This is a very rare accolade for someone from the catering industry...we can't think of anyone else from foodservice who has won this award...so what is so special about Ian Wood?
He is not one to follow the crowd (note the glaring red bow tie)!
A pioneer in the true sense of the word, he has helped to completely re-invent commercial refrigeration and is doing his best to achieve the same in retail.
What started his journey to refrigeration stardom? Chefs on oil rigs...that's who!
Ian’s story starts in the 90’s when he was asked to solve a major refrigeration problem for oil rig kitchens.
The problem was rig kitchens, like many restaurant and hotels, were just too hot for conventional upright or counter technology. The chefs complained their conventional units were failing to hold temperature, causing food to spoil and be thrown away. That's bad enough in a normal kitchen, but infuriating for rig chefs when it has been taken there by helicopter at a cost of thousands of pounds.
Ian was then providing HVAC services to rigs and – working with fellow engineer George Young – he came up with an entirely new approach to catering refrigeration because that was the only system he could see would work! Such was their belief in the new system – the Adande insulated drawer – that the pair gave up HVAC work to found Adande.
The genius of the new system is simple. In conventional fridges or freezers, you open the door, the cold air falls out and warm, moist air is sucked in, raising internal temperatures and in freezers particularly, causing that well known 'snowstorm' effect.
With the Adande insulated drawer, the cold 'sits' and does not move, solving the issue of failing to hold consistent
Under the cookline at Jamie's Kingston.
In the kitchen at The Montagu Arms.
Next to the Combis at Galvin's La Chappelle.
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