- [Charlie] The fish is downstairs too.
So they both just got here.
- [Max] Ooh, she's still alive
- So this is Ben.
Ben brings our stuff from Regalis
which right now we're receiving crab,
Norwegian King crab.
Still pretty alive and she's pretty spunky today.
And also some Périgord truffles for us today.
Man, I feel like we're one of the...
we're one of your only people in this neighborhood,
like immediate neighborhood.
- The only person.
Yeah. Yeah
- Order in four.
- Five four tasting.
- Five four snack.
(Upbeat techno music)
This is for our opening bite, the bay leaf tartlet,
and we basically take this king crab, we'll steam it
and then we're going to toss it in a reduced crab stock
and a little bit of smoked butter.
Make sure you tuck them wings in, cuz.
She's trying to get out of there.
Yeah, you gotta tuck them wings in.
I mean I think Brooklyn, naturally, gives you a little bit
of an underdog kind of feel, but we also felt that even
more being so tucked into the neighborhood that we had to
really fight for people to discover us.
All right.
So where you at right now?
- So, I'm about to blend this bouillon
and then I'm going to go crowd and steam it and break it up
- Break it up.
Okay.
We get about two days, two services out of one crab.
Like I said, you want to make sure people get like,
crab, you know, we don't want to say like,
"Hey we're using this really sick crab,"
and only give people little bites of crab, you know.
Make sure it's nice and chunky.
(Upbeat techno music)
So on Tuesdays, you know, from start to finish
you know, the cooks get in around 9, 9:30
and by 10:00 AM we're full throttle,
whether we're like, waiting on orders or
you know, getting everything
on the stove, stocks, sauce, veg for the night,
all that stuff is kind of going as soon as we can get here.
So we can get set up.
Six hours may seem like a lot of prep time to some people
but it goes a lot faster than you think.
All right, I have two.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, this is the first one of the day
like until we get this, the fluke in
and get all the fish cleaned and processed, stuff like that,
we are just kind of waiting.
Everything we try to get as cold as possible
and then we take it over here to the dish
so we can get it scaled, clipped.
So the fluke is for our first plated dish
and it's a two day process.
So we take the fluke, scale it, clean it, and then
we cure it overnight in salt kombu,
and then the next day we're able to come in,
pound it out flat.
It's really important that we get it going early
'cause it needs to cure for exactly 24 hours
before we can start the next phase of the dish.
The fluke was the dish I was the most excited about,
coming into it.
I decided to treat the fluke
as if it was like a spring roll wrapper.
Every day we bring in the fluke so we're always a day ahead.
So, even though Monday when we're closed, we got a fluke
in yesterday, someone comes in to process it
so it can be ready for a Tuesday night service.
- Cleaned up fluke,
I will pass it off
to Chef Max because he is great at butchering Fluke.
He was feeling himself from yesterday.
Apparently he nailed one so, he's going to do it today.
- Like yesterday I was giving Michael a demo on how to
break it down because the way I broke it down yesterday was
like, next level perfect.
I'm like damn, that boy bad.
We want everybody here to be chefs, and because
it's such a small team and the space is really intimate,
if I'm breaking down a protein you should learn how
to do it too,
'cause one day, I don't know, I may be sick, can't come in
or I have to work on something else.
He needs to be able to do the same,
and like, I was really feeling myself yesterday
and like today
like I've outdone myself again.
Like, goddamn.
Right?
Like there, look at that.
- Yeah, very nice.
- Yes, yes, yes
- [Producer] You can talk shit if you want.
- No, no, no.
That's my chef.
- You still talk shit though.
Most cooks in other restaurants are
like scared to tell their chef
if something's right or something's wrong.
I really appreciate the team that we have here
'cause we're like, we're honest with each other.
The difference between working here and those,
like, big old French restaurants is, I get to have my eye
on everything. As I'm prepping this,
there's two preparations that's happening here.
So I can just turn around
and see what Michael's doing, how his tart's looking.
Casey he's working on his shellfish project,
I could just look over and see it
and like Charlie's upstairs.
So Charlie has eyes upstairs.
So like, I come in the morning, I have my AM team down here
and it's like, they're right behind me.
We're like well-connected, we're all together
and we're able to hold each other accountable better.
So we're going to hit it with a light cure
and let it cure overnight.
Then tomorrow, Casey will come in, rinse out the salt
from the fish and then he would portion it
for our garde manger cook who will pound out the turbot flat
so they can make the little spring roll that's upstairs.
- So here we have the sawara, this is the mackerel
that we use on the main course here.
Yeah that was almost three grand worth
of mackerel that just walked in.
The sawara dish, you know,
we get the fish in,
maybe it let it age just a little bit.
Not too much 'cause the sawara doesn't really need it.
It grills very well.
We felt it was a very great way to finish the meal
with the fish being grilled as opposed to
like a heavy meat dish, you know.
We just recently started going fish on main
although a lot of guests expect their meat or their bird.
We recently just, you know, kind of went for it.
