Moffat’s versatile counters at UK’s biggest buffet restaurant
With up to 1,000 diners at a time, Za Za Bazaar in Bristol is the largest buffet restaurant in the UK. It also offers the widest variety of cuisine, with menus that encompass all five continents. This is a bold and innovative brand, with an Asian street market look and feel – a key characteristic of the restaurant being its theatre cooking, which takes place on a range of bespoke counters designed and manufactured by Scotland-based E& R Moffat.
The project manager was Bal Badesha of Oasis Group, Coventry. “The counters are integral to the whole look and feel of Za Za Bazaar,” he says. “The demands of all the different cuisines meant we needed a company that could offer a highly flexible approach. We went to Moffat because of their expertise, experience and service back-up.”
The counters were designed to house an array of theatre cooking that mimics styles found around the world. So the Indian counter has a tandoori oven, the Chinese one a wok station, the European counter includes a chargrill and a carvery, while the Tex Mex counter features live cooking of fajitas and Mexican chicken wings.
“Za Za Bazaar had very specific requirements. Not only are the counter bodies bespoke: we worked with Moffat to create one-off drop-in units for some of the cooking stations,” says Bal Badesha. “All the counters had their own requirements – for example on the Indian one we have a ceran hotplate for holding the starters.”
Alongside the counters where starters and main courses are cooked and served, there is a salad bar, where both salads and sushi are prepared ‘live’, and a dessert counter, which has a chocolate fountain and ice cream maker as well as displaying traditional puds.
“The counters look fabulous but they are also easy to work with – which is vital in a site as busy as this,” says Bal Badesha. “Moffat’s advice was invaluable – for example, they helped us fit all the different cooking equipment into the counter space available.”
E & R Moffat is one of the UK’s leading manufacturers of quality foodservice equipment, designing and manufacturing in-house. Based in Bonnybridge, Scotland, the company manufactures standard and bespoke servery, regeneration and storage equipment and runs a full nationwide after-sales engineering team. E & R Moffat is accredited to ISO 9001:2008 and many of the products have gas approvals and are EMC tested. For more information on E & R Moffat visit the website on www.ermoffat.co.uk