When Robert Lomeli, the executive chef at Atomic Golf on the Las Vegas Strip, saw the plans for his new kitchen for the first time, he was skeptical. For one thing, all the appliances were electric, which, he thought, had less firepower than gas. Worse, there was no flat top.
“I was like, ‘Wait a minute,’” Lomeli remembers now. “‘How are we going to grill?’”
He begged for a flat top. He was told he was getting 13 RATIONAL iCombi Pro ovens and six iVario Pro tilt skillets instead. Lomeli had used an earlier generation of the iCombi as a young sous chef. The oven consistently turned out perfectly cooked roast chickens. But he didn’t realize it was capable of more.
Then Lomeli traveled to Atomic Golf’s headquarters in Dallas to do a test run with the RATIONAL equipment. After one day of cooking, he was converted. He hasn’t demanded a flat top since.
“I was blown away by the iCombi because of the way that the heat would actually replicate the heat of a grill,” he says. Even better for a chef who was expected to feed 3000 people a night at a full-service restaurant and multiple bars, it was fast. “I come from steakhouses. Cooking a medium steak perfectly, perfectly cooked in seven minutes? I've never heard of it before.”
The iCombi Pro didn’t just turn out perfect steaks. It turned out perfect burgers, too, in two-and-a-half minutes. Pizzas and flatbreads tasted like they had come out of a wood-fired oven. The best part was, he could program the different shelves of the oven to cook different foods on various timers, all automatically coordinated by the iCombi Pro. No matter how many times he opened and closed the oven doors, the temperatures stayed consistent.
Lomeli was equally impressed with the iVario. He’s used it to prepare everything from stocks and sauces to pasta and carnitas.
“Here’s a funny fact that a lot of people may not believe,” he says. “We don’t have stockpots. We don’t have saute pans. We don’t have sauce pans. Everything we do, we use the iVario. It still blows me away.”
As a matter of fact, the iVario Pro and the iCombi Pro together do roughly 90% of the cooking in Lomeli’s kitchen. The only other appliance his cooks use is a deep fryer.
The iVario and iCombi have not only made Lomeli’s job of cooking easier, they’ve also helped him better manage his kitchen. Both systems are programmable so they can automatically cook specific dishes at the touch of a button. The iVario has an automatic water fill system so cooks don’t have to waste time hauling around buckets and stockpots. Both the iVario and iCombi have hidden drains in the back to remove water and grease, which means no more potentially hazardous spills or drain holes in the middle of the floor.
But Lomeli’s favorite feature is the self-clean function. His cooks run the 15-minute cycle during service and then set the machines to do a deep clean overnight. This ensures that they’re always working with clean equipment and saves everyone the pain of staying late to scrub.
Lomeli’s staff had no difficulty mastering the kitchen setup, even those who had never used an iCombi or iVario before. “If you know how to grill, you can grill in an iCombi Pro, easy,” he says. “If you know how to saute, you can saute in the iVario.”
After six months, Lomeli is still astounded by everything the iVario and iCombi Pro can do.
“I’m a born-again believer,” he says. “The equipment is great. It’s made me realize that this is exactly where I need to be.”
For more information about iVario and iCombi solutions and to schedule a demonstration, visit the RATIONAL website.
This post is sponsored by RATIONAL