(dramatic music)
- Hawksmoor, in its bones, is a steakhouse
and the kind of culture that we've created here
is we've merged the UK and the US seamlessly.
The adrenaline of the excitement of the guests
and the team kind of pushes me through every day.
(upbeat music)
Morning, guys, doing good?
My day starts with people and product.
So first is checking on the team
and then doing the same for all of our products
and making sure that everything's to our standard.
(upbeat music)
So this is some meat that we've selected
from the delivery that just came in.
These are the cuts that we're gonna fabricate today.
A small percentage of the beef that we'll go through
here today at Hawksmoor.
First thing we're always thinking about here is beef.
So our beef supply is usually the first
to come through the door in the morning.
We check it in. We inspect it.
On a weekly basis, we go through a literal ton of beef,
where we try to utilize the whole carcass
as much as possible.
So we sell almost the whole cow.
Incredible amount of beef comes to these doors every day.
(knife clanging)
So this is Chef Paddy.
Sous chef here in charge of grill development,
steak development, everything beef and a master butcher.
- So this is a whole rump, off the bone,
so fresh out of our dry aging facility.
So the rump is the bum, basically.
It's a hardworking muscle
and top sirloin is what it's known as.
It's my personal favorite cut.
- [Matt] The rump steak is really important to our mission
as part of our sustainability mission.
And also with our UK roots,
being such a popular cut there for the Sunday roast,
it was really important to us to introduce the US to it
and show them how delicious that cut can be.
- Is we'll actually use this cut for our tartare dish.
- Paddy is here from the UK,
a long-time member of the Hawksmoor team
and he's the driving force behind all things beef
and grill at Hawksmoor.
Having someone with Paddy's skill,
how to train the staff, both front and back of the house
was really a big integral part in opening the restaurant.
And he's really allowed us to be as successful as we've been
in just being open for three months.
He's got his head around ounces now.
- Yeah, still getting to grips with Fahrenheit.
We track the dry aging of it.
So that we know that it's at that perfect sweet spot
of what we want in a Hawksmoor steak,
it's between 28 and 35.
I've just separated off what's known as the barrel,
the barrel cup from the D rump.
So now we're just gonna break down the D rump into steaks.
So this is a rump or top sirloin,
as known in the US on the menu.
12 ounces it's a fantastic steak.
(upbeat music)
- This is kind of a cut that many cultures use, right?
So, Brazilians, picanha.
In France they call it the culotte,
the rump cap in English,
and here we just call it delicious.
So this is the cut we primarily will use for tartare.
A huge reason why we chose rump is that
that chew to it and that strong beefy flavor,
the texture of the umami from the age incredible.
We're gonna put together a steak tartare
so we can make sure that the steak
is at the quality we need for service tonight.
We basically tasted every cut on the cow
and the rump outperformed everything else.
(upbeat music)
We hide the yolk.
So it's like a little bit of a surprise to the guests
when they cut it open.
Fantastic dish, on the menu tonight.
(upbeat music)
So at Hawksmoor we use a Turkish style of grill,
which is actually a replica
of the grill in our very first restaurant
and every restaurant since and is, you know,
part of the DNA of who we are.
So this is a beautiful lump with charcoal.
We get from Ecuador.
Huge chunks of wood, burns really, really hot,
really long time.
Amazing flavor.
- You basically wanna create some air pockets.
So there's enough oxygen to circulate
to help start the fire.
The quality of the charcoal, this is good.
I mean, it literally takes 30 seconds to light.
So there's no need for any chemicals or anything like that.
It's just pure, like fire and oxygen.
Just playing with the elements
and you really wanna nice dry charcoal.
And that's why it creates that crack.
It's the layers of woodwork and carbonades.
There's like air trapped in them.
It's a sign of good charcoal
when it starts to split like that.
(fire cracking)
- [Matt] Working with charcoal in New York is unique,
mostly due to the cost of building out a charcoal kitchen.
- What you do is you get the grill lit,
so that it's super hot.
And then you create your hotspots
to what your personal cooking style is.
So we'll always have one side ready to cook
and one side that's burning.
And then there's like a game of tetris
you're always moving from side to side
to play with what's best for the steaks at the time.
