we're just a restaurant that happens to
be kosher and i consider ourselves as
one of the top small houses here in new
york
we're gonna get ready our uh famous
pastrami this is the briskets we use
here at
the smokehouse and this is gonna be done
for our pastrami as well
most of this is a source from the
midwest
uh brought to here see how it's like a
nice fat cap
if you look look at the marbling as well
we're going to talk about
what goes in our pastrami brine and what
does not go in our pastrami brine
the pastrami essentially is a rough
pastrami is not a piece of meat it's a
coriander black pepper based rub that
you put on the meat once the meat is
done to pickle
you got our pink salt over here and this
sort of ensures that no bacteria
checks the meat here's sugar we got our
fresh
garlic here some honey here we have a
blend of spices which obviously
you know it's coriander based grinded
black pepper
pastrami is so big in new york when they
came over from europe a lot of the
jewish people
you know they opened up the delis that
was an affordable way of you know people
to eat
brisket will go in here and see you in
two weeks
so once the pastrami is done curing
after two weeks this is what it'll look
like pretty much
so this is what just went in and this is
something that's gonna look like that
has been pickled for two weeks
we'll come back after a week and a half
we'll start to check the briskets
um at that point already it's pretty
much pickled as they say so
let it dry overnight i will go ahead and
rub the meat and we'll put in the smoker
again anywhere from 12 to 18 hour cook
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you're pretty much curing it sort of to
to preserve it
and then you're making that piece of
meat and something so delicious almost
like a
mommy in its own version pretty much so
when you take the
texas style then you take the juice and
the deli when you combine those two it's
just
getting a phenomenal amazing product and
just
something that people obsess with
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so pretty much we come in the morning we
start the fires every sunday morning for
the rest of the whole week
this here is our wood room you know
being that in new york we have to have a
fire rated proof room
so every week our little delivery will
come in calm down the chute
and go straight into here we'll put it
in every week so i'll take some small
small pieces this way it's easy to catch
and then i'll look for some nice pieces
as well something that's not too heavy
versus something that's that's more more
wet pretty much we're doing our standard
building like a house almost so what
we're doing
as far as a fire starter we got we got
plenty
so this is pretty much our extra uh
paper that we used to wrap our
i know the brisket so this is a perfect
start of fire it's oily it's greasy
we're doing we're using a blend of woods
here you know here on the east coast
it's uh
hard to get just post though for only
cherry or woods that
i would ideally love to use so we have a
mix of like you know it's cherry it's
oak it's hickory
ash blended woods here on the east coast
essentially the fire starts on the
bottom here we'll go into the back
of the smoker come out and around and
convect all around the smoker
i do tend to see a difference when i'm
cooking on an offset for what i'm
cooking
in that but it gives out a phenomenal
product and allows us pretty much in a
small kitchen to
do a large quantity of meat
this here is a kokoshi brisket if you
see over here the symbol
the the place that certifies it in
kosher there's something called glot and
when it comes to meat and that's sort of
the highest level
people who are orthodox generally only
eat glot what it means is pretty much
that that the
the lungs are pure and there are no you
know holes at all in the lungs and it's
just a pure pure uh
healthy animal i would say probably from
every 100 uh steer
probably 30 of them are good and it's
not that the other ones are bad it's
just you know our requirements that the
animal can't be injured can't be sick
you know we just have a small ratio of
what we could slaughter
so being that you know we can't use poor
corkis and koshers so it forces us to
to use brisket in innovative ways in
other dishes
a few of the ways that we use our
brisket it's whether it's our sliced
brisket
whether it's our chopped brisket our
pulley sandwich our pulp leaf tacos
our pulbee fries or it's our pastrami
and you know it goes in our beans as
well
so pretty much we're getting a bunch of
dishes that we're getting from the same
cut with me
so right over here you know as you see
i'm squaring off the brisket this is
going to be used for
full beef you know because we can't use
a pork pork isn't a
kosher this is our rub over here which
is pretty much uh
salt pepper and paprika is what it is
there's no sugar no onion or garlic
powder we really want the beef you know
we have this beautiful piece of brisket
that we really want it to shine first
and foremost this is what we want to do
since in kosher we have the salting
process once the meat's uh
slaughtered and deveined by default our
meats happen to be much more saltier you
know
so we automatically have to compensate
in our rubs
you know we are a kosher restaurant
we're under the okay kosher
certifications obviously besides for
having a mashiach you know someone who
supervises at all times
you know while it's open we also have
the actual head rabbi usually a couple
of times a week
every package is cryo-packed it's got a
label and a lot of times it has even
inside
under the cryo pack there are more
labels but besides the meat we're also
going to check all ingredients and we're
going to see that
every ingredient is is up to our
standards of what we require
and we're going to verify that all those
things are being done on a daily basis
kosher barbecue it's not that common you
know i can't just order
my meat and expect to come at a specific
time or specific cuts
you know based on kosher holidays or
other times or
cuts that aren't available or the effect
that you're limited in the vendors or
like price increases
in fact we're paying so so much for meat
and we're you know that you know our
food cost
will be higher than any other uh kosher
restaurant when it comes to food cost
these are lime ribs you can see
nice and fatty over the years we've
learned that we can't only smoke brisket
and shores
we need to have other items as well
generally when you smoke land
it takes a ton of that gaminess away
that you would have on lamb
you know it's delicious but super super
super fatty for some people it's like
it isn't a common item you know poor
crips is an item that they're used to
having
so it's something that they really enjoy
alarm ribs
i think part of my obsession with
barbecue is the fact that i never really
you know had non-kosher barbecue didn't
know what it tastes like
and we heard of this guy his name is ari
white known as the wandering q
and he was the first kosher barbecue
pop-up
i got obsessed with the art of
wood-fired cooking over the years we
sort of you know we won brisket king
2016.
