Council Oak Restaurant at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Tampa, Tampa, Fla.

In 2004, the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Tampa, owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida, was built on property formerly occupied by another hotel. In 2007, a 10,500-square-foot expansion to the 250-room, 12-story hotel and 150,000-square-foot casino featuring 3,200 gaming machines included

the Council Oak steakhouse restaurant. The restaurant includes a 4,300-square-foot kitchen visible to customers, a 450-square-foot butcher shop and a 5,800-square-foot, 120-seat dining room and 66-seat lounge/bar. The new 120,000-square-foot complex also contains a 250-room hotel, 1,000 casino games, two restaurants, food court and banquet space. Soon to open will be a marketplace restaurant, private VIP club and office space, and more hotel rooms.

From the moment most customers enter into Council Oak, they encounter a restaurant theater environment unlike anything they've experienced before. One of the first staff persons they meet is a butcher who cuts steaks for the evening's meal and chats with curious epicureans about cuts of prime beef and the adjacent and visible meat aging room with an entire wall of hand-carved bricks of Himalayan pink salt that assists the aging process.

Once in their seats, which rise up to three levels above the ground floor, customers see all but a very few pieces of preparation, storage and dishwashing equipment. In the sparkling kitchen, staff use an island suite, charbroilers, an oyster shucking station, lobster tank, steamers, a combi and sauté ranges to prepare the restaurant's menu, which specializes in prime steaks and fresh seafood and fish. Floor-to-ceiling wine displays that together hold 1,200 bottles flank two sides of the kitchen. The display on the right side looking into the kitchen coordinates with the service bar in the back, and sits in front of a service station.

On both sides of the butcher shop, well-lit cases each contain 50 French knives made of polished stainless steel with rosewood handles. Only members of the VIP Knife Club can use these special instruments. “We worked with cutlers in France who added a laser image of Council Oak to the knives' blades so we could bring back a practice that was common long ago,” says Dave Miller, vice president of operations, who came to this property nearly four years ago and has spent his career in casino foodservice operations. “If you're in the knife club, a gorgeous, personalized knife is brought to you each time you dine in our restaurant.” Marketing materials promoting the knife club promise that “Your name could one day be memorialized on the VIP Knife Club Wall of Game.”

In the dining room, table settings feature white tablecloths, candles from Himalayan pink salt, fine china, silverware and stemware.

“Customers have a different restaurant experience depending on the level they're sitting on,” Miller says. “If you're on the lower level, you're right in front of the kitchen and focused on the kitchen. In the middle level, you feel the kitchen and the dining room ambiance. On the top level, or the front of the balcony, you see the whole play, including the crowd, the dining room and the entire kitchen.”

The ideas for a steakhouse and the elevated dining room originated in the three-year-old sister property's steakhouse in Hollywood, Fla. “In Hollywood, customers look down into an outside seating area, while in Tampa customers see an entirely open kitchen,” Miller says. “For this restaurant, the interior designer, Larry Lee of Laurence Lee Designs in Los Angeles, added different interior finishes, as well.”

The entire kitchen sits two feet lower than normal, allowing it to be at the same level as a kitchen serving an adjacent restaurant, according to John Egnor, president of JEM Associates in Pleasantville, N.J. “Rather than ramp down, it was better to lower the whole kitchen. Then the dining room was raised to overlook the entire kitchen. This and the access to the butcher shop add a new interactive dimension to an open kitchen concept.”

Strong, bright lighting and a marble tile wall provide a complementary stage set for the equipment, Egnor adds. A full-service bar and lounge that offers entertainment also attract customers into this new restaurant space, he says.

The only part of the operation invisible to customers is a space containing a walk-in cooler; a small service walk-in for beer, which also stocks garnishes and other products and serves as backup when needed; a small freezer; and a dry storage section. The back of the house also holds worktables for staff to cut potatoes for french fries and an au gratin dish; julienne onions and other vegetables for French onion, Cuban black bean and crab bisque soups; cut vegetables for salads and appetizers; split crab legs; and slice cheeses and tomatoes. A buffalo chopper, food processor and 20-quart mixer assist staff in basic prep. Dish- and warewashing take place in a separate area to the side of the kitchen.

The kitchen's openness and access to customers who sit right in front of or overlook the action is particularly attractive to Matthew Sadowski, Council Oak's chef de cuisine. He spent several years working at foodservice operations in Connecticut casinos before moving to Tampa. “Since we're always being watched, we can't be at all sloppy in our sanitation and food handling and professional habits,” he says.

Directly in back of the back prep area, a lobster tank holds live lobsters for up to three days. Currently, the menu offers two and two-and-a-half-pound crustaceans. A steamer on the line heats these and king crab legs just minutes before staff deliver them to diners. The long work counters and sinks give staff ample room for maintaining sanitation standards.

A service bar sits in a space adjacent to the work counters. Several steps from the tank in the opposite direction reside a walk-in cooler and a beer cooling system. Across an isle, the fish refrigerator holds fresh seafood and fish. The chef's counter sits along this line closer to the front of the kitchen.

