‘Refrigeration Is Critical For F&B Industry’

PANELISTS AT the session entitled--Meat of the Matter: Managing Meats, Fish & Seafood -- Changing Commercial Refrigeration Needs of Hotels, which was preceded by a presentation given by Pankaj Jawa, Area Manager (North), Blue Star, spoke on the necessity of refrigeration and its importance for the hotel industry. All the speakers agreed that refrigeration is very critical in maintaining the exact taste of the meat, chicken and seafood. 

“The entire cold chain is very critical and important for maintaining the quality of food and their taste,” said Ajay Sumrani, Director-procurement, equipment at Yum! Restaurants India.

Nilesh Dey, executive chef at the Claridges said, “Freshness is the priority of any chef. Refrigeration plays an important as we have different climatic conditions in India like for example the Japanese cuisine needs deep freezing to maintain the homogeneous taste.”

Tanveer Kwatra, director of cuisine at W Goa said, “Refrigeration plays an important especially while preserving seafood and meat items. It is critical for hotel industry. The whole supply chain has to be on the same level to maintain the texture of the food while it’s being transported from farm to hotel kitchen.”

“Suppliers need to have refrigeration points at various levels as the hotel industry at time face space crunch to store all item at the same time. We also need deep freezer to store the perishable food items as we do not get all the items at everytime,” said Sahil Sablok, executive chef at The Claridges.

Abhishek Basu, executive chef at The Park said that sourcing is very important in hotel industry. The supply chain has to properly maintained at the critical temperature especially maintain the quality of the food, more particularly the seafood.

“Refrigeration is critical to prevent contamination. We have separate section for each food item and we also do audit at the supply end,” said Neeraj Tyagi, executive chef at Shangri-la’s Eros Hotel. Pankaj Jawa, area manager, north at Blue Star said, “We are trying to understand every bit of the cold chain supply and will soon have a product at every level to cater the hotel industry.”