hamzy concluded.