Also across from the walk-in cooler on the other side of the kitchen is a seafood station containing a raw bar where staff shuck oysters from Maryland, Washington, Canada and New Jersey. A Council Oak raw bar sampler offers oysters along with Alaskan king crab, lobster, colossal shrimp and clams. Staff here also shuck oysters for oysters Rockefeller. Other cooks later bake them in the convection ovens beneath the sauté ranges, then top them with cheese that the overhead broiler melts.

The sauté ranges are part of an island suite with a U-shaped counter surrounding it. “On one side is the entrée station and on the other the salads, appetizers and desserts,” Egnor says. “This configuration allows the entire kitchen production operation to be visible to customers.”

Staff use one of two six-burner sauté stations for grouper, red snapper and other fish and seafood, according to Sadowski. They melt cheese for French onion soup, caramelize oysters Rockefeller and brown stuffed clams in the overhead broilers. The convection ovens beneath the sauté ranges finish fish and seafood, bake oysters and clams, and stuffed lobster tails. “We keep the seafood separate so there is no mixing of aromas,” says Sadowski.

Staff use the other sauté range to sear free-range, organic chicken that staff layer in ceramic pots with root vegetables, chicken stock and thyme, then bake in the convection oven below.

Another oven beneath the sauté range bakes potatoes, well-done prime rib covered with lettuce, and barbecue short ribs that are first dry-rubbed and seared. “Another unique dish, the pork prime rib, is started in the oven,” Sadowski says. “Butchers bone the ribs but leave on the fat. It is then rubbed down with roasted garlic, fresh herbs, sea salt and pepper and put in a 450°F. oven for 15 to 20 minutes to seal the juices in the meat. It is next put into a combi oven and cooked slowly for two to two and a half hours at 200°F. All the fat left on the top melts down into the meat. Chefs carve it with a double bone, so it looks like prime rib with the fat on the top. It's so tender you can cut it with a fork.”

Chefs also use the combi for actual prime rib of beef. After 5 p.m., the combi oven cooks vanilla, praline and chocolate soufflés only. Two hot-holding units keep pork and roast prime rib at temperature before they are cut to order.

On the front of the line, cooks use three grills. One, a flat-top grill, sears steak — bone-in filet mignon, New York strip, Porterhouse and other varieties — before placing the meat on the char grill, which can turn out up to 500 steak orders per evening. “On the long bone-in ribeyes, we use an engraving tool to carve the initials of the guest ordering this item into the bone,” Sadowski says. “We flash-burn it with a brûlée torch before it is grilled. This a little personalized touch people enjoy. It's also a conversation piece during dinner. Customers also tell their friends after they've left the restaurant.”

Staff also prepare crab cakes on the searing grill. They cook lamb and veal chops on a third grill, which eventually will be designated for fish only. “The grills are very efficient because they get so hot and they're durable, which is what we need in this type of operation,” Sadowski says.

“We selected grills vs. radiant broilers for preparing meat because the cooking action can be seen, which is crucial to an exhibition kitchen,” Egnor says. “As long as the meat is seared and the juice is kept in, this process works to maintain a very high-quality standard.”

Also part of the suite are a convection steamer for seafood and fryers that turn out in-house, fresh-cut french fries and onion rings. Huge piles of fries and rings greet customers when they order these sides. Fryers also produce beignets presented to guests in a box with powdered sugar sprinkled on top and accompanied with squeeze bottles of chocolate, raspberry and apple butter fillings that customers can consume at the restaurant or take home.

Tableside dessert presentation receives special attention. Staff caramelize a Grand Marnier and sugar sauce over vanilla bean-scented crème brûlée, then top it with macerated berries. For the restaurant's signature dessert, Council Oak 151 Volcano, staff flambé a cone-shaped ice cream mound covered with Heath Bar crunch with rum.

For the most part, Sadowski appreciates the U shape for allowing all parts of the kitchen to be visible to guests and permitting staff to move around easily. However, he admits that communication poses a challenge. “It's impossible to communicate across the line from the expo station,” he says. “So, we have to have an inside expediter on the line. I also have to walk around a lot to see what's going on at the other side of the line. If I stand at the very front, I can see everything, but that's not where the pass is. If we put the pass in the front, it would block the view of the dining room. So, there are trade-offs for enhancing the guests' experience.”

In the butcher shop, a butcher uses a meat band saw to cut meat into large sections. He then places it on racks and tags it before placing it in a room with a constant temperature of 36°F. and 55-percent humidity. In this space the casino ages beef for 21 days and lamb for 14 days.

“Aging used to be done frequently, but no longer,” Sadowski says. “Excess moisture and blood come out and the meat slowly starts to decompose. From the outside it looks dry and black. But, that is trimmed off and the meat is red inside. Meat fibers are broken down so the meat is much more tender. This is a time-consuming process, so most people do wet aging. I buy it 14-days wet aged, then dry age it.”

Sadowski says there is minimal entry and exit from the room to keep the temperature and humidity stable and minimize bacteria counts. “We use no chemicals for cleaning so we don't add any odor to the area,” Sadowski says.

As Miller, Sadowski, Lee and Egnor know all too well after working in hotel and casino foodservices for many years during their careers, customers' expectations for dining entertainment continue to grow with the opening of each new facility. The addition of interaction and education adds yet another dimension that once again places equipment on stage for all to view its ability to perform top-notch performances night after night.