- So now we're stepping into our main kitchen.
The early moments of prep for the hotline
are happening over here.
Over here is where all of the
butchery happens for the restaurant.
He's doing right now, some strip steak for our skewers.
He's gonna be doing some swordfish, some fluke later on.
You'll see a lot of skewering.
We cook all of our entrees except for
the lamb shoulder on skewers.
We got some radishes.
These are marinated in harissa and then grilled.
- [Michael] Yeah, I mean, the thing about cooking
on ash or over charcoal is that like,
it's way better than anything else.
- Chef Rob is prepping some portobello mushrooms
for tonight.
They're gonna get lightly roasted just until they're tender
and then we're gonna clean 'em up
marinate them and get 'em on the grill for service.
- [Michael] You know, I grew up cooking,
thinking that if you wanted to be a professional chef
that you had to like, sous vide
and wrap things with like transglutaminase and chicken skin,
and while those things are fantastic
and the techniques are brilliant
and you can really achieve awesome, cool stuff,
you know, meat that is like marinated or ground
on a stick over charcoal.
And you've got the acid and the salt
and the spices and the smoke.
This is the way that people want to eat, you know?
And this is the way that so many
different kinds of people eat and share.
That's what we wanted to emulate in Philadelphia.
- [Michael] All right.
So, what have we got here, bro?
- [Colin] We got some day boat catch fluke
from Point Pleasant, New Jersey.
- I love it, I love it.
Collin is an amazing fish monger.
Everything is local.
Everything is day boat.
So it's like first thing in the morning
here at Zahav, we wanted to receive this fluke,
I want to get it on the menu tonight.
So we really have to like workshop it.
We have to break it down.
We gotta get it to Rosie and we got to
make it happen for service tonight.
- [Beau] This is Rosalino, Rosie for short,
he's our butcher here.
He's the best at butchering.
He's the fastest.
He always likes to brag how clean
the bones are after he's finished.
- [Michael] We are, you know
about an hour away from the shore in New Jersey.
Fluke is one of those things,
it's a treasure of New Jersey.
It is like certainly not found anywhere
on the coast of Israel, which is special for us
because we get to use things like spice,
fermented chilies, like schug and do like
sort of our take on this Palestinian dish kibbeh naye,
adding sumac onions, local onions actually too,
which are very good and really create
something that is, I guess, unique to us.
But if you were from any of those places
and you close your eyes and eat it
our idea is that it takes you home a little bit, right?
- Thank you.
- All right.
So we're gonna chop this up.
Let's get it together, let's taste it before noon.
All right?
- And Chef Beau, you know, his context to this food
is very personal as well.
So I think he understands it
and it's easy for us to bounce ideas.
It's easy for us to formulate these dishes together.
- So I think this is what the mise en place would look like
for this dish for service.
So we got salt.
This is a little cumin and all spice.
Some of this green freekeh, this is a little schug
It's our fermented spicy green chili, condiment
- Throw in more more more.
- You got some olive oil, lemon
- We need more freekeh
and traditionally this would have a ton
of onion in it, which would give it a lot of texture.
We're gonna be using the freekeh for that, and really like
knead the s*** out of it, okay?
You know, celebrating the conversions
of like 2000 years
of diasporic history with indigenous Palestinian cuisines
and just kind of shaking it up and sort of spitting it out.
That's to me, what is Israeli food is, you know
to say that it's only Jewish food
or kosher food is definitely wrong.
And to say that it's like Mediterranean
what the does that even mean?
That's like how many different kinds of cuisines.
All right.
So we're gonna finish
with a little of this Pennsylvania Armenian lav.
Now let's just do a dollop
on top to really irritate the traditionalists.
- Maybe a little finishing salt.
- Yeah.
We'll do a little, but it doesn't need much man,
that's delicious, bro.
Thank you.
So the lamb at Zahav, which I guess is
our signature dish is actually quite simple.
It's brined, it's smoked, it's confited in schmaltz.
And then it's glazed with pomegranate.
- A part of the lamb process is always happening.
I think the lamb never sleeps.
We're always making lamb stock, making lamb jew
grinding lambs, cooking lambs, brazing, glazing
it's always happening.
So these at this point have been brined for 24 hours.
We're gonna get them in the smoker
for about an hour and a half, two hours.
This is a small batch.
We are usually doing around 10 times this.
So usually in a dinner service
we'll go through around 30 whole lamb shoulders.
This is chef Joe.
He's one of our sous chefs here.
He's working the bread station tonight.
We work together for a long time.
He's definitely one of my closest friends
and trusted associates here at Zahav
- Absolutely. Thank you chef.
- This is our wood burning oven.
We call it a tabun.
We use it for dinner service just for the laffa bread.
- [Joe] So one of the first things I do when I get
into work is I light the tabun and I get that going.
And I gather all of my, all of my Israeli olive oil
and the fresh za'atar that we use as a topping
for our laffa. And then I immediately go
into mixing bread for the next day.
