Across from the cold prep is where the hot- and cold-food preparation takes place.

When longtime restauranteur Abraham Berookhim decided to move The Olive Tree restaurant to a new location with an upscale Southern Mediterranean village ambiance, he efficiently solved the dilemma of having to create two distinctly different types of cuisine, Mexican and Southern Mediterranean-each with their own special equipment needs- within the confines of the same kitchen.

"It's very difficult to be authentic when you have to mix the two [commercial kitchen] areas with one another," Berookhim explains. "Now the space is more efficient."

Berookhim moved The Olive Tree from its original downtown Los Angeles location a couple of spaces over to the other end of the same block. Now Berookhim has two restaurants dominating the block-the new Olive Tree and the former location, Chili Express, which specializes in authentic Mexican cuisine.

Renovating the new Olive Tree location-a former Bank of America branch office-required extensive planning and approximately $2 million in renovation costs. Berookhim drew on his extensive restaurant experience to create a unique dining experience: The restaurant's interior recreates an Italian village piazza with a high-profile ambiance combined with the speed and reasonable prices of fast-food restaurants.

Everything is served fresh, including kabobs, pizza, wraps, grilled selections, pastas and salads. "It doesn't look like fast food," Berookhim says, "but it's fast service." (Inside seating occupancy is under 80, with additional outdoor seating for 15 to 20.)

In addition to serving meals on the premises, The Olive Tree provides 2,000 hot lunches Monday through Friday for Los Angeles area private schools. "We don't serve breakfast here [at the restaurant]," Berookhim explains. "That's packing time for our school lunches." (Chili Express, also designed for fast service, provides the Mexican lunch selections for The Olive Tree's school lunch menu.)

Transforming a sterile bank location into a warm, sunny piazza meant extensive structural work-an extra headache in earthquake code California. For structural strength, columns were added. To create the open air atmosphere, large windows, skylights and a built-in bay window were added. The second floor of the building was renovated into sunny offices with a view of the restaurant below. To add to the Southern Mediterranean feel, Berookhim decorated with yellows, greens and warm terra cotta, and designed everything in the building down to the granite-top tables and matching chairs.

The restaurant uses natural gas for its commercial kitchen, utilizing an American Appliance 100-gallon commercial gas water heater and incorporates a Makeup air system. Berookhim employed Morteza Parvaresh, a Los Angeles-based contractor, and Roben Eisaeian, owner of Loris Plumbing, Glendale, Calif., to aid him in implementing his designs.

Designing for Flow

Leading back from the prep area, the fryer, broiler and gas range are in view. To the left of the fryer, a portion of the hot wash section is visible.

Due to The Olive Tree's unusual usage requirements, Berookhim faced a number of challenges when designing the commercial kitchen. First, in order to meet code, everything in the kitchen had to be spaced to allow for handicapped access, cutting down immensely on the amount of available space, he points out. Further, the flow of traffic in the area had to facilitate the restaurant's morning catering needs as well as its fast-food-like serving style. Consequently, considerable planning was required to prevent unnecessary kitchen movement to maximize time. Here are some of Berookhim's innovative solutions:

Overall Design: Berookhim created the kitchen with The Olive Tree's unique needs in mind. The highly visible large front section of the kitchen includes all major food prep surfaces, a pizza oven with conveyor belt, a Royal Industries gas range, hot plate sections, fryer, refrigeration, broiler, and a finishing oven. In front of this kitchen section is a cafeteria-style counter with two cashier stations. Two self-serve beverage stations are set-up at both ends of the restaurant.

Behind the kitchen wall is the second kitchen section, which includes a dishwashing area, a food-storage section, a walk-in cooler/freezer unit, two rice cookers and a tilting kettle. In addition, a U.S. Range convection oven accommodates roasting chicken and oven potatoes, and baking bread bowls for salads.

With the exception of an additional convection oven and the pizza oven, which were transferred from the previous location, all the appliances in the kitchen were purchased for the new location.

Hot/Cold Section: The front kitchen work area features one of the many unique Berookhim designs in the restaurant-a work area with a hot-plate section on the left and a cold section with ice tray on the right. This cold and hot combination area is unusual, Berookhim says, but ideal for The Olive Tree. Customers like combo plates that include both hot and cold dishes, such as a hot entree and salad, he explains. The design keeps the kitchen worker from having to move from a hot area in the kitchen to a cold food area, saving time and steps.

Food-Prep Area: Typically in commercial kitchens the food-prep sections are welded together. Not so with The Olive Tree's long-front section, which incorporates hot-plate and food-prep areas. Rather than welding the food-prep area together, the section was created to make it easy to clean. For example, the Aerohot hot plate unit can be pulled out, allowing for easier cleaning of the section. Berookhim learned from past experience that the Aerohot can get quite messy, Parvaresh explains.

Cold Prep Area: Another L-shaped section of the kitchen-designed for cold food prep-incorporates a counter with a Continental refrigerator underneath on one side. This allows for easy prep of vegetables, Berookhim says. Also included is a sink, a True Refrigerator and, above, a Holman final touch forced convection infrared finishing oven. Salads and sandwiches can be easily put together in the area with the Holman allowing for quick heating of sandwiches, Berookhim points out.

Nieco Automatic Broiler: Another kitchen area includes a Nieco automatic broiler with a Beverage Air freezer installed below. Berookhim created this section specifically for a new application. "Burger King uses the Nieco for hamburgers," he explains. "We're using it for kabobs. No one else uses it for that."

The freezer below helps keep meat for the kabobs, such as shrimp, "very cold" so no bacteria can develop, he adds. Also, a Frymaster fryer on the left provides for quick frying of items, such as french fries.

Rice Cooker: The rice-cooker section of the kitchen is another example of efficient design. Handicap access considerations cut the amount of space Berookhim has in this section, so he created a table that allows for the use of two rice cookers-one on top of each other. "By putting them there, we don't lose space," he explains.

Hot-Wash Section: Washing dishes and eating utensils requires more time and space-concepts not in keeping with The Olive Tree's fast-food philosophy. Consequently, all the eating dishes and utensils, including the disposable containers for the catering business, are made of all-recyclable plastic materials. "It's more hygienic," Berookhim adds.

As a result, the kitchen has no dishwasher, but, instead, an industrial wash basin with a large flexible long-reach water hose, allowing for hand washing of cooking equipment, such as large pots.

Refrigeration Concerns: Even The Olive Tree's Duracold walk-in cooler features a special design. The walk-in freezer unit is built inside the cooler. This makes the unit more energy efficient by allowing less cold air to escape, Parvaresh points out.

Tilting Kettle: Berookhim paid special attention not just to the placement of equipment, but in the selection of equipment that was efficient to use. For example, the high-volume Market Forge tilting kettle for soups and other large cooking needs tilts to an almost 90-degree angle, making cleaning easier. Berookhim also placed the kettle near the hot-washer area to more easily facilitate cleaning, he points out.

Pizza, Pizza, Pizza: The Olive Tree sells a lot of pizzas-especially via its school lunchroom catering business. One of the only pieces of equipment Berookhim transferred from the former Olive Tree location was the restaurant's pizza oven, which was conveniently placed near the front counter/prep area, allowing for quick, efficient production.

One installation consideration Berookhim had to accommodate at the new location was the installation of a new fire extinguisher for the pizza oven. This was a code consideration, points out Eisaeian. Every conveyor belt has to have in and out valves for the fire extinguisher, he explains.

By working with his contractors and selecting the right equipment, Berookhim has been able to design an energy-efficient kitchen without sacrificing production and quality in a smaller footprint.