- When we come up with dishes,
we don't think that closely about is it going to be exactly like what you would find in Mexico? - Just want to get it pretty
much into a single layer. One, so that we get a lot of
smoke all over the caviar, and then two, this is on ice, so I want to make sure that as much caviar as we
possibly can is touching the ice. - So the banana and
caviar dish is something that I wanted to make years ago. And it was something that like, I dunno, it was kind of like a weird
combination of flavors and I could never figure out
exactly how it would work. - [Kedar] It's not that long or hard of a smoke to perfect the color. - It's basically a cold smoke. You've got a mixture of a
fruit wood and oak in there. We take these bananas,
skewer them, grill them, glaze them in a little butter, and then the savory dulce de leche, it's basically a date
and fresh coconut sauce. - [Kedar] 20 Minutes in now. - It's ready for the bananas. 13 grams of caviar, it's
like a sizable amount. We weigh it out, so every person gets the
same quantity of caviar. And I think like, you know, most people like are not used
to eating that much caviar and it's just like a treat
I think for everyone. Altogether, it sort of creates this like
savory sweet combination that's like, people think
it's going to be too sweet, but then it's not, and it just like somehow works together. When we drop the banana, I want people to feel like that they have been
like hooked up, you know? Like they're a friend of the restaurant. (dramatic music) So the first thing we do
in the morning is we start to process the corn, you know, the foundation of our cuisine, and one of the most important
elements that we serve. - Basically the goal of
nixtamalizing the corn is to remove the outer husk from the corn to basically release the nutrients, allow us to grind it, and create masa. That's the gist of it. - If you take this dent corn and cook it without the cal and without nixtamalizing it, then you don't like unlocked
the nutrients of the dent corn, so you have to nixtamalize it so that the B vitamins
become bioavailable. Whenever I was like
cooking in fine dining, it was almost no one
treating Mexican ingredients with like the kind of respect
that I thought it deserved. And, you know, I thought it was just as
worthy of treating it with care and respect as any other cuisine. You know, this is our
sushi rice here, you know? Make a little.... (man laughs)
Just kidding. So this machine is a
Molinito created by Masienda, which is an LA-based corn importer. So we'll load up the hopper here. (machine whirs) Corn is an amazing and delicious
and healthful ingredient that has like become
abused and over-farmed and become like genetically
modified to not a good place. The goal of the restaurant
is to preserve that cuisine, preserve these vegetables
that could be lost if no one's serving them. - It comes out pretty smooth. I mean, at this point, we just mix it with a little bit of fat as well as salt. - [Val] What's up Jeff? - [Jeffrey] Hey, what's up Val? - Jeffrey's here. - Do you sell to any other
Mexican restaurants, Jeff? - No, you're definitely my first. (Val chuckles) So, special treat for you today. Matsutake mushrooms, this is the season. - Obviously we're just
a little jump from Japan and so I feel like we
get the freshest stuff because we're probably
the first stop, right? - Mh-hm. - We're going to be the envy
of all New York, you know? Cause we get the nice shit and they get it like 24 hours later. - Yeah, when it's all brown.
(men laughing) - Here, we have our Hokkaido uni. - Yeah. So we, you know, we had this urchin infladita that we have we've had on
the menu for a long time and we sort of phased it
out during the summertime, just because the urchin
was getting too bitter and we just weren't happy with it. So you want to try a Jeff?
