- So this is shima aji coming from Oita.
We're going to break this one down and lightly cure it
and then we'll sear it with a little bit
of binchōtan charcoal, just really hard on the flesh,
keep it nice and raw but serving it warm so
you can kind of taste the fat of the fish.
- We built this restaurant to showcase how amazing
the quality of the products are.
- This month has been like the best shima aji of the year,
and this is definitely like one of my favorite fish.
Like, you can see the fat right there.
Looks like the top of a rib-eye.
(upbeat music)
- We have the Japanese wood charcoal,
the binchōtan, right in the fire.
We get it hot as we can
and then we sear that straight on the fat of the shima aji
and it kind of just like softens the texture of the fish.
Regardless of everything else, accolades-wise,
the idea originated with, we want to cook the best seafood
in the world.
Predominantly, Japan holds that category.
(upbeat music)
Jont's a 16-seat tasting-menu-only counter, focused
on all the luxury ingredients
of Japan cooked over a wood fire.
Bresca's a French bistro.
It's like our take on bistronomy.
- So it's 10:00 AM, we're upstairs with Jont.
We're going to get the fire lit
so we can help out the Bresca team downstairs.
Get a little bit of beets
over the fire smoking throughout the day.
So for us, the fire is the kind
of the focal point of the food up here.
So pretty much every course that you'll see
throughout the day, we cook over the fire at some point,
whether it's here in the prep day
or like during service a la minute.
Now that the fire's started,
we're going to go downstairs.
A lot of our seafood orders are starting to roll in,
so we're going to start sorting through the fish,
look at what we got for today,
make sure that the quality's right there.
So first thing we're going through,
we're going to start with the sea urchin.
This is how they mark the sea urchin at auction.
They'll go through,
they have like an expert that rates each one.
So this is the number seven at auction this day.
So super, super tasty, super exciting stuff.
Unboxing all this really we're just checking to make sure
that nothing got beat up in the shipping.
It's the guaranteed 36 hours out of market,
like, from Toyosu to here.
(upbeat music)
This is channel rockfish, or kinki.
This is coming from Hokkaido.
This is definitely one of our favorite fish here.
You can talk to any chef that really works
with Japanese seafood,
they can definitely tell you that it's like a cut above.
After I go through these, we're going to go ahead
and we're going to pull out what we need
for today and we're going to process those.
With 32 guests, if we're breaking down eight fish a night,
it should take us no less
than an hour to fabricate the whole fish.
- There's nothing easy about working with some
of those small fish.
Like we can get like 40, 50, 60 in a week sometimes.
- Take the eyeballs out to preserve the fish
from getting overly fishy and you can usually
slide your finger through, pop the eyeball out.
- Such a process, like every day you're breaking
down what you need for a service.
But then there's like the process before it even
started to dry age of like cleaning it, scaling it,
gutting it, knocking out the eyes, hanging it.
- And then like we'll take that
down to the Dry Ager in a little bit.
- It's not only like expensive as an ingredient,
it's expensive like cost of time.
- So we're in the basement prep kitchen kind of
where we store all of our mise en place
throughout the day.
We're down here at the fish Dry Ager.
We also have a meat Dry Ager that we're going to fill
with pork a little bit later on this evening.
Our menu's 75% seafood and all of that sees a little bit
of age from as much as like four days,
to as much as two weeks, depending on the fish,
depending on the fat content.
So really it's just kind of picking
and choosing, trial and error for the last two
and a half years has kind of taught us a lot.
So we're going to go ahead, we're going to shop starting
off with our channel rockfish, the kinki.
These guys have been hanging since the 25th,
so we're looking at four days right now.
It really allows us to like get a nice crispy skin.
And with the fat content on these fish
it kind of almost fries it when we grill it
over the fire a little bit later.
We need all three of these fish this evening
but really we just want to make sure we keep the quality
of the fish so we're on the ice and we want to shop them one
at a time.
