It's been four years in the making, but this weekend Morgan Mansfield and Antonio Engel will finally see their hard work come to fruition with the grand re-opening of Kitchen Riddles.
But let's back up a few years, back to when Mansfield and Engel first met. At the time, Engel was managing a cookware wholesale store with his father. Mansfield's own father came into the store and when the younger Mansfield and Engel met they immediately recognized an opportunity to rebuild the store with a new twist.
"I wanted to get involved in a new business and cooking is right up my alley so I thought 'what better way,'" Mansfield said.
And so the journey began. Mansfield and Engel have worked side by side since then to re-shape the business into a place where regular folks can come to purchase high quality cookware for reasonable prices. Cookware designed and patented by Engel himself.
"It's basically like the Rolls Royce of cookware but with a better price," he said. "You're not paying an arm and a leg to get exceptional cookware."
Engel teamed up with chef Daniel Riviere to develop cookware that could compete with higher name brands while remaining reasonably priced.
"We decided we needed to start a new cookware line that would compete against higher end products but not for the higher end price, so for the last three years we were researching and developing our new line of cookware," Engel said.
The result was the Engel-Riviere All-Ply cookware line.
"We were selling encapsulated cookware and I noticed over the years what was happening to that was that either the capsule would fall off or just wouldn't provide sufficient heat on the sides," he said.
The All-Ply technology combines five layers of high-end stainless steel with a copper core, and then the material is molded into the desired shape so that each wok or frying pan is one piece. Engel said this way the heat is dispersed evenly throughout the pan and makes it especially durable, even in a commercial setting.
"Basically the cookware is indestructible," he said.
But what's got both Mansfield and Engel really excited are the prices for the Engel-Riviere All-Ply line of cookware. When they started selling the products they were adamant that the prices be affordable for the average person. Too often, Engel said, higher quality cookware is out of budget for regular folks.
"Either you go to the Canadian Tire, (or) you go to the Bay, (or) you go to these other places and you'll pay three or four hundred dollars for basically low-end cookware or you'll have to pay fifteen hundred and up for high-end cookware, there was no bridge in between," he said.
By manufacturing the cookware himself - all manufacturing is done in a factory in China -Engel is able to keep the costs low for customers. The most expensive piece, Engel-Riviere's signature dolphin wok, runs about $230, the rest of the line ranges from $80 to $170, depending on the size of the item.
Both Mansfield and Engel say they are proud of the work they've accomplished since 2009 and are even prouder to offer customers a satisfying and educational experience when they visit Kitchen Riddles.
"We're not like the big box retailer store, where someone is getting paid $10 to $15 an hour and they don't know what they're talking about, whereas we know the tools and we're not going to sell you a whole set if you only need one or two pieces," Engel said.
But their dream didn't end there.
"We wanted to sell a variety of (products), but we also wanted to provide a service and that's where our cooking studio came into play," Engel said.
The cooking studio is the second facet of the newly re-opened kitchen cookware business. The studio offers weekly classes for anyone looking to learn the basics of cooking. Each class has a capacity for 12 students and are all taught by chef instructors from the Art Institute of Vancouver.
Kitchen Riddles' upcoming April 27 cooking class goes through a spring menu featuring crab cakes, stuffed prosciutto wrapped chicken breast with a green pea risotto and steamed asparagus. For dessert, students will be taught how to make their own Bailey's chocolate mousse. The classes typical run on Saturdays for four hours, and according to Mansfield it's a very hands-on class.
"We pick some good dishes that the chefs can come up with, but within those dishes we want to touch on knife skills, proper uses of different pans, be it searing, sauting," he said. "Proper technique is our main thing."
Kitchen Riddles is hosting its official re-opening this weekend, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. There will be activities both days, including knife sharpening demonstrations and cooking samples from the studio chefs. Visitors can also bring in their old cookware to donate to the Kidney Foundation's metals program fundraiser. For each piece that is donated, Kitchen Riddles will give the donor 15 per cent off towards the purchase of any Engel-Riviere piece. Kitchen Riddles is located at 5589 Byrne Road, unit 118, across from Market Crossing in Burnaby.
