(upbeat music) - Huevos rancheros over easy. Looks good. Take it out. This isn't your typical diner. We're putting all types of food on the table to our customers from disco fries, pancakes, eggs, club sandwiches, cheesesteaks, pastas. You name it, we got it. We try to be the top of
all the diners in Jersey. (upbeat dance music) Breakfast sampler, table 51. Looks good. Take it out. I think New Jersey's the
diner capital of the world. I think there's about
500 diners in New Jersey. At one point there probably was 600, but as you know, it's become more difficult to run these type of restaurants and these type of establishments. It takes a lot and it's become something that's unique if you're still in the diner business. (upbeat dance music fades out) So right now we're in the
kitchen of Tops Diner. This is Stephen McCormick. He's our executive chef. He's gonna show us how to
butcher our meat over here, which we do in-house every single day. Come on in. (upbeat music) - So welcome to our "meating" room. This is where we butcher
all of our steaks, filet mignon, New York
strip steaks, rib-eye, skirt steaks, whole chicken,
in our climate-controlled room. Right here, we're using
USDA Choice filet mignon. Also a beef tenderloin to cut our eight ounce filets for our surf and turf. - Having a butcher, in-house
butcher is expensive. We're fortunate that
Stephen, the executive chef, does that day in, day out on
top of all his daily tasks. So it's a testament to his hard work. - We go through approximately 12 to 16 filet mignon
portions every single day. Friday, Saturday, and Sundays we're going through
about 24 to 30 portions every single day. You know, not a typical diner is going to serve filet mignon, surf and turf, and things of that nature. It's one thing that we gave it a try to see if people would like to see it and people took to it. We always listen to our guests and what they want, and what they would
like to see on our menu. We grind our scraps and trimmings, and grind it and put it into our chili. So that's one of the reasons
why people love our chili, because we're using filet
mignon, skirt steaks, rib-eyes. Not a lot of people do, if anybody do, because it's not cost-effective. - Obviously, it's always nicer when you're buying a nice product, and you're able to cut
that rib-eye in-house and New York strip as opposed to being done at another facility. - [Stephen] So this is our
eight-ounce filet here, which will be used for our surf and turf. - Believe it or not, you're coming here, you wanna treat yourself. You're comin' to Tops, get something more expensive. - We're gonna build our surf and turf. This eight-ounce Brazilian lobster tail. This is a warm water. Our center cut filet mignon, coarse sea salt, and freshly
cracked black pepper. - John Benitez is the kitchen manager. He's been the kitchen manager since the first day we
opened up Tops, the new Tops. He does everything. He could be expoing, he
could be on fry, saute, it doesn't matter. - Now we're gonna take
this over to the grill, cook it to medium rare. And as that's cooking, we're gonna prepare our lobster tail now. Some nice butter, clarified butter, smoked paprika, pop this in the oven, and this will stay in here
at 450 for six minutes. And add a little bit of butter, put it in our broiler. At that moment we have our lobster tail. And that's our surf and turf. - Diners make good disco fries. You could go to pretty much any diner, if they can't make a good disco fry, then they should shut down immediately. That gravy has to kinda soak in and go through the layers
of cheese and those fries. - This is our overnight brown gravy. This is our veal stock made with veal marrow bones, carrots, celery, onions, red wine, sherry, all spice, bay leaves, thyme, peppercorns, and tomato paste. And what we do is we take
our veal marrow bones, we roast them in the oven, and then we take our vegetables, carrots, celery, onions, we roast that as well, and then we smother it with tomato paste. We cook it overnight for
approximately 18 hours. So right now we're making a roux, which is equal parts butter and flour. With the veal marrow bones, we have a natural thickener, which is the marrow
from the bones already. But we need a little bit of help just to make it the right consistency that we're looking for for our disco fries and other sauces. - [John] This gravy is laborious. It's a labor, it's a sign
of love and tradition. It's the recipe that we sort of inherited, but it's tried and true. (suspenseful music) This is one order of disco fries. - When you're making disco fries, and you're making that platform, the cooks kind of like, look at it like a masterpiece. It's only cheese and gravy on fries that was created by people that were drunk at two in the morning. - Let me get a side of grits. - My parents bought Tops in 1972. So when my dad came from
Greece to New York in 1968, and he ended up getting into
the restaurant business. And it was challenging for him because he didn't have education, he couldn't speak English, he didn't know how to write a check. He was learning on the go. He found a place in Newark,
New Jersey four years later, and bought it with my uncles. Without him, there would be no Tops. He's Mr. Tops. So this is Carlos. He's been here since, how long have you been here, Carlos? - Over 20.