Because we're on the third floor,
it means a lot of running up and down the stairs.
Keeps you pretty fit, hopefully.
(upbeat music)
So we'll be here for a little while
like breaking these fish.
It usually takes about an hour just because all
of the pin bones and then we'll go back through
and try to find any scales we have.
It's like these fish are so crazy
that like you know you break down two,
and that's like the fat that comes off of it.
It's insane.
Like you can see this is all like fat that's like leaching
out of the fish.
- One of these small kinki is easily 60, 75 bucks a piece.
- Like even when we buy them, like we communicate
with the guys through WhatsApp, they'll literally be
like, kinki is the highest price that it's ever been.
Like they send you like crying emojis
'cause they're just like sad that they can't give it
to you at the pricepoint that you want it.
It's like, no, like, get us where we want to be
and that's fine.
- They're pretty much like the opposite
of giving you what you want.
They let us know where we're going to land each week.
This is the most expensive fish at the market.
Like, you have to enjoy this when you can get it,
because nobody wants to buy this shit.
It's so expensive.
But like then when people eat it, they're like,
blows their mind.
They're just like, "What the f*** is that?"
You're like, I'm like, I told you.
It's like the wagyu of the ocean, man.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
(upbeat music)
- So Kyle's just unpacking our beef here.
This is the order
for the whole building for about the next two weeks.
This is our Japanese wagyu rib caps coming
from the Gunma Prefecture,
and then you also have Japanese short rib.
This is coming from the Miyazaki Prefecture, so
you kind get to see two different prefectures of beef.
So with the two restaurants it gives us a lot
more buying power.
Obviously when you commit the 300 pounds of beef biweekly,
we can try to get a better price point.
- Everything's rolling in both restaurants.
You know the guys are just prepping,
Evan's knocking out some caviar mise.
Brandon's working on some
of the canapes with the braised lamb neck.
And then we just received some pork though
from Autumn Olives Farms.
It's been dry aged for about three weeks.
So we're going to go down to Bresca
and start breaking those down
so we can split 'em up for the restaurants.
- How are you doing chef?
- Good, how are you?
- Good - Good.
You see everybody on the stairs.
That's how you know when everyone's here, you know,
going up and down the stairs.
Every floor is activated every day or
like the five days a week that we're open
from like 7:00 AM until 1:00 AM.
Part of the reason we're able to
offer the experiences that we do are because
they're in the same building, right?
I think if they were separate, the restaurants
would both logistically cost a lot more money to operate.
A second-story restaurant like Jont benefits a lot
from a first-story restaurant like Bresca paying the bulk
of the rent and things like that.
And now we're down at Bresca.
What we'll do is we'll start to knock this down.
Downstairs will use probably 80% of it.
Upstairs will take the first six bones off
and then we'll throw that in the Ager downstairs
for like 45 to 90 days.
They'll grill that over the wood fire
and serve it upstairs as well.
Yeah, so we knock the tenderloin
off from the backside, here.
Pork is something we love to work
with here in both restaurants.
We get in the whole back saddles of the pork, though.
Downstairs you know we're going to take the loins
and the tenderloins, kind of roast those classically,
confit them in pork fat.
The meat is crazy dark for pork.
Yeah.
Adam's knocking down some fluke from the mid-Atlantic.
They're going to work that onto crudo.
Chef Kam has that Aussie sirloin.
They have like a lot more mise en place
to place down here, that's for sure.
(upbeat music)
I'm going to take this downstairs, rack it up
in the Dry Ager and then Kam's going to roll a couple bones
off this loin.
- So when we're breaking it for up here,
we're just kind of rolling it right off of the bone here,
cleaning the loin up,
and then we'll have it ready for service tonight.
(upbeat music)
- Like we always just mature the meat
for as long as possible.
Sometimes we'll take the hams,
we're working on those right now.
We have over 200 days of age on them.
- So this is going to be our sawara,
Spanish mackerel caught in southern Japan.
