Cool customers
Cool customers
With two main restaurants – including one featuring an open sushi kitchen – plus bars and room service, the Mandarin Oriental Mayfair, London, had complex refrigeration needs. Executive head chef Jihun Maxime Kim, Gary McMullan of Galgorm Group, and Andrew Charles of Humble Arnold Associates explain to Sam Noble how Williams Refrigeration provided the five-star solution.
Without reliable refrigeration, foodservice operations simply can’t function. At the Mandarin Oriental Mayfair, London, a fivestar hotel with multiple world-class restaurants and bars, the refrigeration requirements are extensive, requiring a diverse range of high-performance equipment.
The hotel’s culinary offerings include its main restaurant, Akira Back, which blends Japanese and Korean cuisine into innovative, mouth-watering creative dishes, and the Michelin-starred Dosa, an intimate 14-seat fine-dining Korean restaurant with an open kitchen. Add to that a lounge bar, a rooftop bar, and in-room dining, and the total covers reach around 800 daily, spanning breakfast through dinner.
Starting pre-pandemic and completed in spring 2024, the hotel’s ambitious kitchen project required multiple coldrooms, refrigeration drawers, blast chillers, a dry meat ager, freezers, counters and cabinets. It needed a trusted brand with a proven track record. That brand was Williams Refrigeration. “Refrigeration in a commercial kitchen is the most important factor in running a safe and successful restaurant operation,” says Jihun Maxime Kim, executive head chef of Dosa. “As well as being reliable, refrigeration has to be easy to clean, to make sure food safety is controlled.
Also, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group globally is very focused on sustainability, so energy efficiency is important.” At Akira Back, the award-winning chef ’s namesake restaurant, the sushi kitchen is on full display to diners. “Having a separate kitchen clearly gives us complete control and ensures there’s no crossover between the Akira Back kitchen and the Sushi kitchen, where the products are raw,” says Jihun. But beyond food safety, the sushi kitchen’s refrigeration is part of the guest experience.
Custom-designed Williams chef ’s drawers, finished in sleek black using the brand’s bespoke Chameleon vinyl wrapping service, ensure ingredients remain separate and precisely temperature-controlled, since very little cold is lost when the drawers are opened. The individually refrigerated, stackable drawers, are front-vented, making them ideal for the sushi kitchen’s tight footprint.
The hotel’s culinary offerings include its main restaurant Akira Back and the Michelin-starred Dosa
The total covers reach around 800 daily, spanning breakfast through dinner
Williams Refrigeration was a great fit for the project, from a design and operational perspective.
Improving the flavor
Dosa’s open kitchen also features bespoke black Chameleon-wrapped refrigeration and a meatageing refrigerator (MAR). “We hang and dry the ducks for 21 days. It gives you really crispy skin when you cook it, and the meat is very tender.”
The MAR operates at the ideal temperature range of +1 to +6°C and provides humidity between 60-90%, ensuring that meat ages perfectly. Himalayan salt blocks assist with moisture management and improve the flavor of the meat. The main kitchen features a variety of Williams Jade counters and cabinets, including glass door and drawer models. These options were chosen to enhance productivity and make the chefs’ lives easier.
Jihun is particularly pleased with the Williams WBCF50, the company’s largest reach-in blast chiller freezer: “We cook big volumes of food here and anything cooked in advance, such as eggplant, requires a reliable blast chiller to cool it down safely.”Throughout the hotel, water-cooled coldrooms enable safe food and beverage storage and separation.
Williams coldrooms have multiple options, including bumper rails, internal release and foot-operated doors, and ramps, to help streamline a kitchen’s operations. A separate coldroom for refuse bins “protects from biological hazard and contains smells,” says Jihun.
The project was executed by the Galgorm Group, with Humble Arnold Design serving as consultant. “Covid restrictions caused delays on the project, but Williams and other suppliers stuck with us all the way, working through all the different stages,” says Gary McMullan, contract manager at Galgorm Group. “We have a great relationship with the team at Williams. They are very professional, and we trust them absolutely,” he adds.
Andrew Charles (above, right), project consultant for Humble Arnold Associates, says, “Williams Refrigeration was a great fit for the project, from a design and operational perspective.” “I’ve worked in many places around the world, and I’ve never had any issues with Williams,” says Jihun. For him, refrigeration is about reliability: “I want to sleep at night and come back to work without any surprises.”
At Dosa, refrigeration is the most important factor in running a safe and successful restaurant operation
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For 45 years, Williams has been renowned for quality, performance, innovation and reliability
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Since 1980 Williams has built a global reputation for excellence
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Williams is part of the AFE Group, a portfolio of five companies owned by Ali Group
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