We mix it the day before, 'cause we want it
to proof which you know, allows the yeast to
kind of really develop those complex flavors
without developing too much gas.
So this will continue to spin and about every five minutes,
I'll come back and check on it in a 25 minute span
adding more water to achieve the hydration that we
that we're looking for in our dough.
- [Beau] So this is our laffa dough.
Erica makes this look really easy, but
if you see someone training on the bread station
this dough is very, very hydrated.
It's really wet.
It's not easy to work with.
When people start out mixing it
the balls do not look perfect like this
this feels not too wet, not too dry.
It's gonna obviously proof more before service.
Every guest is getting a laffa.
We do one laffa per two people.
It's really simple, but it's one
of the best things on the menu.
- [Joe] So I pulled my dough around three o'clock.
I let it proof one last time.
And then it's portioned into the balls.
Now I'm taking the balls and
as the ticket gets fired, I fire off a laffa to order
- The way that you're introduced to this restaurant
and dining at Zahav is by getting fresh laffa, which is
like a Iraqi-style pita slathered with olive oil and za'atar
a bunch of different salatim and hummus.
The reality is making laffa perfectly every single day
probably the most challenging thing to do.
We gotta get moving, right?
We gotta make our hummus right now, our hummus
we take very, very seriously.
We've got chickpeas that are like totally shot out, really
really, really soft and we've cooked them and then
we've pressed them overnight to drain out all the water.
So it's like chickpea concentrate right.
Now we also cook them with baking soda too.
So the skin's loosen up.
We've got our tehina, alright.
Sesame paste that we whip with garlic lemon and
a s***load of ice water.
So it gets fluffy.
And then we've got salt that we grind up and
fresh ground cumin.
So we're just gonna spin it.
I was born in a town called Ganei Yehuda
which is like a tiny little town that nobody's ever heard
of in Israel.
The motor like tempers it and warms it.
We don't want cold hummus that's bad, bad, bad, bad.
So we're gonna do this like 10 more times
throughout the morning and then we get it chilled.
And then during service, we spin it again every 30 minutes
or so we've got fresh hummus.
I didn't think I was gonna cook Israeli food.
I wanted to cook European food or whatever.
And then I don't know, just at a certain point, I was like
there is this misunderstanding of Israeli cuisine
and I just wanted to show people what it was about.
- So this is chef Natasha, my co-chef here.
This is our pastry and production kitchen.
So a lot of the major projects happen here
early in the morning.
A lot of the things that make Zahav, what it is.
- [Natasha] Here is our famous Moroccan carrot salad.
We're also using our homemade preserved lemons
which we're preserving for like 30 days, at least every day
we're mixing so many like probably like 20 to 30 pounds.
of each of the salads.
- [Beau] This twice-cooked eggplant is probably
my favorite salad. It's really, really, really delicious.
- So yeah, we making our knafeh pies.
Our version has a dark chocolate filling.
We also put a little bit
of our secret ingredient, labneh, for that savory note.
And I also have already
some of them done nice, beautiful, and golden.
We're just gonna put our syrup
which made out of the orange blossom water.
It soaks up.
It makes it crispy, very shiny top.
As soon as service starts, my job is done.
I'm leaving and now Beau will be
in charge of all of the service
doing all of the amazing stuff that you guys actually see
during the dining.
- All right, so it's right around 3:15.
We're just finishing up prep.
We've got skewers being skewered over here.
We do a little clean and resetting
of the kitchen and then the cooks are gonna start pulling
out all their mise en place for service
and getting ready to go.
And we're gonna be doing line checks soon.
All right.
So these have been in for about an hour and a half.
We're gonna take 'em out now, get 'em
in some schmaltz and we're gonna get them
confiting in the oven.
We make sure to dump this really nice rendered
smokey lamb fat in there.
- [Michael] We cook 50 whole lamb shoulders a day.
I don't know, emotionally.
I think people like stews or braised meat.
I feel like regardless of where you sort of come from
or your background, there is this iconic family
style shared pot-roasty situation that you can relate to.
I don't know.
Everybody loves it.
We could never really take it off the menu.
- [Beau] So these are gonna go in the oven
for about four hours.
We're gonna pull 'em out.
Cool. 'em in the walk-in overnight.
And then we'll have them ready for service for tomorrow.
Chef Hasan here has some of the finished products,
cooked lamb.
So these are some ones we did yesterday.
We let them cool overnight.
We're gonna go ahead from here and we'll portion them
for dinner service.
So this is Chef Tina.
She's one of our sous chefs.
She's working on some braided challah.
- We've been doing sort of take
on eggs in the hole for like a very, very long time
which is just amazing challah fresh.
- [Beau] So right now Tina is weighing out each dough ball.
- [Michael] No, I never thought that like I would make
challah and, and that would be like on the
on the menu, but like, I don't know.