- 20 years. He starts the engine over here with Marcos over here in the morning. Without them we couldn't do this, man. It takes a village and they're part of it over here. - We're the backbone of the business. - I would say about 125 people are working in the back of the house from porters, dishwashers,
to prep, to line. - This is our prep cook, Santiago Garcia. He's gonna show us how we make our famous fried chicken here. - I season a little bit of
chicken with salt and pepper. Then, I put it into this bowl, so I can start with whites. - On one weekend, easily, easily, easily, we're selling at least 200 to 300 pounds. And that's just night shift, really. Like that's how much we sell. - Chicken and waffles became a staple where growing up in the nineties, I don't think anybody knew what chicken and waffles was unless you were from the South or I would say like, Harlem. - This is our pressure
fryer, the Henny Penny. This machine alone is extremely important to our day-to-day operation. When we have such high
demand for fried chicken, this can cook eight full chickens in 13-and-a-half minutes to perfection, which is why it's used in so many specialty
fried chicken restaurants. Once these are fried, we put
'em into our cooling racks, then we have the orders here prepared, and we take a portion at a time, so maybe five or six orders, put it right there by the
deep fryer on the line. And then we start keeping track. Once we're down to about
four to five orders depending on what time it is, we know, add another 10. If it's busy, add 12 orders. If it's a little bit slower, we know, okay only add
about five or six orders to whatever we have currently. If we were to use a regular fryer that's not pressured, it would take at least 18 minutes. Imagine you were to wait 18 to 23 minutes for one order of fried chicken. When we opened up the new diner, when we rebuilt, we transitioned from a lot of the old traditional machines that we had for 20 years plus. Now we're using the Rolls
Royce of deep fryers. (energetic dance music) This is our house-made hot honey. (energetic dance music) - The new Tops that we're
sitting in right now, I mean, we didn't start
the actual construction of the steel 'til March of 2020. At that time also, we lost my dad, which was a bigger blow than anything we could ever even think of. At the end, we had to kind
of pick each other up, and I think my dad built us that way, where he was adamant that we needed to build this new place and give the people more. People, when they come to Tops, and that's what I love, they always try to go all out, and we wanna make sure that happens. - [John] All right, so our lobster tail is fresh water Maine lobster tail, and they're sweeter. So that sweetness pairs
very, very, very well with our Mornay, with a cognac. - We started featuring
the lobster mac and cheese I'd say like 2012, and it just gained popularity, and we've tried to keep
it the same ever since. Nowadays, you wanna have lower staff. You wanna have things on the menu that are easier to build, easier to make, high profit, high volume. So we're still doing things that most restaurateurs can't do and can't handle. I'm gonna take you to the bake shop. Obviously, you can't
have a diner in Jersey without a bakery. Cheesecakes, sponge cakes, layer cakes, pies, brownies, cookies. Bake shop has to have that in-house. This is Nathalia, our pastry chef. - So now we're gonna mix our batter for our cheesecake for the day. In here we have our cream
cheese, sugar, and salt. We're gonna mix this until it becomes a very
nice and smooth batter. We make cheesecake about six days a week in the diner. Right now we're serving
original cheesecake, strawberry cheesecake,
blueberry cheesecake, cherry cheesecake, Oreo cheesecake, and red velvet cheesecake. So now I'm adding sour cream
to our cheesecake batter. This is our heavy cream. So this is our cheesecake batter ready to go in the oven. We're gonna fill our pans. (upbeat music) So now the cheesecakes are all in the pan, we're gonna put them in
the oven to be baked. So we add water to the
pans to avoid cracks on the cheesecake and to
create a more even temperature. This is the traditional
way to make cheesecakes, and that's how we've been making it since the early '70s. - I think our most popular dessert at Tops is strawberry
cheesecake, hands downs. Tres leches sells the most, but I have to say strawberry cheesecake is the most popular. Strawberry cheesecake's
like Michael Jordan, and tres leches is like LeBron James. (playful piano music) I wanna satisfy and wow my
guests every single day. We wanna make sure that they came here and they felt like this is a second home, and they can come back and they feel good. It has this dynamic of people. People that embody what
New Jersey is, what we are. We're thankful that Tops is considered one of the best diners in New Jersey, and I hope that it just keeps going. It's a landmark, it's an institution. Diners itself have been here for so many years and we have to continue to kinda keep it from
being extinct, so to say. Because it's rare and it's unique, so somehow, some way,
we gotta keep it going. (cheerful music)
