If you're looking for inspiration Restaurant and Café Middle East is the place to be. Running alongside Gulfood, it brings restaurant and café culture to life, with all the products and services you need in one place. From new buffet units to tableware, professional clothing to table art, you'll find everything dedicated to the business of restaurants and cafés. The event is described as, ‘a comprehensive showcase of interior designers, tableware developers, contract furnishers and kitchen equipment suppliers through to the latest business and point of sale technology'. In short, your one-shop-stop to success.
One of the things the most successful restaurants and cafés have in common is great staff. Even if you have the best equipment money can buy, if you don't have the right team of people in place your business will not be performing to its full potential. We go behind the scenes to find how one restaurant manager makes sure everything comes together.
At 6.30pm, the calm of the restaurant as the staff put the finishing touches to tables, polish up the bar and take last-minute bookings for tables, belies the detailed organisation that goes into running BiCe, one of Dubai's most popular restaurants. Roberto Rella, restaurant manager of BiCe, an Italian restaurant in Hilton Dubai Jumeirah, is proud to have that responsibility. His eye for detail and personable manner make him the ideal candidate for the position, which has seen him launch BiCe restaurants all over the world.
Detail is all
It's the small touches that make the difference, Rella says, which is why he will be sitting up and taking notice of the developments and new products highlighted during Gulfood. "We've been around in Dubai for almost ten years, and have been the first to introduce a host of new concepts," Rella says.
"For example, BiCe is famous for its trolley showcase of our selection of some of the finest olive oil and traditional balsamic vinegar, some from Movena, aged 15 to 25 years, to our selection of a dozen natural mineral salts from across the globe. These are all great examples of how we distinguish ourselves in the market. Our cheese trolley is replete with some of the finest Italian cheeses in Dubai."
Purchase planning
Sourcing top-quality ingredients is integral to the brand, says Rella. He says the better the restaurant performs the more justification he has to request a bigger budget for the very best ingredients. It's for this reason sourcing is a huge part of Rella's job.
"The head chef, Andrea and I, together with the hotel's purchasing teams brief the suppliers, who then deliver on our requirements. It requires planning ahead and keeping up to speed with new items available.
"It's also very useful to regularly visit trade shows and visit international markets in order to source the best," he says.
The cycle of sourcing is never-ending. Ingredients are sourced seasonally and ordered in as required, but there are a whole host of other products that need to be kept tabs on too. On a busy day, BiCe serves around 250 to 300 covers, which equates to around 1,000 dishes and around 650 glasses that need to be washed after a busy service. Inevitably, there are some breakages.
"Given the quality and experience of our service staff we have a very low breakage rate, but on busy nights, causalities amount to around six to eight pieces in total," says Rella.
So, aside from the ongoing sourcing of food, the same can be said for crockery. "As we have been operating in this market for almost a decade, we have developed a great bevy of preferred suppliers," he says. "Most of our produce is imported from Europe, and the same goes for most of our crockery and glasses, many of our suppliers have a base in the UAE, but work with their partners in countries such as France, Germany, Austria and Italy. Our fresh truffle and mushroom trolley is a great example of our sourcing prowess," he says.
But sourcing the right foods, beverages and supplies is a result of years of trial and error, says Rella. "It has taken a great many trials to get where we are, but we are now at the stage where nothing is beyond reach.
"Given the explosion on the F&B scene over the past five years, Dubai's purchasing cycle has developed exponentially and become more expedient and diverse. Every year the number of new suppliers who approach us keeps expanding and suppliers are developing their niche."
Rella says that entertainment is another form of sourcing for the restaurant, "Our piano has always been pivotal to our concept. We have one of the best pianists in town. For us, searching for the best entertainment is another form of sourcing."
The menu, revisited
With the attention to detail that goes into product sourcing in high-profile restaurants such as BiCe, the menu is the platform on which these star ingredients must perform.
"On a monthly basis our head chef, restaurant managers and I look at all the fresh seasonal produce available in the market," says Rella.
"We look at how best we can incorporate these new ingredients in our menu but do not focus on drastically changing the menu every season. We include novelties in our prestige menu and revise some ingredients of our main dishes. Ultimately, customer preferences lie at the heart of our menu and consistency in our best-selling dishes is key to our success.
"We have an overall retouch of our menu twice a year where we revisit our main dishes and see how we can best adapt to changing client demands and trends."
A team effort
To best complement a well-planned menu, Rella advises involving the whole team in tastings. "Everyone from managers to busboys attends the tastings. After all, it's the service staff who really impact on what a guest chooses, so it's imperative they understand the inspiration of the dish, the ingredients, its seasonality and source to best present these dishes that the kitchen toil over to produce.
"This education is what helps create a great restaurant and a motivated staff, where service is informed and detailed. For example, to help guests with food allergies, waiters must be well aware of all the ingredients that make up a dish."
As the restaurant picks up pace, and is packed by 9pm, it's clear to see that Rella's devotion to detail is a formula that's working.
For those sparkling glasses
Ever wondered how restaurants get their glasses so sparkling? "At BiCe, we combine the modern with the traditional for achieving the best in hygiene," says Roberto Rella, Restaurant Manager of BiCe, Hilton Dubai Jumeirah.
"Thus not only do our glasses, cutlery and plates go through separate dish washers, changing the water at least three times during a service, we then top this off with a traditional technique, which is our little secret, of rinsing these washed dishes in warm water, white vinegar or lemon to create that shiny, clean look and feel," says Rella.