Café Ba-Ba Reeba! in Las Vegas

A display cooking line with a plancha, charbroiler, sauté ranges and a hearth oven for preparing hot tapas and paellais the main event at this Las Vegas restaurant. Ultra-violet hoods, convection ovens and fryers also support the diverse Spanish menu.

Foodservice Equipment & Supplies - February 2006

By Donna Boss, Contributing Editor

"Café Ba-Ba Reeba! is part of me," declares Gabino Sotelino, co-owner with Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises of the Chicago and Las Vegas locations. "Whatever room you find yourself in, you are in the heart of Spain, the country of my youth. Spain represents a melding of cultures, from the Basque region of my mother and the Galacian land of my father, to all the rest of the regions that make up the country. Our distinct wish is to appeal to the Spaniard in everyone. When you come to my restaurant for the sherry, the sangria or the food, you will feel like I feel in my soul ... the soul of Spain."

With this expression of passion, Sotelino and his partners opened the Chicago Café Ba-Ba Reeba! 15 years ago. In September 2004, the partners opened the second Café Ba-Ba Reeba! in the Fashion Show Mall on Las Vegas Boulevard. The authentic Spanish menu, featuring paella, tapas, toro brochetas, Spanish-style pizzas known as cocas from the island of Ibiza, and other Spanish-influenced dishes, desserts, wines and brandies, is attracting an average of 800 to 1,000 customers in peak periods. An open kitchen equipped with planchas, radiant-flame and convection ovens, fryers and much more invites these customers to watch the restaurant's chefs and cooks in action as they prepare cuisine selected by Sotelino and the restaurant's executive chef Michael Bellovich.

"The kitchen is my living room and it must be clean, practical and, most important, functional," Sotelino says.

Upon entering the restaurant, customers are transported from the glitzy, brightly lit mall into a warm, rustic, 200-seat dining room designed with old-world Spanish charm created by dark woodtones, red leather booths and walls, along with an infusion of modern touches and colors. Customers can also choose to sit on what may be Las Vegas' largest patio, with 200 seats, overlooking the strip and the new Wynn hotel. A smaller patio seats 100.

"This restaurant, which offers a fun, family-style way to eat, is a very different experience for many customers here in Las Vegas who aren't familiar with tapas and Spanish food," says Perry Fuselier, who was born, raised and trained in the restaurant industry in New Orleans before coming to Las Vegas. He is currently supervising partner of Café Ba-Ba Reeba! and its sister restaurant, Mon Ami Gabi. "So, we spend a lot of time educating the customers about how to best order and make the most of their experience with us."

Giving customers a memorable experience at Café Ba-Ba Reeba! requires staff to coordinate the timing of entrée preparation so every item comes out to guests at the same time, according to Fuselier. "Tapas comes out individually as it's prepared, but we coordinate timing with entrées ordered. We don't want to hold food more than a couple of minutes if at all," he says. "This requires precise timing and very good expediting."

Timing for a diverse menu, an open kitchen, as well as keeping the kitchen to dining space ratio as low as possible were among the many challenges faced by the design team, which was led by Sotelino and included architect, Bill Johnson of The Johnson Studio, and kitchen consultant, Steve Schoop of ADE Restaurant Services Inc.

The front hot line provides entertainment and becomes a key component of the restaurant experience. At one end is the plancha on which cooks prepare hot tapas by searing seafood, fish, chicken and beef and combining these ingredients with a multitude of other fresh ingredients. "The best way to use a plancha is to use a little — not too much — oil and ample seasonings, which result in the golden crust on items prepared on this equipment," says Bellovich, who has worked for 16 years in various facets of the industry from fine-dining restaurants to movie sets both in the United States and in Italy. "Planchas have been used in Europe for centuries. More and more chefs in this country are discovering how to use this equipment the ‘right' way — not too much oil and seasonings — to get great flavors. Every night, we clean it down to the bare metal, then re-oil and re-season every day. If you let the oil and seasonings build up, you don't get the proper sear and golden color."

Adjacent to the plancha are salamanders and a grill that cooks toro brochetas, beef, pork, chicken and seafood that is served on skewers. Cooks also prepare a bone-in cowboy ribeye steak on the grill.

Next on the line are two fryers in which chefs cook bacon-wrapped dates, spicy potatoes, Spanish peppers seasoned with kosher salt, and ham and chicken croquettes served with a spicy sherry tomato sauce. Further along the line, chefs fire up burners to sauté garlic shrimp and heat soups and sauces.

For many baked items, a large (7' × 7') hearth oven heats goat cheese and pizza, finishes off empanadas and roasts lamb, couscous, dates and lemon chicken. "I like the way the food is heated from below and from the sides, which enhances the roasted flavor and adds a lovely color to the finished dishes," says Bellovich.

"This oven is extra-deep and designed for display cooking at high temperatures. It protrudes through the wall behind it and into the back prep area in order to match the depth of the other equipment on the front line," Schoop adds.