- Damn Chef, not bad
- Not bad for an old man.
- When me and Charlie was at like Eleven Madison Park
he was a butcher before I was so it's
like low-key always talking shit
about each other's butcher game.
So we're always, like, competing.
- This would be a lot easier
if he had a sharper knife but-
- Wow.
- Work with what you got.
- Wow, oui Chef
- We have a really small walk-in obviously
and it gets really packed this time of the week
but we try to like, hang or dry age anything here or
if it's larger proteins that'll go on this speed rack here.
So, this is a striped bass from Montauk
and we just wanted to see how it compared
to the other fish we've been using.
So, today we're going to be comparing this striped bass
to the sawara.
I mean we, we always are happy with the sawara
and the way it's been going on the new menu,
but anytime we can try to see how a local product
will compare to the product we're sourcing from Japan,
we want to see like, why spend the extra money
and the time to get it from Japan
versus if we can get a product that's local
from the area and it'd be just as good
or if not better, then we'll go that route.
If we're going to replace the sawara on this course,
we need something that is going to be able to react well
to the charcoal, you know, take the heat
and also while while we're retaining this moisture
and also be able to get crispy skin.
I think this is going to be nice.
It looks like it.
Yeah. So that's, that's the plan today.
We'll cook it side by side
with the sawara and see how it compares.
You know, is it something we should move into
or if we should just stick with what we know right now,
which is very good?
So now it's like one o'clock.
You know Chef Kayla's pretty much knee deep
in getting the flukes ready for tonight's service
so she'll have her head down focused on that
and then we'll start to divvy up the rest
of her prep list for the station amongst everyone else.
As you can see like,
Chef Grace is already jumping on the crab.
- I've never gotten to break this down before.
This is like my second or third time doing it.
I've always watched chef Casey do it
and I've always wanted to do it, so.
He definitely lets us try a lot of new things
that we wouldn't normally get to try
in a larger-scale fine dining restaurant
- It's a very small kitchen.
Although they have their own sections,
we all still work together, you know,
and the dishes are designed to where
they always do something for each other, you know
and that way everyone like, sees the value in the product
but also sees how much work the other person is doing.
You know, no one is ever like, "Man
I'm buried in this prep list
and you're over there chilling."
Casey, oui?
- [Casey] Oui, chef
- We're portioned?
Sick.
I like to squeeze in a little bit of playfulness
on the fluke, make it a crudo but,
just try to have a little more fun
so when guests receive it,
you know maybe they smile, they take pictures of it.
As you can see these went 24 hours.
They're nice and like very, very tacky.
We want them to be very thin, but we don't want 'em to
like disintegrate on us, like melt on us essentially.
And basically, we'll do this tortilla press smasher.
So, as we're pounding it
you want it to be a little translucent here but you
want to make sure it's not completely falling apart.
And you also want to make sure it's not too chunky
in points so that when we go to roll the spring rolls,
they're really even
they all have the same mouthfeel to them.
Pretty sick, right?
It's kind of,
it's a fun time making these work.
So as, as I'm doing this, getting the flukes
pounded, ready to go,
chef Kayla here is preparing the
the juliennes that will be rolled inside the fluke.
- [Kayla] So we vac-pack it just to get the
flavor inside of the vegetables
without actually cooking them
and the vegetables are just going to create a little bit
of a crunch that goes inside of the fluke.
- Veg is cut, they're all measured to an inch and a half
so that all the rolls are pretty consistent.
Kayla takes each portion of fluke essentially
and tries to get as many rolls as we can out of one piece.
It ranges, you know, maybe we can get two rolls,
three rolls.
How long it takes you about to roll?
- About
- About how about an hour or two per day to roll
on a low end.
- Yeah
- If we're fully booked on a Friday, Saturday night
takes a little bit more,
and we normally have two people doing it.
In service, it also takes about,
to do I'm a timely manner,
it takes two people to plate each one as well.
So, we like to spread out the work.
So, no one's just buried in the fluke all day.
It's about two o'clock
we're finally on our last fluke roll here.
Now we're over the hump.
Now the rest of the day will fly,
and we'll have a good service.
Man I knew it'd be a lot of work
but, you know, if you wanted to get something that delicate
and that precise, then it just takes a lot of time.
You know, I've done dishes like that as a cook before
but sometimes, when you're on this side of it,
when you're like the chef assigning the dish to a cook
you kind of are like,
"Damn, that's kind of a lot of work."
(laughing)
So like I try to throw hands as much
as I possibly can and try to help get it done.
But you know, in the end, in service, it's
it's very worth it.
So now that this is done
we're going to start to fabricate the last fish of the day
which is the salmon, which takes the least amount of work.
We just need to break it, brine it
and do a little poach on it.
So, we'll head down and get that going right now.
So, the salmon is a dish that
I felt a little passionate about because I grew up eating
a lot of salmon, you know,
like my mom cooked a lot of it and people
in my family cooked a lot of salmon growing up in Detroit.
