COOKING : Shopping Where the Pros Do

Products labeled “industrial strength” probably get their toughest test in the kitchen, where pots burn, pans bang and dishes drop like so many cookie crumbs.

People who make their living cooking for or feeding others understand this, and that’s why they shop for equipment at stores such as Terry Costa’s Santa Ana Restaurant Equipment Co., a 47-year-old business at 2520 S. Fairview St. in Santa Ana between Segerstrom and Warner avenues. To the pros, these products represent an important investment: They must not only work well, but also last longer than a Christmas fruitcake.

To the layman, using a potato masher the size of a 3-year-old may seem like trying to kill a flea with an elephant--and if you have only four to feed instead of 40, you’re right.

But anyone who has cursed a rolling pin for mangling the pie dough will appreciate the store’s selection of rolling pins, such as the Johnson-Rose Corp. precision-constructed hard-rock maple version. It’s about the size of a Louisville Slugger and just as tough, with an axle rod of high-carbon cold-rolled steel. With this instrument, any baker could flatten enough dough for four pies with one roll and barely strain the wrist.

Maybe you’re searching for those little tin chocolate shakers you’ve seen in cappuccino houses, the ones with the big holes and wide handles. Costa’s store has a shelf-full. Or maybe you’ve been looking for those indestructible oval white porcelain plates you find at steakhouses--where the New York cut can nestle with a baked Idaho potato and still leave room for a vegetable and chunk of garlic bread. You can order them by the dozen here.

The Bunn pans--cookie trays in layman’s terms--are reinforced with a wire mesh and designed to withstand commercial ovens capable of cranking out 30,000 BTUs. They feel strong enough to surf on.

The Silverstone no-stick frying pans can go from the top of the stove into the oven and then into the dishwasher with nary a warp. Don’t worry about a handle ever coming loose--they’re bolted on. And the pans, in a wide range of sizes, come with removable rubber burn guards for the handles.

Toward the back of the store are rows of Swiss Forschner knives, the same ones sold by a certain mail-order gourmet gadget company for about twice the price. This is the preferred brand of many chefs, Costa notes.

Costa is one of the few restaurant suppliers who sells to the general public, although most of his customers are restaurants, schools, prisons and other institutions. He also gets a lot of trade from students in the chef’s program at Orange Coast College.

Don’t come here looking for “cute” items to decorate a kitchen or for the latest picture-laden cookbook, because that’s not the store’s style. This is strictly utilitarian merchandise, made to get the job done. For the same--or less--than you’d pay for items in department stores and supermarkets, you can get equipment of durability and quality that’s off the charts. This is, after all, what the pros use.

Most of the goods, by the way, are made in America. Costa stocks them not so much for patriotic reasons as for quality--American cookware, he contends, just tends to be the best.

Santa Ana Restaurant Equipment Co.

2520 S. Fairview St., Unit A-1, Santa Ana

(714) 241-0909

Open Mondays through Fridays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.