May 3, 2005 - Paul Bramel, executive chef for the Hilton Hotel and the newly expanded Grand Wayne Convention Center, has nerves of stainless steel.

He's not the least bit intimidated, he says, by the fact that his new shipment of china fills 17 pallets, or that the refrigerators in his state-of-the-art kitchen have the square footage of a not-so-modest house. He doesn't worry about the possibility of turning 100 pounds of prime rib into charcoal in his huge, newfangled oven. Not even the thought of 6,000 hungry conventioneers clamoring for dinner makes him sweat.

"No, I'm excited," he said. "I love the constant change and all the challenges with the convention center. I actually like the volume. I love cooking big."

Bramel -- and his new kitchen -- should be ready to go by this weekend, when the Grand Wayne Center unveils its $42 million expansion and renovation. Inaugural activities at the 225,000-square-foot facility include a ribbon-cutting on Friday and a ticketed Fort Wayne Philharmonic cabaret show on Saturday, neither of which will overtax Bramel's skills, staff or facilities, he says.

In fact, the events will increase gradually in number and culinary complexity between now and July, when the first conventions begin. That will allow Bramel, two sous chefs, two dozen kitchen staffers and 70 new banquet servers to get comfortable in their roles.

"We have some small cocktail-type deals, nothing too demanding right away," said Bob Lister, Grand Wayne's executive director.

The main reason Bramel isn't getting grand-opening jitters, though, is experience: He has been cooking at the Hilton and the convention center for 18 years now, two of them as sous chef and the rest as executive chef.

The 41-year-old Fort Wayne native had his heart set on a culinary career even before he graduated from Elmhurst High School. At 18, he landed a job as executive chef at the Double Eagle Country Club, now called Cross Creek Country Club, in Decatur. After three years of hands-on learning, Bramel "decided to get an education"; he graduated from the famed Culinary Institute of American in Hyde Park, N.Y., in 1987.

Bramel loves cooking so much that he still prepares meals for his family -- his wife, Liz, and their three daughters, ages 5, 8 and 12 -- even after long days in his commercial kitchen.

"I enjoy cooking at home. It's relaxing," he says. "The only problem is when my kids say my food is 'better than Mommy's.'"

In addition to his professional training and his passion for food, Bramel's patience makes him a good chef, he says. It's a personality trait that allows him to calmly cope with feeding the convention center crowds, the patrons at the Hilton's Desoto Diner and the hotel's room-service customers, which could theoretically add up to several thousand mouths.

Patience is also what kept him sane during the menu retooling and kitchen redesign, which began in earnest three years ago.

The revamped catering menu, six months in the making, will give Grand Wayne clients flexibility in planning events, Bramel says. There are 21 pages of options, including midmeeting snack breaks; sit-down and buffet breakfasts, lunches and dinners; theme buffets; cocktail parties and box lunches.

Vorndran & Associates, the Fort Wayne-based food-industry consulting business that designed Grand Wayne's first kitchen 20 years ago, helped Bramel create his dream facility. Company founder Paul Vorndran was coaxed out of retirement to oversee the project, Lister said.

After almost two decades in the original kitchen, Bramel himself was an expert on what worked and what didn't. He had a definite wish list for Vorndran, who located the components and fit them into the blueprints. Bramel also visited convention centers throughout the country to get ideas.

"Yep, this is (my dream kitchen)," Bramel says. "Nope, I can't think of anything (I'd add to it). You can't anticipate everything but this gives us a lot of room to grow."

At 12,000 square feet, Grand Wayne's new kitchen is double the size of the old one and has separate areas for storage, cooking, plating and cleanup.

"This is one big kitchen. One of the contractors said, 'You could raise your own food in this kitchen,'" Lister quipped.

The storage facility includes a pantry area for dry ingredients, and an Elliott-Williams refrigeration system that is four times the size of the original kitchen's. At 64 feet by 34 feet -- or 2,176 square feet total -- the units should provide plenty of space for perishables, with room to grow as catering needs increase. The ratio of coolers to freezers is five to one, primarily because Bramel prefers to use fresh ingredients over frozen ones.