(upbeat music)
- Here in America,
we know we're in newer country
and we're starting to realize
and care a bit more about like what our animals eat.
In the UK they have a bit of a headstart on that.
They have ton of old world farming.
- Grass-fed is like,
kind of almost seen as a bit of a nouveau thing,
whereas in the UK, it's, you know,
it's what the majority of our cows are fed
and raised on grass.
(upbeat music)
- Rather than just taking exclusively porterhouses
out of the short loin, we take the whole thing.
Porterhouse will have the largest amount of filet,
probably our most popular sharing steak.
As you start to go a little bit further down the short loin,
you get to the t-bone and then as you get even further down,
you lose the filet totally.
Kind of get our bone-in strip out of this,
which I would say is my favorite steak on the menu.
It's beautiful bone on the side.
Excellent flavor.
Nice and thick.
What's your favorite Paddy?
- Of the three? - Yeah.
- Strip tenderloin. Yeah.
- We agree on that one.
- Yeah.
To be honest, my least favorite is porterhouse.
(Paddy chuckles)
I don't know if you wanna to use that or not but...
(both laughing)
Here's your bloody tadpole, chef.
This is the whole tenderloin
or filet as we'll know it in the UK.
Very lean piece of meat.
- What we do with the tenderloin here Hawksmoor
is quite unique.
Places would take just the center, cut barrel,
get filets, everything else goes.
For us we do full tenderloin utilization.
- So we're gonna break down the tenderloin
So we have the head which will be our shutter ground.
And then of course the tail
we'll butter fly and use as our skirlie.
And that's where you can see a bit
of our British culture coming in.
The skirlie is a Scottish dish traditionally,
hence the name comes from the sound
of the oats and the fat hitting the pan.
It makes that 'SKS' kind of sound.
And that's what we'll get.
Set it off for the cast iron.
And we'll make a call on how
many filets we can get out of that
before it starts to cut into the chateau,
in this case it's two.
And then what you're left with is a nice even chateau
that's got three pieces to it.
That's what makes a chateau,
a chateau where you have the end of the sense of barrel
and then the two side muscles.
And that'll go in our blackboard later.
(upbeat music)
- Our pastry program, I look at it as our secret weapon.
Carla is a pro, an amazing team,
an amazing variety of desserts.
You know, people come in just for a dessert.
It's really becoming a huge part of our identity here.
This is my, by far, my favorite morning snack,
maybe the maple tart neck and neck.
But... - Marple tart.
- Yeah, this is my favorite thing
to quality control in the morning.
Normally I'll be over here
and she just kind of leaves it on the corner,
gives me the look, that's when I know I can have it.
(upbeat music)
- So we're making the chocolate shells for the grand Rocher,
70% chocolate.
- Carla is gonna be making the grand Rocher,
which is one of our signature desserts.
It's inspired by her childhood favorite holiday dessert,
the Ferrero Rocher candy and this is her play on it
that we do in the restaurant.
(soft music)
- It's very important
that we try to do as thin as possible.
It's gonna be pretty hard to cut into them
if they're not thin.
(soft music)
This is definitely for me,
one of the perfect chocolates to have
in this time of the year, for sure,
it always in my house, always.
It's my guilty pleasure.
- So it's 12:00 PM.
We just finished butchery.
The grills are lit and now we're gonna start to get ready
for our daily steak test.
So Paddy we'll take one piece from every cut that comes in.
We taste it, we talk about it, we make notes
and if anything doesn't make the cut,
it doesn't make the menu.
(upbeat music)
- Quite a generous seasoning of Maldon sea salt,
'cause A, because we lose a little bit
on the bars as they fall through
but also the big heavy filets make for a great crust
and enable us to get that Maillard reaction going,
caramelization.
Flavor, it's texture and it's appearance as well.
But we don't want bar marks.
We want a nice even golden brown crust
through out our steaks.
Because the different steaks have different fat levels,
which will make for where and how long
you need to cook them.
So the heavier the fat, the quicker the char
cause there's a bigger conductor of heat
running through the meat.
Whereas something like a filet,
which has much, less fat, will take longer.
We can see how good our extracting system is
by how quickly it's going up,
so it looks like a lot of smoke.
They help spread my natural charcoal color.
