- Is the meat gonna be cooked in time?
Is the rice gonna be cooked in time?
What am I supposed to do?
How am I supposed to get this done?
It's just like, man how am I gonna pull this off?
(jazzy music)
- What's up everybody, I'm Chef Marcus Samuelsson
and right now you're at Red Rooster in Harlem.
Today's all about family meal,
which is also the one meal that you can never ever ever
order in any restaurant.
Family meal is this hidden little secret.
Cooks, servers, bartenders, managers,
everybody sitting together, everybody eating,
it is an opportunity for us to see each other as a family.
I thought it would be challenging
to have Tiffany take on the challenge with family meal.
Show us who you are, get a chance to perform.
Let's go meet Tiffany in the kitchen.
Hey Tiffany how are you?
- Hey Chef, how are you?
- So today you gotta make family meal.
- Okay.
Uh, what, okay!
You can't really say no to Marcus, so.
- [Marcus] You ready?
- I am ready.
- [Marcus] It better be delicious.
- It will be.
- I don't wanna see any sweet technical dessert.
Today has nothing to do with pastry.
- No.
- Good luck.
- I hope you like it.
- And I'm gonna rate you, I'm rooting for you.
- Thank you.
- But if it's not good, I'm gonna let you know.
- [Tiffany] I know you will.
- Okay, cool good luck.
- Thank you.
So when Marcus told me that I was making family meal today
I was just like, oh my goodness, what am I gonna do?
It was definitely a lot of pressure
because I have been doing pastries for about 13 years,
I do not cook, I'm pretty much a home cook.
- One of Rooster's biggest assets
and any restaurants assets is the creative staff.
Everyone that works in a restaurant is creative.
In so many ways do we get a chance
to showcase that here because of family meal.
- So I decided to use rice and beans
because they had kidney beans already prepared.
I go inside the protein walk in to see
what protein is available, we have some goat meat.
I was like, you can't make goat unless it's curry goat.
There's no other way to make goat.
So when I went into the produce fridge now
to see what vegetable I can use
I saw that there was some shredded cabbage,
that's how I came up with the process.
Curry goat with steamed cabbage, rice and peas,
and festival, which is a fry bread.
- So I was really, really nervous for Tiffany.
That wasn't a challenge at all.
I wish I could have done something more difficult you know,
but that's the beautiful thing with cooking.
Sometimes you need a lot of time and planning
and sometimes just whipping something up is the best way.
I think people are really rooting for her,
that they want her to do really well.
- My favorite family meal here?
- [Cameraman] Yeah who makes the best?
- Who makes the best?
Chef Ed.
- Yeah Ed does good!
- I love him the best, he does right.
Love southern food.
- We're also waiting for Chef Tiffany, so I don't know.
- Yes, we'll compare and then we'll know exactly.
- [Cameraman] Are you excited for Tiffany's family meal?
- Oh very excited for her family meal.
I haven't had West Indian, Jamaican food in forever.
To have her make it, oh man!
- And Jamie's also an example of
I didn't know she was cooking, so she came in
and did family meal for us and then we actually started
to put on the Latin night, we started to put
Jamie's dishes on the menu.
- Family meal really shows the best of a restaurant
and why I love to be a restaurant worker so much.
We treat the meal just like we would cook for a guest,
and our audience at that moment is our staff.
- There's a lot of pressure.
So I'm a little nervous because I don't know
what people are gonna expect, but I hope they enjoy it
as much as I'm enjoying making it for them.
I learned to make all these dishes from my grandmother.
Her name is Hope Lynn Robinson,
and she passed away last week, so she's the reason why
I decided to make this meal and I said one day
I'm gonna perfect these dishes
and I'm gonna be famous for it and look at me now!
- I mean Rooster is really la familia
and the fact that Tiffany's such a loved team member
'cause she works hard and she's on everybody all the time,
but they also know because she has
the best interest of the food.
- For the curry goat, typically when I make it
I like to marinate my meat for about two or three days,
I only was able to marinate it for literally five minutes
and then I had to cook it and then I'm like,
man goat takes about three hours.