What's better than like fresh challah.
- She's gonna let those proof really quickly.
And then she's gonna braid the challah
We're gonna proof it again.
And then we're gonna bake in the oven.
Tina is my favorite 'cause she just, she gets stuff done.
She's a great person to work with in my brain.
I wanna say she's
like a lieutenant in a mob family, you know, but
and her challah braiding is way better than mine.
- [Tina] Oh, so you wanna be stretching the dough each time
you're pulling it and starting
in the middle gives it that beautiful football shape.
And then at the very end
I like to twist it and kind of chop it off.
It binds the braids together.
- [Beau] Do you tell them
about the cold dough or is that a family secret?
- [Tina] I don't know.
That might be a family secret.
No, I like to keep the dough cold when it's too warm.
It's just too pliable
to the point where it might be breaking on you.
- [Beau] I grew up in an Ashkenazi Jewish household
so it's super comforting to see the challah being braided
smell it coming out of the oven
- [Tina] Coming from a Christian household, even though
it wasn't Jewish.
I still get the nostalgia from baking
with my mom when I was younger smelling the fresh challah.
- [Beau] I think once you work here
for over like a year and a half, you become an honorary Jew,
so I think you're good.
- From here, I'm gonna let these proof
until they've doubled in size.
We're gonna bake 'em off
and then they'll be ready for the egg and a hole.
- [Michael] Hey, what's up?
- Hey. Hey.
- How are you?
Ian Brendel amazing
amazing farmer brings the best s*** ever to us.
We're working on a dish.
That's focused around challah
We're using a little bit of green garlic to wake
up some smoke sable.
- [Ian] Ukrainian red garlic.
- Beautiful.
- We have the etrog here.
- I can't believe that you like you do this.
Yeah. We use this for sukkot,
which is like a harvest festival in Judaism.
And it's like very rare
that you would see this coming from Pennsylvania
but it's like lemon being injected with verbena.
Yeah, seriously.
We'll buy all of it next year.
Okay.
- Trust me, as soon as I get more.
- [Beau] So we've got our smoked fish.
We're gonna go with a little
of the pickled green garlic that we got from Ian.
Some sort of essentially everything spice
with some dried lemon.
- [Michael] I don't know.
What's better than like fresh challah I ask you?
Why not make it and why not stuff it with like a,
a runny egg yolk, and why not smoked sable on top
and sable and challah and eggs.
It's like a very important trinity in our culture.
- So I think the flavor's really good.
We definitely have to work on the shape of the challah
We can definitely send a few
of these out compliments tonight.
All right.
Egg in a hole ready?
- It's like 4:30, 30 minutes
until s*** gets really, really real here.
So we gotta get the charcoal lit and burned.
We use organic Mesquite charcoal.
We have a whole separate hood.
We use a ton of charcoal and we need that like smoke.
We need that smoldering heat.
Okay. That's like our flavor.
- All right. It's 4:45.
I'm gonna go grab the first hummus.
Get it ready to go for service.
It's go time.
- [Joe] Chef. How are we looking
- About the spin?
We'll be ready to go in about seven minutes.
- [Joe] Yes Chef.
- We've got chef Joe.
That's making a bunch of pita.
We make that for big parties before service
and then we make the laffas to order.
- Hey guys, you guys fired up first tickets in.
- [All] Yes Chef!
- [Michael] During service, the bread station is the beacon.
It's the heart and the soul of the restaurant.
You're controlling basically the way that all
the food goes out.
- [Joe] Hey guys
looking for one carrot up front.
- One carrot up front!
Mise next solde is coming through.
- [Michael] So the idea is,
is that we have all this meticulous
preparation. That's very exact.
That is very process oriented.
And we are a small plates restaurant.
So it's like a lot of plates coming out.
The idea is that it is relatively simple and kind
of a low lift during service.
But I think if you were to ask any of the, the line cooks
they probably wouldn't say that. It's still a restaurant.
It's still a very busy restaurant.
Vika. Can you do me a favor?
Can you run this out rice to one, five, please together.
You can come right back all right.
Thank you.
Mushroom one five
- Mushroom one,five
Mushroom two, one
- Third hummus.
- It's been a, a really smooth service.
Obviously the team here is awesome
and I'm just gonna make some bread
and hang out because these guys have it under control
but Joe's laffa is definitely better than mine
but mine's still pretty good, you know, Chef Joe.
Okay.
- [Joe} Absolutely.
It's beautiful Chef.
- [Michael] We do this because this is what we're good at.
And because this is what our like
soul and our spirit allows.
And it's definitely not for everybody.
There are times that are
like very difficult and times where you absolutely fail
but when you can take somebody that's waited for two months
to have f****** dinner here and you can make them feel great
for the two to three hours that they eat in this restaurant.
Like there's, there is magic there and that is like
that's what we work for.
And that's why we do what we do.
It's it's only for that reason.