Adjacent to the hearth oven, double-stacked convection ovens cook meats and paella. In fact, the largest station is dedicated to preparation of paella, which originated on the eastern coast of Spain in the province of Valencia, where most of Spain's rice is grown. Depending on customer count, two to 10 persons may work here. During the 25-minute from-scratch preparation process, cooks combine seared meats and seafood, Arborio rice, spices, tomatoes and garlic, homemade stock in thin, two-inch paella pans, then finish off the dishes in the convection ovens. "Runners then take it to the table, loosen the crusty edges from the pans with big paella spoons and dish it up," Bellovich explains.

Cooks prepare cold tapas, small dishes made from seafood, meats, cheese and vegetables, in a dedicated area with a custom refrigerated counter located closer to the dining room. "After the job was almost completed, this counter was moved even further into the dining room so the guests would be closer to production," Schoop says. This counter also displays desserts. Adjacent to this section is a cold line for salad and sandwich assembly, and the expo area where all menu items come together. These are situated closest to the dining area. Bellovich and his top chefs stand at the expo line to coordinate and quality-check all menu production.

Behind the hot cookline is support equipment, including tilting kettles for vegetable, meat and poultry stock preparation; a braising pan for meats, such as short ribs that are further cooked in the convection ovens, carmelized onions and sauces; and a sauté range for the preparation of stocks, soups, sauces and fillings for empanadas. According to Bellovich, in this area and on the front cookline, ultra-violet hoods that remove grease from the air before it moves into the ducts contribute to the sanitation and spotless maintenance of the kitchen. "We take two filters down every night, scrub them down a bit, run them through the dishmachine, and put them back in. No one has to go up into the hoods and clean them. These are more expensive, but the costs balance out over the long-term."

Further behind this section, staff manually cut vegetables, butcher meat and cut seafood on a series of worktables. Staff use a slicer to prepare chips. Pastry chefs and cooks work in an adjacent area on a marble worktable and use a large mixer and ice cream machine to support their preparation. Among its specialties, the restaurant lists such desserts as caramelized banana with vanilla ice cream, three-milk chocolate cake, bread pudding and sorbet, and "Bull's Eyes," sorbet or ice cream with liqueurs.

The far reaches of the BOH provides home to a walk-in cooler, a wine cooler, a reach-in refrigerator, a reach-in freezer and dry storage. Dishwashing is in the west section of the kitchen.

"The back prep area has several angular beams that cost valuable floor space," Schoop says. "The walk-ins and worktables were arranged to fit between these columns and angular walls to make the best possible use of this space. Because it was located on the Vegas strip, the owner wanted to make sure that the space allocated for the kitchen was as small as possible." In addition, Schoop says, in order to save space, a mezzanine was created above the dishroom and walk-in cooler for the water heating equipment, air handlers and remote refrigeration condensers.

The smooth-running restaurant of today belies the difficulties presented during a period that spanned the design, building and equipping of the restaurant. "Unfortunately, this space was not originally built out for use as a restaurant," Schoop admits. "Some of the floor was on grade, some was above the lower level parking garage and there was a crawl space or void beneath the remaining area, which made it difficult to install the mechanical requirements for the kitchen equipment."

Sotelino echoes Schoop's comments and adds, "Las Vegas also has very stringent safety regulations, which of course added to the costs of construction."

Adjacent to the prep area, staff mix the ingredients for the restaurant's signature sangria. "The sangria is made on-site by mixing wine, sugar and an assortment of other ‘secret' ingredients stored in large vats," Schoop explains. "It is then dispensed at the bar and service bar via a remote dispensing system. The dispensing faucets were installed in custom-fabricated pewter towers that were made in Peru to resemble wine kegs."

Also at the service bar is equipment for coffee and tea preparation. The full-service bar has its own glasswasher and blenders.

"The challenge with this type of menu is the timing so everyone at a table receives their dishes at the same time," says Bellovich, who adds that each station has a printer so cooks know when to begin cooking each item. "The openness of the kitchen and the long cooklines work well for us here, because everyone can move around easily, there's very little congestion, and no one is far from the expo station. I can see everything and can make sure we maintain the consistent quality of food."

Customer traffic itself represents another challenge during winter months. "No one wants to sit on the patio during colder months, so the restaurant size is literally cut in half. We're challenged during peak periods to seat everyone who wants to dine with us without waiting very long," Fuselier explains. "So, we ask our servers to turn tables but not rush guests."

In the fastest growing new restaurant city in America, Las Vegas restaurants that bring a fresh, entertaining approach to an open kitchen dining experience seem inevitably positioned for success. But as Café Ba-Ba Reeba!'s team of veteran restaurateurs, chefs, designers and consultants know only too well, resting on past laurels is a high-risk gamble. A much safer game is to earn customer interest and loyalty every day, one tapas and paella at a time.