For the Pros, a Lean, Mean Cooking Machine

D.C. Test Kitchen Shows Off Its Athanor Suite, With 3 Ovens, 3 Sets of Burners and More

At first glance, it looks more or less like a typical professional-grade kitchen island: an expanse of stainless steel with a griddle, three sets of burners placed here and there, and an upper shelf for holding pots, pans and plates.

But to Bryan Moscatello, the Athanor Bespoke Cooking Suite is no glorified steam table. The executive chef of Star Restaurant Group, whose ventures include Zola, the recently opened Zola Wine & Kitchen and Spy City Cafe in Penn Quarter, says the custom-made French range is a perfect blend of tradition and high-tech innovation, of sleek appeal and functionality. It is, he says, a restaurant chef's dream.

"The beauty of this range is its versatility," says Moscatello, who has the distinction of being the only D.C. chef to be cooking on an Athanor. Among the features he prizes most are the plancha, a thick, flat black steel surface for searing; burners with flames that spiral upward for even heating; the multi-cooker, for "wet" cooking such as braising, boiling and sous vide (a trendy method of low-temperature vacuum cooking); and the French top, a heating element that looks like a steel bull's-eye with an intense blue flame shooting out of it that can heat up to 850 degrees.

"This unit is a precision cooking tool, with total controllability," Moscatello says. Ingredients -- salt, pepper, butter -- are always within reach. And in the tradition of French chefs, "you see everything that is going on. You can have control over everything that is being cooked," he says.

Athanor -- the name comes from the Arabic words for cauldron ("al"), oven ("tan") and fire ("nour") -- was created four years ago by refugees of two small French manufacturers whose businesses had been bought out by a larger company, says John Knight, a partner at Maverick Cuisine, Athanor's U.S. arm.

The company makes 100 units per year, and each one "is tailor-made to meet each chef's application, menu and methods of cooking," Knight says. The top-grade materials include 12-gauge titanium stainless steel for a surface that is guaranteed never to warp, and cast-iron doors on the ovens.

At $100,000, Zola Wine & Kitchen's cooking suite is considered a midsize unit, 10 feet long and 5 feet wide. It has three two-burner sets, three ovens, the plancha, the multi-cooker, the French top, two smallish deep-fryers, storage units and a heated cupboard with a convection feature that circulates air. The overhead shelf retains enough heat to keep plates warm.

The island, which is smack in the center of Zola Wine & Kitchen's small open kitchen, serves numerous vital functions, Moscatello says. It is the heart of a test kitchen for Star Restaurant's operations and is used for its breakfast catering business. It is also where Moscatello and his staff give hands-on cooking classes and where they cook when they host wine dinners. "I had 11 people around here the other day making crepes all at once," Moscatello says.

One of his recent favorite creations on the plancha, which can get as hot as 900 degrees, was quail en crepinette: He wrapped boned quail in lacy-veined caul fat, seasoned the birds with herbs, salt and pepper, and "rolled them around on the plancha" until they were done. (He served them with porcini ravioli and wilted spinach.)

Ambitious home cooks, take heart. Athanor makes custom units for private homes as well, with black or colored enamel sides and detailed corner embellishments. But beauty and functionality come at a price, from $25,000 to $250,000, Knight says. The top amount is what one Palm Beach, Fla., resident paid for a two-unit ensemble, including a suite similar to Zola Wine & Kitchen's.

For information on cooking classes and other events at Zola Wine & Kitchen, visit http://www.zolawinekitchen.com. For details on Athanor products, go to http://www.athanor-fourneaux.fr.