The cooking area has much-needed elbow room and several appliances that will make cooking for a crowd much easier. In addition to rows of stoves and several high-tech deep-fryers, the kitchen is equipped with "tip kettles" that allow vegetable-cooking water to be poured down in-floor drains; Alto-Shaam Combitherm ovens that can steam as well as bake foods; a walk-in oven that rotates roasts, ribs and briskets for slow, even cooking; and Thermodyne ovens, which have heat sources in their shelves to keep food fresh and flavorful even if there are serving delays.

One of the kitchen's best features, Bramel says, is the spacious assembly area where prepared food will be arranged on the dishes. The kitchen staff, copying a presentation plate created by Bramel, will stand over large steel tables plating up raspberry-nut chicken breasts, blue cheese-crusted filet mignon or Chilean sea bass, for example, with appropriate vegetables, potatoes, pasta and garnishes.

Much of the new kitchen's technology is aimed at solving an age-old challenge -- keeping food hot until it reaches the table. It's a common problem that multiplies geometrically when a kitchen is serving hundreds, even thousands, of meals, Bramel says.

At the renovated convention center, no dining area is further than 800 feet from the kitchen, Lister said. Steaming plates can be stacked on racks or bundled into unplugged ovens-turned-warmers, wheeled en masse through industrial garage-style doors and hustled down the hallways.

Even the new china -- plain white plates chosen for their simplicity and matchability to centerpieces and linens -- does its part: Its high aluminum content retains heat and keeps food warm longer.

Cleaning up will always be a chore, but the new kitchen's commercial dishwashers and automatic pot scrubber will elevate it from drudgery.

The latter uses 60 gallons of hot, soapy water and swirling clouds of plastic pellets -- no elbow grease needed -- to remove baked-on residue and stubborn grease from 15 to 20 pans at a time.

Bramel is eager to actually get down to work, now that the construction is mostly finished.

"I'm a hands-on chef, not just an overseer," he says, wiggling his fingers. "I definitely will be cooking in this kitchen."

INTERESTING TIDBITS

Hilton Hotel and Grand Wayne Convention Center 1020 S. Calhoun St. 420-1100

--Soft drinks available: Pepsi products

--Additional charges: 20 percent service charge, 7 percent food and beverage tax added to all menu prices

--Theme buffets available : "Tour of Italy"; "Mexican Fiesta"; "Western Cookout"; "Orient Express"

--Custom-made ice carvings: $250 per block

--Doughnuts: $18 a dozen

--Cashews: $22 a pound

--Small domestic cheese display (serves 40-60): $150

--Small imported cheese display (serves 40-60): $250

--Chef for carving station for 1 1/2 hours: $50

--Steamship round of beef for 120 people: $500

--Shrimp Fest (100 large shrimp with cocktail sauce): $250

--Concession stand fee: $750 minimum (waived if stand hits $750 in sales; if not, the difference between actual sales and $750 is charged).

--Concession stand bowl of chili: $3

--Concession stand chicken salad on croissant: $5

--Water service (per 100 guests when no food or beverage services are provided by the Hilton): $30

--Cash bar beer: $3.50 domestic, $4.75 imported

--Host-sponsored bar beer: $3.25 domestic, $4.50 imported

--Domestic house champagne: $25 a bottle

--Breakfast and lunch buffet time limit: 1 hour

--Dinner buffet or hors d'oeuvres buffet time limit: 1 1/2 hours

--Break time limit: 1/2 hour

--Linen napkin use (when minimum for food and beverage service is not met): 50 cents each

--Box lunch (sandwich choice, chips, cookies, apple, Pepsi product), $10

--Most expensive sit-down dinner entree (not including "market price" items): $26 (orange roughy with lemon caper beurre blanc or prime rib au jus)

--Least expensive sit-down dinner entree: $18 (steamed vegetables with herb butter sauce on a bed of rice)

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