Red Lobster Fuels Its Menu with Wood-Grilling

Senior Executive Chef Michael LaDuke explains how Red Lobster's culinary team added wood to the grills in the chain's 680 seafood restaurants.

By David Farkas, Senior Editor -- Chain Leader, 11/20/2008 2:06:00 PM

A new menu at Red Lobster announces the change in culinary direction at the 680-unit chain.

VIDEO: Watch as two Red Lobster grillmasters show and explain their new technique.

Orlando, Fla.-based restaurant chain Red Lobster is now counting on wood-fired grills in its 680-unit system to boost traffic and sales. Launched in early November at a cost of $10.5 million, the grills give customers healthful menu options. Chain Leader recently grilled Senior Executive Chef Michael LaDuke about how he got the massive project off the ground.

Want to hear something funny, chef?

Yeah.

I'm reading an article on the Internet, and the headline is, "Mesquite Grilling--Hot New Food Trend."

Really!

And it mentions Red Lobster?

Really?

Oh, did I mention the article was published in 1984?

(Laughs.)

The article says mesquite-grilled food "is moist and tasty because the extreme heat seals in the juices." My first question then, chef, is how come you aren't using mesquite today?

We tried a lot of different woods. Between sustainability issues and the great flavor we get from the wood, we thought oak was the way to go. We liked the way it burned and worked in our restaurants. We also like the way oak didn't take over the flavor. Back in the '80s, you'll recall, when mesquite was a big thing, it was all about that big, heavy smoky flavor. Today, it's is about subtly adding wood flavor to the seafood.

Red Lobster's "grill masters" now have the ability to grill proteins, including fresh fish selections, over American white oak.

Did you experiment with mesquite at least?

Oh yeah. We tried mesquite, oak, hickory, cedar chips and hardwood charcoal. We looked at some citrus woods, too. But we have to start with where there was availability and what we could get to our distribution centers.

Did it come down to oak being the easier fuel to source, distribution-wise?

We made the decision first on flavor, and then made sure we had distribution.

Where is the oak coming from, and what type is it?

It's coming from three different vendors. One of them is north of Gainesville, Fla. It's American white oak.

Had you ever used a wood grill in a professional kitchen?

I had. Prior to working here, I was at Disney and I worked in a couple restaurants that had wood grills, primarily with Mediterranean themes.

Describe the change in kitchen equipment at Red Lobster.

We went into all 680-plus restaurants with the grill manufacturer to figure out if we could retrofit existing grills to burn wood or if we had to put in new grills. From a logistics standpoint, we had to figure out where to store the wood. We kept the same format, an open-top grill, not a broiler, and really tried to leverage what our crews know about grilling and tried to teach them a bit more about wood grilling.

They were using gas-fired grills. Are those still being used?

The grills right now are gas-assisted to help get the wood started.

What did the manufacturer sell you?

We went to [our grill manufacturer] with a challenge: We want to wood-fire grill. Does this mean we have to buy all new grills for 680 restaurants or can we work with existing ones? We went through a number of different designs and finally came up with one where we could add whole logs to the bottom of the grill and with the assist of gas produce the nice steady burn we get with oak.

Where did the wood-fire testing take place?

We had grills in our test kitchens [at Orlando, Fla., headquarters]. [The manufacturer] sent us some kits and grills. At the time, we also had some stack broilers from another company that we looked at to determine if we could retrofit those. We ended up moving them out and going with one kind of grill.

What were some of the challenges at this point?

Myself and the other chefs brought logs in to watch them burn. One big consideration was designing a grill and then discovering the logs burn out every 30 minutes. Having to change logs during volume is not a great thing.

Are the kitchens now hotter?

We did some work with one of our restaurants in Orlando, checking the airflow and exhaust before we went full throttle. Then we checked the temperature of every restaurant in the chain to make sure we didn't change them. The temperature of the grill itself has gone up by about 100 degrees, to between 550 and 650 degrees.

Were there wood storage issues?

We started with wood that was boxed through our distribution. Then we went with wood that's bagged. We soak wood before we use it, and we needed soaking bins. We're using big, heavy-duty plastic material that we had. We also had to add ash boxes next to the grills. You obviously don't want people to put ashes into a garbage can.

Speaking of dangers, what's to keep a spark from igniting the kitchen?

In some places we had to build specific wood storage facilities. We also added a piece of equipment called a spark-arrester to the hoods over the grills in each restaurant. We found the product at the beginning of our research and thought we should add it to every restaurant.

« Back | Print