- The main difference between cooking with gas
or cooking with charcoal is as the juices of the meat,
the fat is dripping onto the coal.
It's creating that bit of smoke,
which is kind of coming up and almost like glazing the meat
with a whole nother layer of flavor
and I almost call it our secret sauce here.
- You have to pay attention the whole time,
otherwise something can over-char or burn
and that is just no good,
We won't send it.
- [Producer] How many steaks have you cooked,
do you reckon?
- [Paddy] Since ever? - [Producer] Ever.
- Millions, millions.
I wouldn't be able to count as many.
- [Matt] The importance of taste testing each
and every steak is every cow is different.
Especially once we put something at the 35 days of age,
a lot of things can happen,
there's a lot of variables.
So we take one piece off of every subprimal
that comes in and test it.
And it's a real indicator
of what the rest of the beef is gonna taste like
and we can flag any issues.
(upbeat music)
- So let's start with this,
this is our...it's not on the menu yet.
It's the grass-fed, grass-finished bone-in rib chop.
Crack on and try a bit.
- This is the rib that we brought in this morning.
So this is a new cut from a new supplier.
First time we've actually tasted it.
35 days in the box, really good
and I think as more gets ready,
we'll start to see it on the menu.
- [Paddy] This is the boneless strip.
- Great texture, amazing flavor from the age.
that's a winner.
- Yeah.
- [Matt] It's absolutely essential
that we have the whole senior team in the kitchen
during the beef tasting.
So it's not just my opinion but it's the house opinion.
And also to help develop their pallets as chefs.
Well, now he needs to cut 10 times more meat,
than we did on camera.
So if we do 250 cover service in the restaurant,
220 covers come off of that grill.
- It's a two-person job.
- Yep.
- So now the meat's been prepped.
We're gonna send it back down into the fridge,
get everything weighed up and get ready for service.
(soft music)
- So now we're in our prep kitchen
and this is kind of the heartbeat of the restaurant,
where everything that happens behind the scenes
before it gets sent upstairs for service.
This is Nick, one of the Sous-Chefs on the grill.
So chef Nick here is weighing out all the stakes
for the service.
so these are all the large cuts that we sell by the ounce.
So they all get individually weighed,
packed up in peach paper
and labeled with the ounces as customers order
then we know which ones to identify from the drawer
and I make sure that everyone gets the stake
that they have picked.
(soft music)
So we're just gonna weigh out the chateaus
for tonight service.
Six will probably take us into the first two hours.
We'll most likely sell around 16 or 20 in the evening,
a chateau like this coming into 31 ounces,
because of no bone, it's about 10 ounces of meat per person,
plenty for three.
And then we have something here closer to 22 ounces.
This is a great steak for two
or one very hungry person.
Two reasons we weigh the steaks,
one for kind of our experience for the guests,
with the marking off of the chalkboard
and giving them that control
of how much beef they want to consume.
And for us, we can, you know,
manage our cost down to the ounce.
This is a count of all of the large format steaks
that we're gonna sell by the ounce,
that'll go on the blackboards.
We have the different ounces that are available
and then how many in each category
we have available for each service.
(soft music)
The sides that we do at Hawksmoor
are as important as the beef.
We wanna have kind of a rounded dining experience here,
where you don't just come in, eat steak and leave.
So here we have the Yorkshire pudding butter.
This is another kind of ceremonial act we do every night.
The butter needs to be prepared 24 hours in advance.
(soft music)
How do they look chef?
- Look okay actually, yeah.
- So you could see that beautiful rise,
that nice indent
and then you have that nice beautiful totally inside.
Yeah so we bake roughly 300 Yorkies
before the service every day.
They go with the potted beef.
So this is our potted beef,
What we do with all of our trim,
we confit them in beef fat
and then that gets kind of whipped together,
almost like a rillette.
Served in a little jar with Yorkies, bone marrow,
onion gravy on the side.
And just like another way
that we try to be really sustainable
and using everything that we have in the restaurant.
So this is a half an evenings of bone marrow.
We go through about 1500 pounds of bone marrow a week.
Bone marrow is in everything.
It's in our burger, it's in our oysters, it's in our sauces.
It's one of our favorite ingredients.
The goal of that center cut is just really
optimizing how much marrow meat is inside each bone.
