Simon Rimmer has come a long way in the twenty years since he purchased Greens Restaurant in Manchester and made his first foray into catering. Now with regular shows on the BBC, a newly opened restaurant in Hale and a host of rave reviews for the recently extended Greens (acknowledged by the Vegetarian Society as National Vegetarian Restaurant of the Year in 2009) the self taught chef, has written three books, but still remains extremely hands on despite his filming commitments.

Simon describes the style of the food at Greens as:

“Modern vegetarian food that takes its influence from cuisines around the world. It is not about vegetarian food that mimics meat alternatives; it is more about a style of cooking, in the same way as Indian or Chinese”.

With Greens going from strength to strength, Simon and his business partner took the big decision during the heart of the recession last year, to increase the size of the restaurant to 84 seats, thereby doubling the previous capacity. With such a significant overhaul, they had to re think the kitchen and contacted equipment specialists, Manitowoc, to discuss their requirements:

“ Manitowoc evaluated the way I use the equipment, along with the current needs based on the menu. Due to the nature of vegetarian cuisine, there is only limited pre-preparation that can be done and therefore whilst the equipment has to work hard through the day, it has to work even harder during service hours.”

Manitowoc’s solution included upgrading the previous six burner double oven to a Moorwood Vulcan eight burner triple oven and complementing this with two double suited fryers and two salamander grills from the same brand. In addition four Merrychef MD1800 microwaves and two Delfield prep counters were also installed.

Since the installation, Simon has been delighted with the transformation “We are now able to turn over 200 covers on an average Saturday with just four of us in the kitchen. I would say that, compared to the equipment in our other restaurant, Moorwood Vulcan continues to impress me with its high end performance.”