Nickel Kitchen & Bar Wins Chef Hat Award & Australia’s Best Restaurant Fitout

Food Strategy tip their hats to Nickel Kitchen & Bar, winner of the 2017 Australian Good Food & Travel Guide (AGFG) Chef Hat Award and the Australian Shop and Office Fitting Industry Association (ASOFIA) award for Australia’s best restaurant fitout.

AGFG is Australia’s most comprehensive restaurant, accommodation and travel authority. It rates food establishments based on six criteria: ingredients, taste, presentation, technique, value and consistency.

Nickel Kitchen & Bar serve retro dishes with a modern twist. The restaurant menu, created by executive chef Chris Sell, features Confit Duck Leg a L’orange, Barossa Valley Chicken Kiev, Truffled Parmesan Fries and Chocolate & Whisky Tart. The restaurant boasts an impressive 250-drop wine library, bespoke cocktail selection and chef’s degustation menu.

Restaurant & Bar Interior Design

When owner TJ Peabody hired Food Strategy to design the dining area and kitchen of Nickel Kitchen & Bar, he drew inspiration from treasured memories of his childhood. He wanted customers to feel what he felt when he accompanied his father to business meetings in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

It was an era of elegance and decadence, when people indulged in good food and rich wine. Men and women enjoyed long lunches with martinis and held business meetings over a juicy Steak Diane, followed by brandy and cigars.

TJ Peabody described the design of his new restaurant as ‘Grand Central Station meets the Orient Express’. It needs an efficient kitchen that can serve the highest quality food to 120 people.

There are two dining zones in Nickel Kitchen & Bar. The lower dining area has a richly stocked bar with ice-cold beer fonts, a keg room, coldrooms and store rooms for wine and whiskey. The bartop is custom made nickel with uniquely designed and moulded trims. A head-turning chandelier made of wine glasses hangs precariously from the ceiling and provides soft mood lighting. The upper dining area has an extensive wall of wines and a glass cabinet displaying kitchen antiques of yesteryear. The large chef’s table overlooks the main dining room on an upper level platform for a more intimate experience with the chefs.

To bring back the grandeur of a bygone era, Food Strategy’s interior designers used dark wood panelling and pressed metal in the dining area. Booths and lounges were upholstered with soft leather in teal and camel tones. The walls were decorated with black and white photos of Craggy Range, the Peabody family vineyard in New Zealand.

The nostalgic art deco design of Nickel Kitchen & Bar provides an elegant and luxurious atmosphere where customers indulge in retro dining with a contemporary spin.

Restaurant & Bar Kitchen Design

Nickel Kitchen & Bar’s commercial kitchen was specially designed so that executive chefs can visually engage with diners. Food Strategy specified reliable, high performance catering equipment. The heavy duty equipment can produce excellent dishes consistently when the kitchen is at peak performance, and it is easy to clean.

Diners can look into the commercial kitchen, so its interiors must be visually appealing. Food Strategy chose shiny black vitreous-enamel Waldorf Bold equipment for an efficient and attractive kitchen. A Convotherm combi oven saves space while allowing kitchen staff to produce more dishes. The Friginox blast chiller freezer keeps ingredients at peak freshness.

Nickel Kitchen & Bar’s foodservice design complies with relevant building and health codes while meeting the site restrictions of the city-building that towered above the restaurant’s footprint. Food Strategy also completed consulting and council approvals for Nickel Kitchen & Bar.

Open a retro restaurant with Food Strategy. Contact us for an efficient commercial kitchen design that strictly adheres to Australia’s food safety standards.