The only thing we have to do is we'll wipe
out the chest cavity.
We'll make a small cut around the back part
of the tail that we can't use to tie it up with string.
Tying it around the bone allows us
to not stress the flesh too much.
(upbeat music)
- Each fish gives us about two days.
So we'll break the side off of one of these
and then we'll bring it back down to hang again
and hopefully by the time we finish this fish,
the next fish will be ready.
I'm just going to pull out the sawara for today's service.
We're going to go ahead and fabricate that.
- Yeah, the first grilled fish of the night
that the guests are going to receive is the sawara.
There's like three dishes that never change.
That's one of them.
By aging at 14 days we just get like a beautiful firmness.
We'll char the skin really, really nicely
or like the fat, if you will.
And then we just leave the top like full medium
and then we serve that with like a load of caviar.
(upbeat music)
Like I'm sure there's probably going to be some ducks.
Yeah, some rendered ducks in here that we're
going to get rolling for tonight.
There's duck everywhere in this building,
like it's ridiculous.
We're going to start rolling
on some duck processing for the day.
So we're going to grab for Jont and Bresca.
We go through a shit load of duck.
So, we inventory about 220 ducks at a time, aging.
This is a Bresca duck being like around like five pounds,
whole cavity.
The Jont ducks are in the Jont cooler, though.
Jont ducks age separately.
Larger duck, so we need like a little bit more airflow.
I'm going to pick out the ducks
for Daniel today and really get on his nerves
'cause he likes to pick him out himself, you know.
(laughing)
- So this is Daniel.
He works meat roast here at Jont.
Right now, he's starting our duck process.
This is kind of one of our things
that is a signature on our menu.
- We're trying to like get rid
of this fat cap right here with the Jaccard,
which is an instrument that basically
pokes all these holes into the fat.
(tool clicking)
You want to be gentle in this process, you don't
want to go too deep, otherwise you mess up the meat itself.
(tool clicking)
So, need to be conscious.
- We used to take an individual cake tester
and we used to poke holes
over and over and over and over again.
- Like I can tell you right now,
this is going to be a hard duck to render.
- Daniel's like a scientist, man.
He does like everything methodically.
- The same movement every day,
for consistency reasons and little bit
of superstition.
To change the style took me six months.
Like a tennis player right?
They always use the same racket.
- He like talks to the fire during service.
- I like this job a lot and makes me excited every day,
that's for sure.
So now it goes in the oven for seven minutes.
So you can tell after seven minutes
how much fat we rendered already.
And that's just the beginning.
So they're going to chill in the freezer
and then we are going to like keep rendering.
- So at 1:00 PM we start our bread rolling process,
where all the dough that got made this morning
got mised out, portioned, and then it's brought
up and the team gathers around, everything's cleared off,
and then we roll our bread for tonight's service.
So we do pretty much one per two guests.
So we'll look at the books,
see about how many mauviels we need to roll.
We only roll the day of, so it's fresh.
It's proofed that day, baked that day.
And then during service, we brush it
with what we we call "brush fat."
Just an aromatic fat that, sprinkle a little bit
of Maldon salt on as well.
It goes with everyone's main course.
- Bread, bread, let's go!
(man whistling)
- It's 2:30.
We're through rolling bread so we're starting to like
like finish up our projects.
We're going to do another scrub down.
Tyler's breaking down the Bresca ducks.
So, same ducks that we use upstairs, similar process,
but we kind of use the upstairs to render
in the rationale and then cool 'em down,
and then what he'll do before service,
come in, hand-render, and then like continue to process
as guests start to roll through the doors.
(upbeat music)
So this is the guy that's been hanging out for a while.
I'm just going to pull out a couple muscles and slowly cook
over the wood fire.
Depending on when you dine,
the proteins that are like mature and ready at the time,
are like what you're going to end up experiencing.
These things are gnarly to break down because there's
like no moisture left, you know,
you're like cutting a brick.
We'll carve away a lot of this, a lot of this trim here
before serving it.
