(light music)
- When I think about Scandinavian food
I think about the purity of it.
To keeping everything true to its nature.
It's more about highlighting what the land is giving us.
And then using simple techniques to preserve it.
Everything from curing, brining, smoking.
All of those flavor profiles are coming more than spices.
(light music)
Today is a very crazy day.
We are fully booked everywhere.
It's all hands on deck.
This is prime time.
Okay, really hot.
You guys are good?
- Oh yeah.
- Are you good, Leslie?
Yeah?
I'm gonna make the tuile for the Arctic bird's nest.
Pastry has always been very close to my heart.
It's what I've been doing for the last 20 years of my life.
I always believe that the finishing touch of a meal
could either help it, or completely destroy it, so...
We have people that travel here for this dessert
and it's helped my career in so many ways, creating this.
I would think it got me my green card.
Doing some cocoa powder.
Just to get a little bit more of a natural feel.
All right, now we're gonna bake it.
Hot, sorry.
I moved to New York in 2010.
I came on board as a pastry chef.
It was supposed to be for a year.
2014, I got the opportunity to take over as head chef.
Not a position that I was really comfortable in or taking.
It was only supposed to be temporary.
So this is the egg.
This is the base of it.
We mold the goat cheese parfait,
scoop out the center.
So in the middle of it we're filling it with
a sea buckthorn curd.
Every portion is three eggs.
Every week we can sell up to 100 portions of this.
My pastry department love me for this dish.
They were all asking, when are we gonna do just one egg?
One big egg instead of three small.
I said, maybe, and that maybe never happened.
That year, later on in October we received
our two Michelin stars.
I'm still pastry chef and I'm still
the head chef of the kitchen but it was
an amazing opportunity to be able to do both.
So this is dark chocolate.
We just need very, very little
and then we cover them just to make
them look a little bit more real.
So we have our little eggs.
That's about it.
(light music)
Everyone always wonders why I put snow on it.
I always say in the Arctic countries or in Sweden,
it's still snowing when the baby birds are being born.
All right, time is running away.
It's 11:00 and service is about to start
and I need to check in on everyone
to make sure that they're ready.
So let's go up.
How many are they?
- [Cook] 62.
- 62, all you do is run.
We have a big lunch today.
80 people, so the salad has to go out
and then it has to flip
and then it's time for main courses.
It has to go fast.
Banquet has to go fast.
People wanna get in and out.
(light music)
- Nine.
(kitchen chattering)
Nine, 10.
(light music)
Five.
- Finish off the last two, three.
The main course is out.
Now we gotta get dessert out.
It's a bit of a beast.
Talking 60, 80, 100 people.
They wanna eat in an hour, less sometimes
and you gotta make it happen.
This is our chocolate cake
that we do for lunch.
My grandmother's recipe.
It's one of those things that like even however good
it is, I can't really put a dish like this
on in the main dining room.
It has to be a little more intricate.
It's nice to have the opportunity over
in the big rooms.
What we don't use we dehydrate.
And we use it as the bottom of the bird's nest, as the soil.
So we're sending this out now
and then by three o'clock we have to switch
rooms because we have another 60 people coming in at 3:00.
It's a crazy day today.
Stay calm is the biggest tip.
As long as I don't hear anything break, I stay calm.
Lunch and dining room, over.
Starting fresh, starting prepping.
And we're back up for dinner again
in a couple of hours.
All right so, our live diver scallops from Maine
arrived this morning and I will bring them out.
Our trout came in this morning.
They all come very beautifully wrapped.
So we'll get a batch of these every day
that gets shucked for service.
(light music)
That is really sandy.
It is bringing the whole sea in.
Including a lot of little fishes.
We always get those.
(light music)
I remember the first time I hold one.
It pulsates and still beats.
Quite a cool feeling.
We just lightly cure this with some sugar and salt.
And take the skin off and that's all you have to do.
I think the best part with having
a restaurant that has so many different elements
in it is that you really do get experience
the whole range of cooking.
Everything from 100 people sit-down dinners, receptions.
To the dining room where it's more tweezer-friendly food.
I want everyone to look at a plate and go,
"It's almost too pretty to eat.
But I'm gonna eat it anyway.
Because it's gonna be amazing."
And you'll see on a lot of dishes
that you have a lot of nice colors, gelées.
A lot of components that are coming out of pastry
are bleeding into the kitchen more and more.
(light music)
All right, it's 4:20 and everything needs to get ready.
At 5:00 it's the call time
for everyone to be up here, on point,
on their stations.
We still have another 80 people in the banquet.
Full bar again.
There's no rest.
It's just go, go, go.
So we're doing our little potato chips
that we use for our caviar dish.
I think we use roughly like 50.
No, not 50 but maybe 20, 30 flowers per portion.
You'll see in the bottom of the dish
it's an egg and crème fraîche emulsion
on top of a small toasted brioche,
some Osetra Imperial Caviar.
I think it's one of the best dishes, ever.
I mean it's not a secret ingredient, you know.
Potato, fat, egg, caviar.
The idea is just to think outside of the box a little bit
and make it fancy.
It's 5:47 and everyone is on track.
So I can take a breath until the first ticket comes in.
Order in, two caviar followed by two beef.
(light music)
When you're in an environment like this
you never know what's gonna happen.
You can be doing your little thing
in the dining room kitchen
and then banquet gets slammed and you just have to
run out there and give them 10 minute of your time.
Let's go to banquet because I wanna check in on them.
They're the focus.
I've always prided myself to be able
to do everything, but I've scaled back a little bit.
(light music)
- The cod is searing.
Just keep an eye on that, there's a hotel pan next to it.
(light music)
- [Manager] I just need a wipe if you guys are standing.
- When I took over as the head chef I tried
to be the best at everything
and it almost killed me on the way.
A wise person told me that, you know,
you're supposed to be the conductor of the orchestra.
You don't have to be able to play every
single instrument perfectly.
You just have to know how to make the music.
- [Host] Five.
- I'll switch up.
All right, so we got through the worst push
in the banquet area, so now it's back into
the small kitchen again.
(light music)
Staying calm, even if you are in pain.
Like, try to look happy.
And I mean, you lead by example.
So nothing really good comes out of craziness
and screaming and things like that.
So I always try and focus on my inner self.
Of course, I have my moments as well.
But not as often.
(light music)