we won rip king as well we were
fortunate enough you know to cook with
aaron franklin in austin he cooked us
some
kosher briskets hung out with him and
daniel vaughn it's been a crazy crazy
ride
these are our beef shore ribs aka dino
ribs as well
um we probably sell out of these almost
every day we don't need this membrane in
the back where they're not gonna do us
any good as far as the lamb it's more of
a unique flavor
you know it's fatty as well i'm much
much much more unique this is just in
terms of beef you know
all that richness you just don't get
with lamb
it's our most expensive item but it's
our least
money making item because it's just a
super expensive cut
there's only six of these per steer so
this is served by the pound each rack
here has three bones
we'll generally will cut out the bone in
the middle and we'll turn this into
two pieces this way it usually comes out
between a pound and a half two pounds
per order same rub as the brisket
as our back is our lime ribs oh these
will cook for like
8 to 12 hours at least so the burn dance
so we have our whole brisket
that we smoke once that brisket is done
we will take off the second cut
the fatty part on top that we had shown
earlier it's our house
barbecue sauce that's obviously very
it's a tomato based
sweet sauce is what it is a lot of
ketchup tomato paste
honey sugar molasses mix that up
this is really an item you know for
everyone really you like sauce
and like stuff that's extra smoky and
this will go back in the smoker for
another uh another two hours in the
smoker
it'll go back so we get crispy sweet
sweet extra smoky
this actually item was a mistake on the
menu i was hungry one day
and i wanted to make a new item so we
came up with our
version of the smoked fried chicken
sandwich and this is probably our
biggest
seller on the menu and we use obviously
thaw here because we believe in thai
over breast so much more moist and
flavorful you know a lot of people why
they don't like thai because they're
usually eating the gristle
part of our process that will pretty
much remove that pretty much a rub for
the chicken is a it's the mixture
between the salt pepper paprika
brown sugar cayenne garlic onion i saw a
video
of a really good fried chicken sandwich
on youtube i couldn't remember what
you know what i said let me try my own
version of a fried chicken sandwich and
that day the fried chicken sandwich
pretty much was born
we'll pretty much smoke it um three
quarters of the way through
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okay so
here we have our seasoned flour so
obviously being that we're
kosher you know we can't use any
buttermilk any dairy so we actually use
coconut milk
we don't go too crazy with our flour
seasoning because we have so much
flavor already from the smoke itself
because the smoke gives it another
element of flavor
that you know you really don't get in
other places
look at that it's beautiful it's a
really short short fry
really finished with a little bit of
horseradish mayo a pickle
a little bit of hot sauce that we make
in house
that's our biggest selling sandwich by
far and away more than any other
sandwich
so we're in the afternoon now and we're
pretty much to get ready for dinner
we got one pulled beef sandwich and i
have found a brisket fatty
amalos let's go as well if you want to
see this one i'll take you over in a
minute okay
we're gonna start pulling out meats out
of the smokers
we're not going by by a thermometer or
really going by how it feels
and when you literally when you press
you know the meat over here it literally
if i wanted to i could literally press
right through you see that
right through
you know i'm fortunate enough that i'm
able to do what i love and it provides a
living for my family and i'm able to
bless them to that and to work here and
we're close to home it's amazing we
happen to be
kosher barbecue but we have plenty of
people who come in that aren't kosher
and say this is like one of the best
barbecues i've ever had
new york should be the barbecue whatever
you want to do we're not tied or
grandfathered in to a uh you know
specific region of barbecue we're free
to do whatever we want
for example being that we're jewish so
we sort of you know dwindled in like the
deli in the pastrami style
i think anybody is in the food industry
is nuts you know to work 80 hours a week
to miss
all their family holidays that you
factor in you know
the bbq version of it which is pretty
much just which is an overnight
business that's like as important as you
know during the day
so the fact that you're in that business
you're nuts
but i think the fact that you know one
of the reasons why we're here today and
why we have that name is
just because all that you know
meticulous craziness
anthony bourdain was saying he said
barbecue may not be the road to world
peace but it's a start and that's the
truth
people go to texas the franklins the
louis millers
or to whatever these places these all
these uh these meccas
it just makes them happy