(upbeat Latin music) - So we got this
beautiful lamb from Virginia.
This one is very local.
This is Nelson, this is the strongest arms
in the restaurant, so he's going to break down the lamb.
He does that faster.
He does like, boom, boom, boom, boom, done.
All this process takes us four days.
We try to get all the proteins broken down in the morning.
Our deadline is when the family meal is out,
we should be finished with all the proteins.
We use the whole animal because sometimes
we use the tongues to do some tacos for end of night.
- Lamb terrine definitely is one of the signatures,
also will never change, it will be always in the menu.
It's a lot, but the way that we do things here,
how we process everything,
is almost from scratch, everything.
We don't get from the purveyors,
everything weighed, cut down, portion sized.
We make everything in house, so it's a lot of prep,
it's a lot of long process.
- The way the dish is built,
you will see like a small rectangle,
but that little rectangle takes like four to five days
to get into your plate.
You can get things from the neck, from the leg,
from the shoulder, even from the loins.
(knife thudding)
- So we save all the bones for stock.
Once a week, I break down three lambs
that get us through the whole week.
- We look like tough people doing this so we like it.
When somebody wants to take my daughter out,
I'm going to have one of these at home.
Oh, I'm going to show him
that I can butcher a lamb, just in case.
(knife thwacks) (bone cracks)
So now we are going to brine it.
It's going to be in the brine for 48 hours
before we put it into the oven.
- Here we can have like the entire lamb,
entire suckling pigs, the entire fishes,
entire tuna, entire king crabs.
- So this has been brining for two days.
We're going to cook some.
You can see how it absorbed the color of the wine.
So we put around three legs in each hotel pan.
Then we add a little bit of the juice from the brine.
Then the next step is going to be, cook them
for four to four-and-a-half hours.
(upbeat Latin music)
(oil sizzling)
(indistinct conversation)
- We are in Washington, D.C. at Imperfecto,
that is this restaurant that is Latino American
Mediterranean fusion.
- This is the first delivery of the day.
This is our live king crab from Norway.
We're going to use this for our buñuelo on the chef's table.
It's nice. It's very nice.
So now we are going to steam it here in the oven.
So this is the kampachi for our chef's table.
It's a very beautiful fish.
This fish is just for chef's table.
- The kampachi is very important in that menu
at the chef's table for several reasons.
One is the way that we source the fish,
that is straight from Japan.
It's the highest quality you can get.
- So the best way you can be gentle
with the fish is scaling it with your knife.
You need to learn how to put the angle of the knife
so that way you don't get into the flesh,
but also you are being gentle enough to not push too hard.
Because of the volume we do,
we cannot process all the Lubinas we get this way.
We need to get them scaled and gutted.
(steady bass beat music) How are you, Kelvin?
- Yes, Chef.
- He has been with us for about six months now.
He has been great to work with.
- So I've got this beautiful fish.
I'm trying to get there.
He just does it so perfectly.
He wants it perfect, less touch, less bruising,
the flesh to be perfect.
When you cook it, it just stays intact and just
once you cut it, you have that beautiful...just
sliced right through.
Yeah, a lot of his dishes that he serves are in his head.
No, he's a f****** killer. (laughs)
- But this is the last thing I teach to the sous chef.
I need to get some vacation sometimes,
(Kelvin laughs)
so they need to put some work. - Chef!
- This I learned practicing.
Honestly, I saw a book of the fish butchery
and when I was in Mexico I started buying fish for my house.
So I started doing it at home.
So I start aging the fish in my fridge.
My wife was not very happy.
I had a good time.
And then when I got here I wanted
to process all the fish like this.
But it's impossible.
We do like 60 pounds of branzino a week.
You cannot make it happen for that amount of people.
We cook it very gentle and then we blend it with
the fish stock and umeboshi paste.
For this one we do up to 48 people per night.
When we're performing the chef's table outside,
we can make 230, 250 people in summer.
Now brine for 20 minutes.
The most important thing here is that this kills bacteria.