We'll split this down and then we'll seam out
like this muscle right here.
I'll peel the skin.
Once we kind of break this down
and wrap it in its own fat again,
these are the the muscles that we'll serve tonight
as like the main course of the tasting room.
(upbeat music)
- First guest in 30.
(cooks acknowledging)
So, right now we're getting set up for service,
finishing the last little touches.
Prep is done,
the pass is set up and we're just getting tidied up
and ready to feed some people.
It's 4:15, we just got back from family meal.
We're setting up for service right now.
Last thing to prep for the meat station would be
the final render on the ducks.
Usually we do three to four ducks a day to feed 32 guests.
We are doing the last render stage.
So we went in the oven earlier today, right now
we're working it in the cast iron pan.
Kind of take out a little bit of fat at a time.
So that one's going to hang out.
He's going to put 'em up there for service.
They're going to hang out.
First guest, five minutes.
- Daniel's doing his superstitious fire build, right?
It's gotta be a certain way or else the fish
isn't going to cook correctly.
- I always put the new log
on the side as a support and as a protection,
so I keep the calorie with me.
- I'm starting off with a four course.
Awesome, let's do it.
- Walking in, two four course going snacks,
going two fluke, two pierogi, two chicken, two desserts.
- [All] Oui!
(intense music)
- Upstairs, it starts with canapes
and then rolls into like, plated crudos,
and always some sort of egg custard, chawanmushi.
And then you know, it moves
into like grilled fish and then we integrate some
like, vegetables and broths and things
of that nature to break up the richness of the meal.
Then we finish on like a protein progression.
- That's the final rendering that I told you about.
If I press towards the skin, I notice
that we still have some fat to render,
so I'm going to like hang it over here towards the fire
and you will see like some duck fat dripping
and that's my final render.
- I always say like,
we're not the most avant-garde restaurant.
That's not our intention.
The idea is to be the most technique and product-
driven restaurant that we can be.
(upbeat music)
Find the best ingredients and like, use the best techniques
to our ability,
cook it a hundred percent the best that we can.
(upbeat music)
We're used to like a watered down food system here
in the United States.
That's our focus, like Brandon and myself, as a team,
is to like showcase, help people understand like what
something really can be or is.
So we just wrapped up the first round of savory,
so Daniel's getting the fire going for the second round,
putting some more calories on it, as he would say.
- Thank you so much.
It's been great by spending time with you guys.
- Rest of the team's going to reset.
We're going to get cleaned down.
The guests are going to transfer to the second part
of the tasting menu into the pastry parlor.
And then this is usually the time where we go downstairs
and check on Bresca and see where we're at.
Are you going to cool off?
What are you going to do?
You're going to take your shirt off in the freezer or what?
- Yeah, I have to in the blast freezer.
I'm going to get some water for sure.
(laughing)
(receipt clicking)
- So down here tonight,
we have a few large parties out there.
We have 14, that's super busy right now.
Like peak hour, 7:30.
It's a little bit noisier down here.
You know, you don't have the guests watching you,
so, they get into it a little bit, like lots of callbacks.
You can have a really good time here.
It's like a lot of adrenaline, you know.
So I was saying we gotta get a-
we gotta get a picture of your duck right here
and then send it to Daniel upstairs so we can show him
how much better your duck was than his tonight, okay?
That's like the philosophy, if you will,
of like what we're trying to do.
Trying to just continue to educate on like what
quality really is, you know.
- Hey, Tyler, how long on that pork?
- I think it's part of our job is like what is the evolution
of food/dining culture?
If we can like educate or help showcase like ingredients,
their purest form and like the quality
of what they really can be,
it helps change the food system ultimately, right?
- Can someone go give Tyler hands
getting scallops down here?
We gotta go.
- I mean it's long game, right?
Like it's not going to happen overnight.
Quality over everything.
It's like something we say here all the time.
(dramatic music)
We want quality over everything.
(dramatic music)