How a Master Chef Created a Michelin-Starred Restaurant in a Mall Food Court — Mise En Place

when all the deliveries walk in the door it's it's all hands on deck thanks when these orders come in early you can process the fish right away you know because it's so small that you can't just have like boxes and boxes laying around there's no receiving team two days a week or the market days and usually two days a week are major butchering days you know there's always like the nuts and bolts little things like herbs are picked every day but the fact that there's four of us you have to compartmentalize your projects and use the manpower the way that you can we wanted to test two different fish today we've been using black cod we weren't happy with what we've been getting recently we brought in Atlantic cod it's good I mean it's really good and so this is rock cod it's coming in locally so we figured we'd try it see how it ends up if we have something our disposal that's local I'd rather use it so basically we just take fillets off I'll cure the fillets and then once they're cured we'll don't poach it today across the board like I just put your coffee all day like that's what I'm doing as much as I would love to stay like oh I get to do this nut and this and that the reality is like today I'm the fish today Randall's the meat butcher and tomorrow it'll be totally different [Music] once I process all these I'll have the you know the bones on one tray and I'll save all the innards another tray wings and another in the compressor process separately we're looking at our menu structure I don't want a menu with a bunch of short stories I want to write the menu as one long story so this is our winter menu as things die in fall because everything dies and falls in winter it builds layers on the ground right things are buried things are hidden and so the pumpkin seed course is the first one with this idea that you know all that's left on the ground are like seeds and twigs and it's all very dark you know nothing fresh on the dish the top layers burnt parsley and the fried pumpkin seeds it doesn't look welcoming at all and then from there we move into a Wagyu course we use the ygor's a wrapper and we filled it basically everything's hidden everything's kind of tucked away the general feeling behind the menu is that you can't see anything the beef is hiding everything inside you know it looks kind of underwhelming almost Russa dish is just like beef on a plate or some garnishes but all of the flavors really kind of tucked inside and so all of our menus every course of something from the previous dish is something that'll be in the next dish with the idea that the course is early we have passion fruit in Hawaii dish which is into the passion fruit greeny and from that point we start exploring seaweed yeah so it's a site of hamachi we're gonna break it down for the seaweed and hamachi course well portion it into 25-grand portions and this semi received awesome the waters colder the seaweeds really lively and Chris we put it on the dish for all and we do it fried the best way to fry these because we want them to be bright green when they come out of the fryers you gotta fry it at 450 which is really high really hot so it kind of makes this crazy explosion but it's the best product you get out of it grab a big handful of it or a pretty moderate handful come service we're gonna sear it really really hot I'm just on one side so we get the nice color so it has the texture of raw hamachi is tender enough to cut with a fork but I think we probably should give you a knife with like the average person would want a knife with it but we chose not to because we want them to fight with the course a little bit I think once you get a couple courses in you get comfortable I mean even comfortable you kind of stop being as aware of what's going on and you're just kind of like a little more relaxed and we wanted to have that be the point where we regain your attention we interject a little bit of discomfort after that there's a course served on a spoon and that's the yuzu black sesame course and the idea what that course is now you don't have silver right so watch the color change all of a sudden so one of the things that we do in the menu is will often play this game of moving back and forth between savory and sweet you know I think it keeps guess not really predicting what the menu is then the sauce makes it tricks you a little bit because it becomes questionably sweet like is this a dessert section am i finishing like this doesn't really make sense once it's cool we basically crush it up we end up with this and then that becomes the topping for the spoon and it gets yuzu cream and then the butter finger over the top so it looks like a spoonful of dirt now you don't have silver lip it served as a bite on a spoon on the first plate that's shared between two people so they you know they have to go for the spoon ultimately they end up saying which one you want you know little things like that that gets diners re engaging with each other again from that you going to preserved corn that's cooked in brown butter and black winter truffles into probably the biggest lightning bolt dish in our menu which is the caviar course when I was portioning caviar for a previous menu I was drinking a Dunkin Donuts french vanilla coffee I was tasting the caviar as well and the two were awesome together the French vanilla coffee for me has always been kind of a cool winter thing I grew up playing hockey and my mornings are with my dad you know going to the game and on the way there we'd always stopping a coffee together and it's literally like melted coffee vanilla ice cream you know roasted hazelnuts and then at E oil it's not like your traditional combination and I think whenever you describe it to people they don't expect it but it's probably my favorite one right here dishes we've ever served there's only three plates on the menu that are white and the first of those is the carrot dish we slow cook the carrot in miso for eight hours it sits on the plate