Here you could just see it in there,
by taking the center cut of the bone,
you get that beautiful deep cup of bone marrow.
You could just slide it out like that.
So this is day two of the triple cooked chips.
Last night, the prep team steamed and shafted these,
from the shafting you get all these beautiful imperfections
in the potato and that's what's gonna get very, very crispy
and create the signature triple cooked chip.
(upbeat music)
So this is Mohamedou,
Mo has been with us since day one,
when we opened Hawksmoor
and his primary mission every day, is triple cooked chips.
So many different variables of how it can go sideways
but a real master of what he does.
Are you tired of chips? - No.
- Nah, never tired of chips.
Our triple cooked chips,
take three days from start to finish.
It's a labor of love
but when you see the guest enjoying it,
it's always worth it.
Here we do the triple cooked chips
but we also do a beef dripping fry.
And we have a clientele that remembers that flavor
and he's like, "I just can't put my finger on it."
And that's exactly what it is,
it's the original flavor of a McDonald's fry.
(soft music)
All right guys, three o'clock staff time.
(soft music)
Afternoon, guys. - [Group] Heeey!
- All right Mikey, let's hear it.
- We have 200 reservations for this evening.
- When the line staff arrives,
we have a briefing talk about last night.
What went well, what didn't?
Menu changes anything like that
and just kind of bring everyone together,
before we start the day.
(all clapping)
- All right, so great service guys.
- [Man] Yes chef.
- So everyone's outside, eating their family meal.
I'm just boxing off what I'm working on.
We cut all of the raw meat and fish
as close to the surface as possible,
starting to get to that intense part of the day,
race to the finish line.
This production is beginning.
We have a little over 70 employees at Hawksmoor.
This is the largest team I've managed as a chef.
We have a lot of legends in each department
and we're just really
trying to build something special here.
It's 4:45 on the dot.
We're doing our sauce check every day.
This is the last test, before we go into the service,
one, two, three, four, five, just shy of 20 here.
Creamed spinach is a big one.
- Yeah. - It's a staple here,
tasting it through meat sauces,
the view on the chicken.
Both are really good.
That one my favorite sauce.
If you don't feel the anchovy,
then you don't know you're eating,
too much anchovy in it overpowers what you're eating with.
Small window of perfection.
And then the chips.
Crunchy, nice acid from the malt vinegar,
great bunch of chips.
A little bit more salt on the tartare.
But everything else is great.
Here you can see all our single cuts for the service
and then in the bottom, is everything sold by the ounce.
Doors are open and the guests are gonna start to come in,
anytime. (soft music)
At 5:30 the curtain goes up,
lights go down in the dining room
and then it becomes all about the guest.
As the day transitions into service,
it becomes more of a conductor role.
So we have a bar, we have private dining,
which is huge and taking off.
And then we have the restaurant.
You know, we're kind of air traffic control
on the past making sure that we
are able to serve all three at the same time.
(soft music)
Beautiful porterhouse service plates.
(soft music)
So this is our cast iron steak,
taken from the tail end of the filet,
bone marrow squarely on top,
beautiful chiffonade of parsley, pinhead oats,
a little bit of sea salt ready for service.
Tonight we have around 220 on the books,
plus two private dining events booked
and then a full bar.
It's one of the beauties of being in an open kitchen
and standing in the dining room.
Is that you get to feel that energy of the clientele
as well as the full team, it's incredible.
(soft music)
So this is our bone-in rib chop,
nice T-bone and a big boy 40 ounce chateau.
(soft music)
It's a beautiful rib chop,
atlas carrots cooked with cider and mustard.
This is two sides of bone marrow, small table.
Night's almost through, quarter houses are gone,
ribs are almost gone.
Couple of big ones to sell.
(jazz music)
By the end of the service,
you know, it can be quite exhausting
but we're always quite enthusiastic and excited by the end
'cause it's just a huge accomplishment
what we do here every day.
I finished once the last check leaves,
it's around 10, 11 o'clock at night,
check out with the senior team
and then off to my next job with my son.
(soft music)
- Chef, eleven open menus. - [Man] VIP.
- And we're all in for the evening.
- All in, oui.
Boys all in.
- [Men] Yes chef. - [Man] Yes sir.
(soft music)