You got that brine for this already ready to go
or we need to make?
- [Chef] I need to make it
- It's just common, you know,
it's like a very common thing that you have as a home cook.
People ask all the time, like, is the food French
or American or
if it's things that I grew up eating and what not.
And it depends, you know, like sometimes
I am inspired by, like, a classic French dish
and sometimes not.
I think it's like all influence
but I don't think the way it eats, it screams like,
"Oh this is only a French dish."
We've had a couple people come here before
with fish allergies
and I was just kind of like, wow
you need to read the menu before you come here. (laughing)
Yeah, I think this year we are a little bit more comfortable
with saying that the food is very seafood-heavy.
(Upbeat music)
Sure, we definitely like to try to finish up
as many tasks as possible before we scrub down.
You know, that's kind of like the bottleneck of the day
when everyone is kind of like trying to hurry up
and finish a bunch of projects
so they can scrub down on time,
get their family meal ready.
Usually the most stressful part of the day is between,
you know, two and four o'clock.
- For the most part the day is like really chill and smooth.
But if you're just bullshitting all day,
once it hits two o'clock, you're f****.
- Now it's about a little bit after 4:45.
Family meal's all over, all cleaned up.
But before we go all the into it, we're going to
test out the fish for tonight.
Comparing this striped bass to the sawara.
We cook it, like I said, over the charcoal here.
PAM spray 'cause we love that shit,
helps stuff not stick to it.
So this is the striper that's been aging for a week now
and like I said, we really just want to see
how it reacts to the charcoal,
now that it has lost all of it's moisture
and if the skin can get as crispy as we feel
like the sawara will here.
So, we'll just cook 'em side by side and see how it goes.
And this is just a little bit of fat that we
kind of make up ourselves.
A little bit of animal fat, oils,
and we use this little guy you know,
we don't have the fans that chefs put
in their back pockets.
So we'll hit it a little bit and then we'll let it chill,
relax a little bit and then we'll go right back on
with the striper.
People expect something that's, you know, hearty
or usually like a red meat or bird, you know,
or meat sauce at the end of the meal,
and we want to make sure this dish, you know,
doesn't leave you feeling like you have a void
or want some more, you know,
something that's hearty,
balanced but well-rounded.
This one we'll take to like, you know,
a medium-rare and this one we'll cook it
more through, you know, typically on the bass.
(Upbeat music)
And this is the sawara here,
which grills up pretty nice.
And then the bass here.
So the sawara, this is the one that we're like,
very used to, very familiar with,
so how it goes with the grill.
- Always fire.
- But this one has a little bit better crust to it.
It's hard to beat right? (laughing)
I think the skin is crispier here,
which is which is beautiful.
But I think the mackerel works better
- With that dish
- with the sauce work here.
But the skin on there is definitely superior
than the mackerel.
You know, even though this one is, you know
maybe local to us, in order for us to change it from here
this would have to be clearly superior, you know?
And I don't think it, I don't think that it is.
I think maybe it's a different dish
for another time or a different sauce,
but I think the mackerel is like,
we can't mess around with that one.
- Yeah, definitely for this set it's-
- Yeah.
- Just everything.
- Yeah
You know it's my first year as an executive chef, right?
So, when you get here,
you realize that you have so much control
that it's kind of overwhelming at the beginning.
Order in four.
- Five, four tasting.
- Five, four snacks.
- All right tarts, let's go.
We gotta start building these flukes.
We have an open kitchen.
We're not quite a chef's table, but like,
I'm like right there, so whenever someone wants
to say the meal was delicious or talk to me or
complain they can do it right to me.
I'm like right there, you know?
So.
Thank you (laughing)
Flukes all the way.
Next on, four farro.
How you going to give up?
It's your mise en place, cuz.
I think you need a little bit more mushroom in here.
- Yeah?
- Yeah
It's tough.
People may expect a certain type of environment
when they're eating a a fine dining meal.
They may not see us as one,
maybe because the space or the lack of tablecloths,
or the lack of luxury that they may want to walk in and see.
And we want people to be very open-minded to
what experience they're going to have when they come here.
All right, next on the bass?
- [Chefs] Oui
- [Charlie Mitchell] Oui. With the octo?
- [Kayla] Oui
- We have surprised a lot of guests and we've
overachieved a lot of ways that people didn't
expect the kind of meal or the experience.
Big dumb scoop.
That's a really good batch.
Damn girl, check you out.
They sent me their wine.
They trying to take me home tonight or what?
(laughing)
I want people to have a great meal
and feel that it was delicious,
but most importantly it's like, "Hey, I just,
I had a great time there."
Like, "We'll be back."
Next on four salmon.
- [Chefs] Oui
- You ready for it?
- Oui Chef
- Alright
You know, I think that is what we try to create
and that's why we don't want to be too stuffy
and we want to be a little bit more laid
back and play a little bit louder music
and have a little bit more fun and smile a little bit more,
so that people leave here and they're like, you know,
they had a sick time.