Hot Food Displays

Pastry decides it. Anything with a crust holds dry, so pies, sausage rolls, pasties and croissants all want radiant heat with no water in the base. Put that same pie over steam and the bottom will go soft long before service is over.

Wet holding is for food that dries out at the edge, so roast meat, rice, curry, vegetables and anything already carrying sauce hold better with moisture in the cabinet. Wet-and-dry bain marie displays will run either way, with water in the base for the saucy lines or dry for a mixed counter, and that's the safer buy if your menu changes with the seasons.

If you're running wet, check the water level before every service. Elements are the first thing to fail on a bain marie that's been boiled dry, and that isn't a warranty claim.

That's the normal way a counter gets built, and most shops need all three. The heated cabinet runs the hot food, a cold food display holds sandwiches, salads and cakes, and an ambient display takes bread, biscuits and packaged goods, because chilling those makes bread go stale faster and brings condensation onto the packaging.

The same body is built in all three versions, so the heights, the fronts and the glass all line up where the units meet. Matching refrigerated countertop displays stand beside the hot benchtop cabinets, and both hot and cold come in square or round glass.

Pick by what you're selling first, then by how long each segment needs to be, and settle the glass shape once so you can repeat it the whole way down the run.

Cabinets are made in segments of 300 mm, so 600, 900, 1200, 1500, 1800 and up, and two or three units will make up a counter of almost any length. Most come in two or three tiers and some in four or more. Pick your tiers by throughput, because two tiers suit large or awkward items while three or four give you more product per metre of bench.

Some models stand hard against each other with no gap, which gives you an unbroken line of glass, and older models need a gap at the sides for airflow. Countertop and floor-standing versions of the same cabinet both exist, so the question is how much bench you're willing to give up. Tell us the counter length you're working with and we'll work out what fits.

Not quite, though they do overlap. A bain marie holds food in gastronorm pans over heated water or dry heat at working height, and it's a service appliance first, so staff plate straight out of it. A heated display is a selling cabinet, so you get glass on the customer side, lighting, and shelves or tiers so the customer can see everything.

The two meet in bain marie displays, which put the pan wells behind display glass. If the customer never sees the food, a plain bain marie or a holding cabinet will cost you less and do the same job, but where the counter is your shopfront you're better off with the display.

A heated well is built into the bench. It's a round or rectangular pot well that drops through the counter top, usually with a drain, and it holds a pan of soup, gravy, sauce or beans at serving temperature. Hatco makes them built-in and free-standing, and they suit a servery that wants a permanent hot point instead of another appliance taking up bench space.

A heated shelf holds food that's already plated or trayed. It's a flat heated surface at the pass that holds plates for the few minutes before they go out, sometimes under a heated gantry. Neither one has glass and neither faces the customer, so they work behind a display cabinet instead of replacing one.

Match the holding style to the food before you blame the cabinet. Dry heat on a saucy line hardens the surface and the edges, and wet heat under pastry softens the base. Turning the cabinet up makes both of those worse, because all the extra heat does is drive more moisture out of the food, or into it.

The other cause is loading. Food stacked past the shelf blocks the air path, so the top tier bakes and the bottom goes cool. Preheat the cabinet before the first tray goes in, because a cold cabinet loaded at opening will pull heat out of the food for the first twenty minutes, right when the morning trade is looking at it.

Safety is the straightforward part: hot food is held at 60°C or above. The cabinet's job is to hold it there, not to bring it there, so food goes in hot out of the oven or the bain marie, because a warmer hasn't got the wattage or the airflow to reheat anything.

Quality runs out first. A pie held dry still eats well for a few hours, but a roast or a curry held wet starts to go at the edges much sooner, and rice sooner again. Batch it instead, because two smaller loads through a lunch rush will sell better than one big load that's been sitting there since eleven.

Check the plug on the product page before you order, and check what the counter has actually got. Small countertop warmers and pie cabinets usually run off a standard 10 amp socket, but larger multi-element cabinets, bain marie displays and built-in wells often need a 15 amp outlet, which is a different plug in a different socket and an electrician's job to fit.

Don't run a heated cabinet off a power board or a domestic extension lead, because it draws a high current all day and they're not built for it. If the display is going into new joinery, have the outlet placed and rated before the cabinetry gets made.

REO's prices are sharp, and a hot cabinet is rarely bought on its own. A counter usually needs a heated one, a chilled one and an ambient one at the same time, and that adds up quickly in a new fit-out.

Silverchef Rent-Try-Buy is the other way to do it. You rent the equipment instead of buying it outright, so your cash stays free for the rest of the shop, and the rent is an operating expense that goes through your running costs. Once the business is settled you buy the cabinet out or trade up to a bigger one, and your accountant can tell you how the numbers work for you.

Gastronorm pans and a set of tongs for each pan. Gastronorm is a standard size, but REO recommends buying pans from the same supplier as the appliance they go into, whether that's a bain marie, a display or a well.

Small differences between brands mean a cross-brand fit can't be guaranteed, and a pan sitting proud of the well lets heat and steam escape past the lip.

After that, a probe thermometer so you can prove your holding temperature, spare pan lids for the quiet part of the day, and a holding cabinet or oven behind the counter to batch from. That way you're topping the display up through service instead of holding a whole day's food in it at once.