- Sometimes when you come to Imperfecto,
you come once and probably you will not go for the tasting.
So you go à la carte. (thoughtful string music)
So you have that experience.
You can order the most simple thing
of things that you understand.
And then we have the chef's table.
That is different because it's three hours.
I'm behind that table taking care
of that table for the entire experience.
When we start the menu as a first course, it's king crab.
That comes live and we, you know, we cook it.
- I never worked with the king crab live until here.
This dish is only for chef table because it's super pricey.
This beautiful table is what we call the chef's table.
So we cook on this side for this group of people.
This makes me happy for sure.
Like a restaurant, when it's full,
at least for me it's like you can perceive
the heartbeats of the restaurant.
We cook this on Thursdays
and we serve the first seating on Friday.
So during service, we will mix
with the avocado, jalapenos, cucumbers.
- The crab dish has probably 25 movements just to make one.
So multiply that for 12.
- This is the king crab we just cleaned.
Chef Nelson has been working very hard.
That's our tomatillo burnt sauce.
The buñuelo.
This is the actual first dish for the chef's table.
(high-energy music) So he's prepping
our agnolotti.
That prep is for our tasting menu.
That one is a work actually from Chef Kelvin.
- It is 1PM.
The protein boys are proteining.
I'm over here just flinging out this pasta.
It's going to be agnolotti.
This is my baby, I made it.
Like people don't really expect a pasta on the menu itself
'cause you're coming in looking for
Latin flavors, Mediterranean flavors.
But the thing is, it's like, if you can concentrate
all those flavors inside something so delicate,
then why not, right?
You know what I'm saying? (laughs)
What I came up with was a confit baby fennel
with Morita chiles, olives, garlic, rosemary, olive oil,
and just let it confit for a while.
I love the high volume at that pace that it is right now,
but I also like the intricate fine dining,
like f****** 30 hours just to make one little sauce.
And that's what it's about, right?
You pour all your passion, your love,
everything into that one little thing.
So right now we're just gonna let 'em sit for a little bit.
Get ready.
Then after that we're just done.
Just slide 'em on in right there. Boop.
- Okay, now that we put the kampachi in the brine,
we let it sit for about 45 minutes
and we build all the kombu wrapping.
Come here, Chef.
Try to take out all the excess water
and then you put the belly down.
- It's really intense.
The minor detail is what makes it that exclusive.
Like that much time and effort and love
that you put into that one piece of protein
is what makes it so good, right?
- It's beautiful.
- Oh yes, chef. Sorry.
(Rene and Kelvin laugh)
- Chef Kelvin is nervous.
- [Kelvin] Definitely.
- Take it to the walk-in for 24 hours, one day.
(high-energy music) So now that we got
the fish aged and ready,
the skin is dry, so it's ready for service.
So we start doing little scores.
Now it's ready.
Just put some olive oil.
(blowtorch hissing)
(fish skin crackling)
Now we put it into the oven for 30 seconds.
Because we put so much effort and work in this fish,
we want to touch it as gentle as possible.
So we just leave it for 30 seconds
just to bring a little bit more of temperature to the center
and then we start prepping the rest of the dish.
An avocado slice and a very special ponzu.
We just dress it with a little dashi.
- My vision was we need to open the best restaurant ever.
I'm crazy to create those kind of things.
This is the opportunity.
We have a space.
So try to do it just in that small space
because we create, create
different things, different things.
- Put also the piece we did with the livers.
(high-energy music)
That's pretty simple.
So this is our Ibérico suckling pig.
We got regular suckling from here,
domestic from the United States.
And this one is off the menu.
I take all the legs, all the shoulders and the loin out.
- Yeah, I have been working with suckling pigs
probably 20 years, something like that.
- What we always try to do is transform whole animals.
We're going to separate all the meat
from the bones and then cover it in the wrap.
We cook overnight.
- Then we marinate it for several hours
and we put it to sous vide.
We cook in a low temperature for probably 12 to 14 hours
and then we just roast it on the oven until, you know,
the skin is very orange, crispy and juicy and all of that.