- [Jeff] Sure. - Yeah. We like the Hokkaido, and it's a little bit sweeter
than the Santa Barbara. Just in general. It's nice. It's creamy,
plain, salty, little salty. Yeah. It has a nice finish. Sweet finish. Yeah, this'll be great. - Here's our tai from Hikime. They were Ikejime, freshly
packed, and shipped 24 hours ago. - [Val] Beautiful. - So we use the madai here, the Tai snapper for our al pastor. I mean, this is like sashimi quality fish that you could literally serve raw. I love fish tacos. We've had like all different
variations of fish tacos on the menu and it just sounded
like it would be delicious, like fish al pastor and light and summery and grilled fish. So from here, Ricardo is
gonna take the skin off. He's going to portion them
into perfect little planks and then a marinate them in
a adobo paste al la minute. They're going to get skewered
and grilled over oak charcoal. Try to get a lot of nice color. That adobo paste like really
gets a little bit burnt, which we like, you know, has that like charred caramelized flavor, it just goes really perfectly
with the smoked pineapple. This is a brand new comal. It's just a beautiful thing, I think. I don't know, cooking the tortillas on like
this like handmade clay vessel and cooking the corn
in that traditional way with the nixtamal, it's just like a natural way for it to like balance in your stomach and still be like healthful
and really good for you. You know, honestly, we
haven't been traveling a lot. I haven't been to Mexico as regularly as I have been, you know, generally I try to go
like several times a year, and so, you know, really I
miss those flavors, you know? And so a lot of the current menu right now is like flavor memories that
we just missed from traveling. Yeah. I get pumped to
serve tacos here, you know, like tacos or like, you know, to go back to Japanese cuisine, it like our own nigiri. Every single bite needs to be perfect and that's like how we like approach it. So right now we have three
taco courses on the menu. We start with tlacoyo, which
is pre-Hispanic street food. We use a blue masa that
we bring in from Mexico and fill it with some
fresh cranberry beans and smoked queso Oaxaca. And then we wrap it with hoja santa, which is a very anise-y wild herb that you would see in Oaxaca. The last taco is a squab arabe. Tacos arabes is like from Puebla, so there was a large
Lebanese influx into Mexico. They brought the rotating spits with them and they brought flour pitas or tortillas. And so basically this
is just a play on that. We use local California squab
marinated in Lebanese spices and we make a sourdough tortilla and the one we're making right now, I think, is like absolutely flawless. It's like incredibly
delicate flower tortilla that's so beautiful and soft. It's like a Krispy Kreme
of flour tortillas. We serve that with Aleppo pepper sauce, cucumber crema, and then a squab broth. - It's like 10:30 in the morning. We're getting started on
the big protein breakdown right now. First up, we're going to break out the dried beef, for steak or our famous dried ribeye that we dry-age in
house for about 35 days. It's a F1 cross, which
means it's 50% Wagyu, 50% black Angus. I think it just works
really well for our menu. We don't like the full-blood Wagyu. It gets a little too fatty, but we do offer that as
a supplement as well. So this is the top cap, or the
spinalis, so the ribeye cap. We'll separate this out
from the eye of the rib and we serve both parts. Sometimes we'll do a tasting on the menu. We'll only do a little piece
of cap and a piece of the eye, just to feature a couple
of different cuts. So the cap is going to be
a little bit more fatty and also a little bit
more aged flavor to it cause it is on the outside. Whereas the eye of the rib
is kind of inside, you know, so it's a little more protected. So now we have our eye rib here and this is primarily
what we serve on the, on the carne asada course. I'm going to clean this rib up, take all the fat off, take all the silver skin, and then we're going to portion it. So we shoot for two
ounces of meat per person. And then we like cooking
them in four ounce blocks. And what happens there is you
have a bigger piece of meat to work with. It's a little bit nicer to grill. This is the slow smoked heirloom tomato and it's the garnish for the beef. - We change the menu
every season, you know. We're always like moving with the seasons. Like even in summertime, like things might change
like halfway through, or winter might change halfway through, but we're always R and D-ing new dishes and working on new things
as ingredients come and go. So this is like a dish
that we've been working on, like legitimately for
probably almost a month now. - So this is the abalone
that's been rested, massaged, sweet talked. We shaved the outer skin off. That's kind of the tougher
part of the abalone. This is a agar that be colored with a little bit of green juice. So it's the color of the sea. And then what we do is we
just glaze the abalone shells. So what it does is it just kind of creates this barrier on the
shell, fills up all these holes. So then when we put the agua
chile in the shell on the ice, it's not going to spill
out all of the holes. - You know, I really encourage and try to mentor a lot of my
chefs on R and D and creating. Creativity is something
that is like an exercise. You have to exercise it. You have to practice it.
You have to work on it. - [Kedar] I really wanted
to add like some height. Maybe like some persimmon
could be cool in here. - [Val] Persimmon? Yeah.
- [Kedar] Yeah. Maybe we could do like a
seaweed oil or something. It'd be dope. Should we try it?
- [Val] Yeah. Yeah, the texture is awesome. - I liked the agretti is really nice. - Yeah. I like the agretti. People are going to be like, how did you not make it leak? - You gotta do the shooter.