with a peanut and a Burt Meyer lemon ponzu fried carrot top and carrot flowers with it to the side of that there's a small bowl that the diners share with each other it has a midnight moon cheese that we basically turned into cheese whiz and then you get a third Bowl behind it with a little carrot fritters so we thought well if we force them to share something and we don't really tell people how to eat it and just say we encourage you to explore then they have to talk to each other so the cod it secured for about an hour see all the liquid that came out I mean all that came out of the fish end up being a really nice texture look at in the light it's almost translucent right now it's much tougher once it comes up to 65 Celsius we let it sit for seven that's important we're really looking forward for the fish to just sort of flake apart like this get nice big pieces to marinade and then this is the lemon vinaigrette to dress the cooked cotton the idea is not break it up too much we let marinate for 24 hours and that helps the protein seize a little more on the bottom we just took pork belly smoked it braised it and then we make a rillette on top of that is the milk poach cod in a lemon vinaigrette this is black radish I would say for the most part all of our dishes have some kind of raw vegetable aspect to it and to finish it olive oil potato foam some that we're trying to hide things that we want each layer to kind of have its own experience with it you know that sense of discovery we wanted to work with swab we really wanted to do the whole bird you know we talked about putting the whole thing on a plate we talked about presenting the whole bird first and cutting it and then the discussion became why do we do that once they're all once I have like roasted that I'm gonna throw lots of garlic shallot and time so it's really really flavorful the more we thought about it the more we thought well everyone's doing it right now so maybe we shouldn't do that and once I'm happy with the color I'm gonna add 3 pounds of butter so we had this thought of basically presenting the entire burden without actually showing the guests any of it once it's all melted and bubbly and foaming I'm gonna add all these roasted squab back completely cover it and get the caramelization looking for it's gonna make a very delicious squab you at the end your first course is just served in a wine box and it's a suave and beat consummate at the body and it looks like a glass of red wine so this is the second course of the three-part progression on one side a squab leg rillette on the other side braised cabbage pine nuts and squab liver mousse in the middle I think that there's a duality to winter where when you're outside you know it's cold and it's harsh and then it all gets covered it also evokes that feeling of comfort inside when people start talking about so you're on the fire and you know warm food things like that after that of course with the breast and heart and the progression of all of those ultimately breaks down the entire body over matching plates that all ultimately show the guests the whole bird without showing them any of the bird just start with a ragout of squab heart beats and preserve cherries over the top of that polenta squab breast and then we have the whole roasting process and squabs you it's finished with mr. sheean pesto and then we really wanted to sort of reflect the fact that at this point in the menu winters kind of coming to a close and in the past we've always talked about like laying everything on so perfectly but it's not really how things fall and so instead it made more sense to just kind of let them be so for the final savory it's just coming back to life the transition course after the squab into dessert is as a salad and it's all the same greens that are on the squab dish but it's all baby versions of those because the baby wild fennel sweet where the mature wild fennel has a lot of salinity to it moving into the dessert we wanted to continue with this sort of movement towards a lighter dish so we want to play off of sweet peas and olive oil some roasted marcona almonds a couple freeze-dried peas and then this is shortbread this is an olive oil jam that we make in creme fraiche that we whip right now at the market the pea tendrils are amazing the idea as we move towards spring as everything starts growing the sorrel is in it for a couple of reasons one it's growing wild everywhere right now but it also adds a really nice vegetal acidity a blend of matcha tea and powdered Peas right around 4:00 o'clock we clear off all like the tablecloths and things on the past and we convert the restaurant into a restaurant we start up the music and open at 5:25 and just walk-in story begins that's it off to the races the original idea came from the idea of a concept dollar you know an album nasty played straight through in order song five needs four and six it was really drawn into this idea of the fact that things made things better but it wasn't just a collection it actually had to do otherwise you have favorite you know favorite dishes and then you have the dishes that fill the void it's a big conversation we've had now about the screaming is just this idea of growth and so how do you make the menu look like it's growing and you built a happiness frame we made it through almost through the first seating just kind of winding down moving the pastry and that's it that's like I guess our story

Channel: Eater

Views: 908,527

Rating: 4.7706485 out of 5

Keywords: michelin starred restaurants, Michelin star restaurants, michelin star restaurants LA, Michelin starred restaurants LA, Michelin starred restaurants california, dialogue, dialogue restaurant, master chef, chef dave beran, best restaurants in LA, best restaurants in california, best restaurants in Santa Monica, concept restaurant, high end restaurant, hidden restaurant LA, eater, eater.com, food, restaurant, dining, dish, foodie, chef, foodshow, fine dining, michelin star

Id: Yi2A1_NR24s

Length: 11min 59sec (719 seconds)

Published: Sat May 02 2020