So I had to just turn the oven up,
all the way up to 500 degrees, boil it for 30 minutes,
pop it in the oven just so it can cook in time.
The rice and peas I would normally use a dry coconut
and make my own coconut milk, but again because I didn't
have any dry coconut in house I just used
canned coconut milk so I can be able
to meet the time frame for family meal.
So as I'm in the process of preparing,
I'm almost done, everything is on time,
behold, Marcus walks in the kitchen.
- See what I got here?
- What's that, oh, Meyer's Rum?
What are you gonna do with that?
- You know we have to add one more thing for you.
- Okay.
- So you're ready to serve right?
- Yes.
- You know what we need?
Because it's pastry, we need a good old
Jamaican rum cake for staff as well.
- Okay.
- Can you do that?
We wanna see savory and something sweet.
- Okay, you got it.
So I need to work on something sweet, alright.
- Fast, go, go, go go go go.
- [Tiffany] What am I gonna do, what am I gonna do?
- Tiffany was a little bit surprised
when I hand her a bottle of rum,
but like any good Jamaican she knew what to do.
- I'm gonna see what kind of cake batter
that I have already pre-made.
(dramatic drum music)
Alright so I have some vanilla cupcake mix
I'm just gonna turn this into a quick and easy rum cake.
That's all I can do right now.
I'm just like, what am I supposed to do?
How am I supposed to get this done?
So I literally have to think off the top of my head
how am I gonna pull this off?
Pass me the rum.
That's how you think on your toes.
Gotta be quick.
Put a little in here.
Put a little rum into the cupcake batter.
It's not the right way, but it will do.
At this point it's a team effort now.
So right now we have about an hour
and the cupcakes will take about 10 minutes.
I'll just bake them, pop them in the freezer,
cool them down, icing it real quick.
The oven at 400 degrees is making
everything cook really fast so that's what's
saving me right now.
So I'm just gonna make some vanilla whipped cream
and I'm gonna run and get some cream from the fridge.
Be back.
Ooh sorry!
Yo make me a fruit salad!
It's definitely a lot of pressure making family meal
because to cook for 50 people and you don't know
what the response or the reaction is going to be,
but fortunately a lot of people here
were very excited for me to make family meal
because they do like my desserts
and then the fact that I have a Jamaican background
and then we have a lot of people from the Caribbean
they're just like, ooh Caribbean food,
something different than what they usually,
usually having for family meal.
Making family meal, making sure I'm set up in time,
I was a little stressed out a little bit.
I was just like, man how am I gonna pull this off?
So when I was serving family meal I was so in my head,
I was like, oh my gosh am I gonna do a good job?
Is the meat gonna be cooked in time?
Is the rice gonna be cooked in time?
I hope everything tastes good.
I was really, really paranoid.
- Her food is amazing.
She's taking the number one spot right now.
I need somebody to create another challenge.
So far she took my spot.
- We definitely have to change the menu by the way.
Two, three of these things, that cabbage is gonna come on,
the goat is coming on, she's taking over.
Yeah she's taking over.
- Everyone I noticed was taking seconds
and coming up for thirds and the reaction
and the responses is really good, really positive.
- What I think is amazing about today
is that Tiffany worked really, really hard for this.
How did the meal come out?
(clapping and cheering)
Nice.
Good job.
Family meal is also a moment to come together.
We can start seeing each other;
whether we work back of the house, or front of the house,
la familia, you have an opportunity
to really support one another because I bet you
it's not one of you that is not going through
so I think that's amazing.
(clapping)
- When Marcus told me that I did a good job
I was like, ah it was so amazing.
It was like a sigh of relief.
I'm like, okay, he enjoys eating what I make,
he liked it.
- I feel like a proud parent.
I was nervous the whole time, but she did such a good job.
Almost too good, I'm like wow, she showed all the cooks.
A restaurant that has great family meal
will have amazing vibe and culture
and it starts with family meal.
(chill music)
(upbeat music)