Mexican inspiration with British ingredients at KOL.

Based in London, KOL is the UK’s first Michelin star Mexican restaurant, championing British ingredients, nothing is imported that means no avocados or limes. With a string of accolades including being named Best New Restaurant in Europe by La Liste, hitting No. 20 in the UK’s National Restaurant Awards. Santiago was also named Best Chef at the GQ Food & Drink Awards.

“KOL means cabbage, we want to show that things that are undervalued can be special if you put them in the right context. Running a Michelin star restaurant is directly related to quality, and quality means consistency,” says Santiago Lastra, Chef Patron at KOL. “We opted for an iCombi Pro combi steamer 6 1/1 and the iVario Pro L with pressure. The Rational cooking systems help us to get that consistency by using their pre-set programs so that our staff have actual recipes and processes all the time.”

“Saving energy is a big topic, one way we do this is to streamline processes and use multifunctional equipment instead of 5 or 6 different appliances. That is why we wanted to find pieces of equipment that can do everything in one, like the iCombi Pro and iVario Pro, I have always been a big fan of using the Rational brand.”

The Rational iCombi Pro offers up to 50% higher productivity, 10% shorter cooking time and 10% lower energy consumption compared to its predecessor. Santiago says “The key features of the iCombi Pro are that you know it is clean, the results are consistent, that it doesn’t break down, that it is heavy duty for the kitchen and it is super precise.”

“In terms of the iVario the moment that I saw the kit I was so blown away, you can not only use it as a conventional bratt pan, also use it for deep frying and you also have the ability to pressure cook. The main dishes that we use it for is to pressure cook our stocks, chicken, veal and bone marrow. We also use it to make all sorts of salsas in bulk. The iVario Pro’s advanced heating system delivers outstanding results and low energy usage, compared to conventional cooking methods:

“One of the things that we do in the iVario are tortillas, by separating the two zones and making one that is slightly higher in temperature, we put them first in the lower temperature zone then flip them so they puff, and that’s a pretty cool feature.” iZoneControl provides more flexibility, as the iVario Pro pan base can be divided up into four zones, which can be of any shape or size. Each of the zones can be used with different cooking paths and temperatures. It is possible to cook foods with very different requirements at the same time.

“The training and support from Rational have been great, there is much more to learn which is really exciting.” says Santiago. “The advice I would give to people considering buying Rational equipment would be don’t be afraid of technology, because the more that you spend the time understanding the features that this incredible equipment has, the better your life in the long run is going to be.”

Santiago has teamed up with Rational to showcase how their cooking systems can support with Mexican cooking. Operators can view our Mexican expert chef webinar by registering here https://www.rational-online.com/en_gb/lp/gb-awareness-4/

RATIONAL is the leading provider of hot food preparation cooking systems and, with the iCombi Pro and the iVario Pro multifunctional cooking system, the company delivers 95% of all conventional cooking applications.  Rational’s ConnectedCooking allows operators to monitor, manage and update their Rational appliances remotely, from a PC, tablet or smartphone.