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”.