- Now what I want to do is
to be super, super close to the bones,
but once you understand better how to clean it,
where the muscles were, you get a better understanding
of how to cook them.
So these are the bones that we use for the consommé.
So after we butcher everything, we put the bones to roast.
So Nelson got the rest of the pieces.
So he's going to put them to cure.
- The beauty of those suckling pigs is the texture.
They are very young.
So it's like a milky flavor in the meat.
(upbeat Latin music)
- This suckling pig is a little bigger
than the Ibérico we did earlier.
It's the same process.
Geraldo is going to do right now is take all the bones out
so that way we can have a very nice kind of roll.
It's very sticky.
All the gelatin of the bones is going to make it
like glue back.
This is our regular suckling pig.
So after all the process that we cook it overnight,
we cool it down very quick in ice.
So for service we put the oven in steaming,
put all the heat back.
It's going to take like around 25 minutes.
These are the loins.
These ones we don't need to take any bone.
We just roast it in the oven directly
until they get golden brown.
Then we take all the butcher twine off.
It's ready for service.
(thoughtful string music) Right now, it's 3:30,
all the line cooks are here already.
We're about to get family meal.
The guys are going to start setting up the lines
and start getting ready for service.
Going to start setting the chef's table.
So Paris, she's setting up the cold station.
We are a little bit ahead with the tuna.
Everything of the higher volume, whatever we do here,
whether we do it for the private parties,
is coming out from here.
The cold station, the line, and the pastry area.
So this is the lamb after we cook it.
It takes, right now got five hours.
Let's see if it's ready.
If not, we're going to give some more time.
This is my favorite thing
because we used to cook this together with Chef Enrique
in Venezuela back in the days.
You can see that the wine keeps the color also
because of the temperature.
We cook it very, very slowly.
So that way the flesh keep kind of pink
but it's still super tender.
Basically just check if it's good.
Mm-hmm.
Now we pull all the bones out.
- Beautiful.
- We also keep the jus from the whole cooking process.
So then we reduce them to get like a jelly texture,
and that's how the terrine can come compact together.
So one whole lamb gives us about one terrine.
One whole terrine gives us around 70 orders.
The final step is going to be to add weight on it.
We leave it like this for 24 hours.
- The way that we present it,
people don't expect the textures.
They are very different.
So you have creaminess, but you have crispy.
You have sweet, sour, you have buttery flavor
from the mashed potato and everything combines.
It's very succulent.
That's the lamb.
- So it's five o'clock.
Kitchen is almost ready.
Finishing the last touches and I'm going to do
the prep shift with the guys and then coming back
to the prep shift in the kitchen as well.
How are you guys?
- [Other chefs] Good, Chef.
- For tonight, we're pretty good in service.
We still have one loin and two shoulders for the Ibérico.
- As always, as you know,
just keep the consistency in service and everything.
All of you are extremely professional.
(Chef Rene speaking foreign language)
(other chefs affirm)
(Chef Rene speaking foreign language)
- [Chef Enrique] The things that I try to pass,
at least for people like Rene,
like you have to improve everyday, no matter what.
(Chef Rene speaking foreign language)
- [Chef Enrique] So you come in and you,
okay, this is a super fancy restaurant,
but then it's loud, fun, like very casual.
So that sometimes we call this like fine casual.
- We make it happen. (laughs)
(thoughtful string music)
(Chef Rene speaking foreign language)
(other chefs affirm)
- People don't understand the meaning of imperfection.
But that's the beauty of something, when it's imperfect.
That's the beauty of it.
Because you will never achieve perfection.
But if you have the strength to pursue perfection,
knowing that you will never achieve that,
that's a great path.
Because everyday, everything you make can be better.
(blowtorch hissing)
(Chef Rene speaking foreign language)
(other chefs affirm)
- So, and that's my path all the time.
That's the things that I try to pass
at least for people like Rene.
Like you have to improve every day, no matter what you do.
(thoughtful string music)