Handmade kitchen island is showpiece in hotel kitchen

As a chef who prepares culinary delights on a daily basis, you only settle for the best quality cooking equipment in the hotel kitchen. A custom-made kitchen island or wall cooker is then an obvious choice. "With our customer-specific solutions, we meet the requirements of renowned hotels at home and abroad," says commercial manager Eric Harsta of Hakvoort Professional from Emmeloord, specialist in catering equipment and large-scale kitchen fittings.

For over 100 years, the originally Belgian company Rubbens has been a big name in catering and commercial kitchens. In 2013, this company was acquired by Hakvoort Professional and the production of handmade range cookers moved from Stavelot to the stainless steel factory in Emmeloord. Among other things, this is where wholesale kitchen solutions are manufactured where efficiency, hygiene and sustainability go hand in hand. The same applies to Rubbens' custom-made cooking islands and wall-mounted cookers. These are made of the best quality 304 stainless steel. The tops are finished in Scotch Brite brushed as standard. Optionally, the top can be ground directionless or provided with a polished edge. The wall-mounted cooktops have a top thickness of 2.5 mm for maximum durability, while the kitchen islands have a top thickness of 3 mm.

Eric Harsta outlines a key advantage of a customised cooking island or wall-mounted cooker over a standard kitchen design: "A standard cooking line consists of individual modules that are joined together on site. But then you always keep seams and gaps in which dirt can accumulate. A custom-made product, consisting of a single seamless top, does not have that disadvantage. It is therefore considerably more hygienic and easier to clean."

Another reason many hotel managers choose custom-made cooking equipment from Rubbens, for example, is that it looks super sleek. Harsta: "Often the cooker is the showpiece of a professional kitchen. With a handmade product like this, you have a real eye-catcher. In our experience, it strokes a chef's professional honour to work with such beautiful and high-quality equipment. A cooker that a chef really stands behind and feels good about. For some cooking professionals, this is even a decisive reason for joining a particular catering company or hotel!"

'One reason to choose bespoke cooking equipment is that it looks super sleek'

At Hakvoort, customers have the option of putting together their own Rubbens kitchen island or wall-mounted cooker. "Each cooker is assembled customer-specifically with the desired built-in modules, such as baking trays, vapogrills, fryers or pasta cookers," Harsta clarifies. "Nowadays we see that in nine out of ten times the choice is for an induction hob. Not only because less and less cooking is done on gas, but also because induction hobs are low in energy consumption, much easier to maintain and give off less heat. Since hotel kitchens usually contain a lot of equipment, the ambient temperature often runs high. Moreover, these are often not the best ventilated rooms. For that reason too, induction is a good solution."

Anno 2023, it is impossible to imagine the catering and industrial kitchen industry without Rubbens' cooking equipment. Meanwhile, Hakvoort has delivered custom-made kitchens and/or cookers to numerous renowned catering companies and hotels at home and abroad. Domestically, the company supplied customised cooking islands to, among others, Hotel de Timmerfabriek in Vlissingen and Bilderberg Château Holtmühle in Tegelen. The Emmeloord-based specialist in commercial kitchen fittings also makes its presence felt internationally, such as with a complete kitchen fitting for the famous Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai. "We have also supplied cooking equipment for the largest airports in the world, for example in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Qatar. These consist of a long battery of linked cooking islands. At Doha airport (Qatar), for example, as many as 82,000 meals a day are prepared in a Rubbens kitchen," concludes a proud Harsta.