Saporre Italiano

Saporre Italiano came to us with a dining room already drawn and a menu already
written — pasta and pizza cooked to order, in volume, all night. That is a
harder brief than it sounds. The two halves of an Italian menu want different
things from a kitchen: the pizza side wants sustained high heat and a clear path
from dough to deck to pass, and the pasta side wants water at a rolling boil all
service and a sauté line close enough to plate without a walk.

We planned the line around that split rather than against it, so the two
stations work in parallel at peak instead of queueing for the same metre of
bench. Refrigeration was specified with the prep list in mind — cold storage
where the mise en place is actually built, not wherever the wall allowed it —
and the washing and prep stations were sized for a full room turning over
twice, not for the quiet Tuesday.

The result is a kitchen the crew can run at capacity without anyone crossing
anyone else's path, and one AM Group still services today.