- Yeah. - Yeah. This is Kaylin Denise. She's one of our sous chefs here. She's been with us for several
years. She just turned 26. (both laugh) But she has basically like the
world's most amazing resume. - Okay. So I have some pork belly here. It's been air drying and
there's also salt here. So all of the moisture should
have come out of the skin. So I want like a crispy outside, soft, braise-y on the inside kind of. You can see the skin is nicely crackling. So the first technique we
tried was just deep fry. Now we're trying a base
over mostly just the skin, put out both, and see what
chefs likes. (chuckles) It's all trial and error. - Getting ready to move into
fall and winter obviously. So I wanted to switch up the protein. So we're always looking
at different stuff. So these ducks are from Root Down farm. So we're going to do a
hot smoke test with them. Timer went off, it's been 20 minutes. We're gonna check the ducks now and see how they've come along. Took on some nice color. - [Val] Yeah, it looks good. - [Kedar] It's kind of a lofty goal to render a duck all the
way through, on a grill without flareups, but you
gotta, gotta give it a shot. - [Val] Sometimes they'll come
up with stuff out of the blue or sometimes, you know,
we'll say, all right, what do we want to move to? And we'll talk about it, and we'll create a plan, and
we'll work on a dish together. And it'll usually take
two to three iterations before it's ready for the menu. - Do you wanna taste the pork dish? - [Val] Yeah, let's do it. - This one was the deep fried, and then this is the basted. - What's in your pumpkin sauce? - So pipián rojo, it's usually pumpkin seeds,
allspice, coriander, cloves. It's just grilled cabbage
alongside that too. - What are the herbs? - [Kaylin] Watercress and lambsquarter. - Pork is really good. Yeah. Really good. I think it needs like some sweetness and then maybe a little
bit less cabbage probably. - Okay.
- Yeah. Let's try it again tomorrow. - [Kaylin] Okay.
- Yeah. - [Kaylin] That's good. - Kaylin and chef, you
guys want to try the duck? - Yeah, I'd love to. - [Kedar] So we have a two breasts here. This one, they both been aged, and then this one here
has been brined as well. - [Val] Oh, it's so juicy. - [Kedar] Now this is
the grand finale, right? Until we get into dessert so... And I don't know of anybody
that's smoking ducks and then grilling them all the way. I think we're the only ones doing, trying to do it. So...
I like the brined one. - That's really good. Could be even smokier. - Smokier?
- Yeah. Yeah, tell him we want all the duck and not to sell to any other
restaurants. (chuckles) - No problem. - Nobody else gets ducks. - It's our ducks now. - [Val] Hi Lee, Wayne. - [Lee] Hey. Val, I brought you your dark fresh masa. - There you go.
- (laughs) Thank you, Lee. Wayne and Lee are a brother and sister farming team
of Tierra vegetables. So today we're going to, we've got some beautiful sea urchin, first sea urchin that
we've gotten this fall. Then we're going to use it to put the sea urchin
infladita back on the menu And we'll use this corn. Here, we've got these, a
beautiful black masa infladitas. So this is black corn, no colors, no dyes. This is just the natural color of it. Will punches these into tiny coins and then launches them
into 400 degree oil, which is like dangerous. And then just gently spoons
oil over them until they puff. - [Will] These are like legitimately like the biggest pain in the ass to make. - It's all right.
(Val chuckles) No, not that it's... - [Will] Hour, hour and a half of the day. Just like sitting there
ladling oil, ladling oil. - [Val] But the end result is so worth it. - [Will] Yeah, 30 perfect shells. - The urchin infladita
is a dish we came up with and it's like sort of a
classic and I love it, but we took it off the menu. The urchin gets a little bit bitter, and so tonight's going
to be the first night that we have it back on. Should be nice?
