SCOTLAND’s Hotel Chef of the Year has been handed his dream job – designing from scratch his own custom-built kitchen in one of Scotland’s leading establishments along with a budget of £150,000 to kit it out.

Alan Dickson will fit out the vast new kitchen at the expanded Ten Hill Place in Edinburgh, which is six times larger than the current facility, where he and his team of 15 chefs and kitchen porters can cater for 400-person conferences, weddings and private parties, as well as the hotel restaurant.

The 29-year-old, from Portobello, said: “Many chefs wait a lifetime for an opportunity of a blank canvas and a budget like this, to design their perfect kitchen. It is not your typical kitchen either – we can go from cooking for hundreds of people during the major conferences – right down to a quiet lunch menu at the restaurant.

“Because of this I felt passionately that we look to install some of the most technologically advanced equipment out there that will make it an amazing, clean environment for the team to work in.”

The new facilities will be all-electric – which is unusual in a professional kitchen – and include induction hobs that are cold to touch but can boil 20 litres of water in just 90 seconds.

With an eye to the environment, power for the hobs is only on when they are in use, while also creating a safer setting for staff and guests with no naked flames.

A £20,000 self-cleaning cooking “suite”, effectively the modern take on the ubiquitous bratt pan, will also be installed to help the team deliver the highest quality food through even the busiest shifts.

The new kitchen is due to be complete by the summer as part of a multi-million-pound development that will see the four-star hotel expand from 77 rooms to 129.

Surgeons Quarter, the recently rebranded commercial arm of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd), operates Ten Hill Place Hotel, Drinks & Dining, as well as all conferences and weddings at the college, with profits going back into the institution.

Scott Mitchell, its commercial director, said: “Alan deserves all the plaudits he gets – and it is testament to how he is rated here that he’s been given free-reign to design this kitchen. His age really is irrelevant as what he has achieved is remarkable – and at the end of the day, he knows what is required better than anyone.”

Chef Nick Nairn, meanwhile, has decided to close his cook school in Aberdeen, blaming the downturn in the north-east economy.

Aberdeen Cook School will close on June 30 as it is “no longer commercially sustainable”. The five staff who work for it were told on Wednesday and a redundancy consultation process is under way.

The TV chef launched the school in 2012 after success with his initial cook school in Port of Menteith, near Stirling. He said: “We enjoyed a great run of custom for a number of years but like many other businesses in Aberdeen and the surrounding areas, we are not immune to the downturn in the north-east economy.”