Nouvelle cuisine
Diners at CERN's Restaurant No. 1 have been adjusting to some temporary arrangements while building work takes place in the main service area. The essential renovation will bring many improvements in the near future.
A huge white marquee erected on a green lawn greets the eye. The sight is familiar in the summer months, but the sharp chill in the air disrupts the scene. Instead of a mid-summer's day, it's actually the middle of January. This apparently strange reversal of seasons is a way of providing an additional dining and service area outside Restaurant No. 1. As renovations get underway inside, the mysterious hum of drills and the hollow echo of hammering behind scaffold boards raise our curiosity about what is in-store.
'Everything will be better,' says Mario Zanolini, head waiter of Restaurant No. 1. 'It will be more comfortable for the customers. The free-flow area will be bigger and there will be 7 tills instead of the previous 5.' These are just for starters. Not only will the free-flow area (diagram, A-D1) be more spacious, but the long queues that usually build up at the tills for a cup of coffee after lunch will be reduced with the provision of 2 self-service coffee machines on the outside (D2). There will be a greater choice of food; new features include wok-cooked dishes, a pizza oven and grill. Soon customers will also see the chefs at work, as the kitchen area (F) will be behind a glass façade. At a new pastry counter (C), the pastry will be made in front of customers.
Many improvements will also be made behind the scenes. These are essential to keep the restaurant in good working order. 'The kitchen was built in the 1960s and is getting too old now. We need to modernise it to meet new hygiene regulations,' explains Joël Nallet, manager of Restaurant No. 1. 'It can be dangerous to cook in if we don't carry out the renovations.' As well as updating the main kitchen, a new kitchen (H) reserved for banquets and VIP visits will be positioned right next to the 'glass box' where important functions are held. The proximity will allow staff to provide an immediate service, so that warm plates and hot dishes will no longer have to be transported down corridors.
The basement underneath the restaurant will house about 5 walk-in fridges of 15 m2, each with an independent regulation system. Every type of food will be stored in individual compartments. Mario emphasises the importance of choreographing the routes that food is taken along through the kitchen. To reduce the risk of bacterial contamination, food in different stages of preparation should not cross paths. Large temperature fluctuations in meats should also be avoided. In the new arrangement, a cold room of no more than 12oC will be used to prepare cold dishes. To further avoid bacterial infection, all food waste will be stored in a separate cold room (J) before it is taken away for disposal.
To make way for a larger free-flow area - the key congestion point during lunch hours - there will no longer be a bar. The kitchen area will also be slightly reduced, but the facilities will be better organised. The customer seating areas will remain unchanged.
CERN's restaurants are undoubtedly one of the essential fuels of physics, the place where ideas take flight. The renovations, to be completed in early June 2007, will allow Restaurant No. 1 to remain in operation, so that scientists may continue to debate on a full stomach, not to mention the compulsory cup of coffee. No doubt they will be doing plenty of debating when the new accelerator gets going!
During the renovations, the weekday lunch menu at Restaurant No. 1 is being served from 11am to 2pm. This is half an hour earlier than usual to ease demands for services and reduce congestions. You can help by avoiding the peak time from 12:30pm to 1:30pm, when the restaurant has to serve 800 diners in just 1 hour!