- [Chef] Yeah. - Yeah. So we're just going
to lightly char this urchin. Just warms it up a little bit. It takes the chill off and gives it a little bit more flavor. We just glaze it really lightly with this little salty sea glaze. That's it, grab another one, Chef Kaylin! We're entering the Twilight zone. This dish is like very delicate to prepare and Kaylin is like the only person that's like a master of it. So that's a guajillo chile atole. It's like a corn and a guajillo sauce. It's got to go like
flying out of the kitchen, otherwise it'll like get
soft and won't be any good. - Happy Thursday to you all. We've got 28 on the books tonight. One vegetarian, and chef Val's dad is
going to be in tonight. Super exciting. Do you have anything
else to add for the day? - Yeah, obviously just stay relaxed keep your stuff tight, and it's going to be a great day. - All right, here we go, Thursday! - (staff shout in unison) Thursday! - After staff, about 4:30, we just said did lineup for the evening, and now it's getting a
little heavy in here. Everybody's getting set up. We're doing final station checks, basting all the sauces, and getting ready for a busy service. Should be good. In about 20 minutes, we're going to have all this cleared off. Everybody will have their
station mise en place out, the grille is going to be ripping, we'll have the comal on the stove, ready to cook the tortillas, and we're getting the
plate warmer all plugged in over there, and we're rigging up our
sourdough flour tortilla station as well. - So this is Sophie Hau. She's our pastry chef. She's been with us for several years now, Sophie and I started talking
about this chocolate stuff like three years ago and just slowly developed it and she's really taken it
and ran with it, you know? - It's difficult and it
shows a lot of skill. So, we definitely don't hold back with it. - Chocolate for me is like one
of my favorite things to eat. It's a native Mexican
ingredient, you know? It's a Meso-American ingredient that I think gets lost in
European and French cuisine. And I think that's a shame because you know,
chocolate started in Mexico and there's no reason that
we shouldn't embrace it and be using it all over. - [Will] All right, so right
here we have our chicharron. It's one of our first
bites of the evening. - You know, we start the meal with a series
of five bites and they're just a reflection of what's
going on in the season. You guys doing okay with this? - It's good. - How are the carrots, Walter? I'll try some scrap? Some bits of carrots. They're meant to be is just
like a really delicious way to start the meal. I think there's a lot of
anxiety with fine dining. People think they're going to come in and spend all this money and still go out, leaving hungry. And so that's like a way for us, to like right in the beginning, like every station picks up a course. So it also like ignites the whole kitchen. Everybody has to start focusing, You get like five pretty
awesome bites, you know, you're at least like,
okay, I'm calmed down. You know, people come in here hungry, and there's anxiety, and they're think it's going to be like everyone here is going
to have their nose in the air. And you know, I really want to like break
that down right away, you know, help people relax, help people feel like
it's going to be a fun, enjoyable experience, you know. - [Host] Who's got one ceviche? - [Chef] One ceviche! - [Host] Ice? - (kitchen staff in unison) Ice! - We're almost done with
the first term here, just wrapping up the last few tacos, and then we're going to get reset, and start over for the second term. Today, we had the urchin on. It was really nice to see it again. We've got some really
amazing R and D dishes that we ironed out today that we'll probably be putting on the menu within the next couple of weeks. My dad is Mexican and my
mom is from Venezuela. I grew up in a small town in Texas. We moved there because my dad wanted to
start a Mexican restaurant with his brother, and so they did, I guess that like early exposure
really like stuck with me. My whole family was working
at the restaurant, you know, my aunts, uncles, cousins,
brother, you know, and it was really just
like a beautiful experience to be involved with. - Everything was great,
especially the arepa. Ah thank you. - No complaints.
(both chuckle) A little bit different than what we were doing back in Texas, but really impressed with
what he is doing here, in San Francisco. So really no comparison and so proud. So proud. Just can't say enough. - Aw thank you dad. Californios is what the
Mexican people of this area called themselves, whenever
they settled California in the 1800s, so we play off that name, and also, you know, try
to represent Mexican and Latin American identity
here at this restaurant I think. Yeah, I think, you know, with our cuisine and the
restaurant and the experience, my goal is for people to
just enjoy it, you know, to have an amazing experience, to have a beautiful experience, and hopefully people understand
that it's a labor of love, but we don't want to beat
people over the head with it as well. Yeah, I want people to come in here and have an amazing time
and eat amazing food and think, "Wow, that was awesome."
Que vergüenza esto no pasa como comida mexicana 🤦♂️
Drops the banana. We're friends now
are these people claiming it's traditional? if not, i don't see the problem
No es tradicional we pero todos los ingredientes son nativos a Mexico y hasta los métodos también son mexicanos. Respeto la idea que tiene