Dallas Museum of Art

Dallas Museum of Art Achieves Greater Cooking Speed

Its mission as a steward of cultural heritage and an advocate for art with exhibits showcasing work from every continent over the last 5,000 years has made the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) a distinctive destination for locals and visitors to Texas’ metropolis.

The museum’s DMA Café is just as popular with visitors, offering a farm-fresh menu of sandwiches, soups, salads and specials created using locally sourced ingredients.

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Its mission as a steward of cultural heritage and an advocate for art with exhibits showcasing work from every continent over the last 5,000 years has made the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) a distinctive destination for locals and visitors to Texas’ metropolis.

The museum’s DMA Café is just as popular with visitors, offering a farm-fresh menu of sandwiches, soups, salads and specials created using locally sourced ingredients.

When Chef Christian Howard came on board, there was already big buzz about a new oven that would soon be implemented.

“Everyone was excited about it, since it sounded like an oven that we could put into play right off the bat to bake, broil and use for the same tasks as a traditional convection oven,” he says. “The difference was it could cook various foods at one time at different temperatures and with a new type of airflow, which is a big time saver.”

Howard and his team had high hopes that Alto-Shaam’s Vector™ Multi-Cook Oven with Structured Air Technology™ would improve the café’s speed of service and decrease labor; they were not disappointed.

“During the oven’s testing process, all of my cooks were involved, asked questions and tested batches of different food,” says Howard. “Everyone was hands-on working with the new unit, but it was a very quick learning curve to get up to speed.”

Labor is substantially reduced with the Vector oven compared to a traditional convection oven. Operators can load in a variety of food, set individual temperatures for each oven compartment and walk away until the cooking process is completed.

This allows DMA Café to simultaneously roast chicken and turkey breasts while baking cookies, which frees up the crew to do other tasks.

“With our previous ovens, we had to pull chickens out twice to rotate the pans for consistent results,” says Howard. “The Vector allows us to set the temperature and walk away, since the Structured Air Technology provides even cooking.”

In addition to use with poultry and cookies, Howard and his staff use the oven for roasting vegetables and making carrot cake.

“Because there is no flavor transfer with these ovens, we don’t have to worry about the garlic from the vegetables transferring to the cake during the cooking process,” says Howard, who has plans to add another Alto-Shaam Vector Oven to his operations. “We have a prep kitchen where we plan to replace the convection oven with the Vector to handle all of our baking needs. We’ve put Alto-Shaam’s oven through every single test we can think of, and it has passed with flying colors.”

Learn more about the Vector Multi-Cook Oven. Visit our product page to watch product videos, view product specifications or to request a demo.

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