The way Felix Tai sees it, a large part of his job as the executive chef at the Polynesian Cultural Center, one of the largest tourist attractions on the island of Oahu, is to allow his guests to feel the spirit of aloha through his food.
“Aloha means love for me,” he explains. “Oftentimes people might not remember what they ate or the name of the dish, but they’ll remember how it made them feel.”
The PCC introduces visitors to the cultures of the South Pacific, including Hawai’i, Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Tahiti, and Aotearoa (the Maori name for New Zealand) through games, crafts, performances, and, especially, food. Every day, Tai and his staff serve 1500 meals at the PCC’s various restaurants, buffets, and nightly lū’au.
The menus are wide-ranging: “I try to incorporate cuisines and food from different ethnic groups,” Tai explains. This includes traditional Polynesian dishes like taro rolls infused with poi, poke made from freshly caught fish, Asian flavors like teriyaki and char siu, kid-friendly offerings like mac and cheese, and original creations like Koko Samoa tiramisu and pineapple creme brulee. Altogether, the PCC serves 115 different items per day, all prepared from scratch.
While this variety makes PCC guests very happy, it also keeps Tai and his staff very busy. Another complication is that many of those staffers aren’t professional cooks: they’re students at a local university campus who are supplementing their educational expenses by working at the PCC. There’s a lot of turnover as students move through different work assignments.
Two years ago, Tai decided he needed additional help in the kitchen. “I needed a support system that would allow me to be efficient because we have a lot of dishes to cook,” he says. He also wanted to make things easier for the new cooks who were cycling in while maintaining the same level of quality. After some research, he discovered RATIONAL’s iCombi Pro oven and iVario tilt skillet. Initially he was impressed by how well RATIONAL’s employees understood what chefs needed. Then he actually tried the equipment. And now he uses nothing else.
“Since I’ve been using the iCombi and iVario, we definitely have been very efficient with our operations,” he says. “We don’t deal with a lot of stress in cooking and executing our menus, and we’re able to maintain a very consistent product.”
Tai has been most impressed by how he can program cooking temperatures and times for different dishes into the iCombi and iVario. “The cooks just have to see the picture and hit the button,” he says. “It’s a very smooth operation.” So far, he’s programmed in more than 100 different recipes.
Together, the iCombi and iVario units cook 98% of the food at the PCC. Tai uses the iCombi for baking, roasting, and steaming, and the iVario for stewing, braising, and anything that requires contact heat, like stir fry and fried rice.
The RATIONAL equipment has even been pressed into service to handle emergencies. When it rained on the day of an outdoor pig roast, for instance, Tai was able to put the whole pig into the iCombi without any problem. And if anything goes wrong, he’s confident that he has the full support of RATIONAL via the ChefLine.
After two years with the iCombi and iVario, Tai can’t imagine going back to conventional stovetop cooking. “I definitely cannot accomplish what I’m accomplishing now with stovetop methodology,” he says. “But if tomorrow, I’m asked to cook 10,000 meals, I know I can do it with RATIONAL.”
To learn more and schedule a demo, visit the RATIONAL website.
This post is sponsored by RATIONAL