- These are the stairs that
keep us fit. (chuckles) When you have a raw bar
that's as busy as Lure, you have no idea how
much ice we go through. Sometimes we go through like, and God forbid the ice
machine breaks down, we go through so many
pounds of ice, it's crazy. Believe it or not, a big
challenge is getting that ice, making sure that we have enough ice. (funky music)
(Preston grunting) But this is just setting up the display, so we just wanna get as much
ice up there as possible. We want it to look nice and sexy. It just kind of adds to the
whole decor of the restaurant. It like, you know, helps
to reinforce the concept. It's old school but it still works. Last night we kinda got torn
up. We had tons of people. There was like, oyster
towers flying outta here so we had to get a couple more oysters. We got about 300 East
coast. These are bad boys. Just wanna make sure we
don't run out for the night. When the dishwashers
come in in the morning, this is one of the first jobs
that they like to knock out, sort through 'em, the
East coast and West coast, make sure all the ones are separated. They give 'em a good rinse. Put them into the Lexans and get 'em in the oyster bin for us. This is where we store all of our oysters. The raw bar cooks will pull from this bin to fill the
refrigerator drawers out there and that's where we service the raw bar. This is basically the raw bar station. So all the raw bar comes
off of here, like maybe six or eight different kinds of
oysters at any given time. We have shrimp cocktail,
crab legs, seafood salad, scallop crudo comes off of here. Our towers come off of here, our small towers and our grande tower. (upbeat violin music) Nice! (laughs) Get your ass over here. What's up? This is sous chef Bruno, executive sous chef of Lure Fish Bar. He's gonna help me break down
fish along with the butcher. It usually takes three
of us to try to get fish 'cause we do so much
volume, we're gonna start to break down the tuna. Now this is our tuna. Tuna loin number one comes from the Gulf. Super nice color today. Look at that. We probably go through about
a hundred to 150 pounds of tuna a week with all of the different
applications that we have. And we're charging a lot of money. We really wanna take care of our guests, so tons of work goes in
ahead of time to make sure that we're a hundred percent
prepared for service. So this is the tuna that we're
gonna use for the kitchen, for all the different
preparations that we use that come out of the main kitchen. And then we have a separate
tuna that's outside that comes for the sushi and we can
go take a look at that. This is our chef Akira.
He's our main sushi chef. So this is the type of
tuna that we use for sushi. The color's a little bit better. He's wrapping the tuna here so that we can just have
it prepared for service. We do so much volume so we gotta make sure
that we have enough ready and so this is the best
way to kind of store it. (upbeat violin music continues) This is gonna be for our
sesame-crusted tuna salad. I'm gonna crust the tuna. So we get the tuna just kinda nice and sopping wet with soy sauce, then we go right into the sesame seeds. You have dishes like
the sesame-crusted tuna. You have a dish like that that
people really, really enjoy and you wanna make sure that you give the people what they want. You know, sesame-crusted
tuna is not a dish that people have not heard
of before. (chuckles) Fun fact is, this is one
of the dishes that I made for my tasting when I first took this job, and it's still in the menu 10 years later. There's definitely a feeling
of like, once a chef has a dish that he knocks outta
the park and it's a 10, you kinda get bored with it and then they don't wanna
make it anymore. (laughs) I had problems with customers, I almost had a mutiny for
taking the sea urchin bucatini off the menu. There was like a firing
squad ready to come get me. (upbeat music) This is exactly how it
looked when I made it for my tasting before I took the job. (upbeat music continues) We're gonna start to do the rice now. We go through so much rice. We decided to really try to stick with the traditional way to make rice. I'm gonna add the vinegar. We use the paddle, so there's
like a technique to doing it. The vinegar gets evenly over all the rice. You can smell that aroma from here, right? As soon as the vinegar hits the rice, it's like, psh, right in your face. Sushi's probably about 35 to 40% of all the food that we do here, so lots and lots and lots for
lunch and then for dinner. Before I took over Lure, I
had no idea how to roll sushi. Now I'm pretty good. (steady music) So it's about 11:30. We're getting ready to
open up for lunch service. It's time to taste the oysters for lunch, make sure all the oysters are super fresh. The oysters are a huge
part of our program here. It's very important that we serve the best
oysters in the city. We're known for our oysters. So I spend about 30 minutes
a day eating oysters. Yeah, I eat about 20 oysters
a day, oysters for breakfast. And I do this twice a day. I kinda just go through all the oysters. I pick a couple at random. The way that we keep the quality up here is by tasting, everybody tasting. If you don't taste, you'll never know. And so we taste everything all the time. This is beausoleil. That right there is
like the perfect oyster. You see all the liquor, the
full size of the oyster. It's like my favorite. So sometimes it happens, when
you're stuck in the oyster, sometimes the shells will
be a little bit brittle and the shells will crack. So I don't like to serve these oysters because I like the shell
to be completely intact. So we just set the actual oyster aside. We get rid of the shell and
then we'll use the oyster for like a crispy oyster
on top of a deviled egg. This is our West coast guy
here. This is Pebble Beach. I like being completely honest
with people saying like, the chef tastes oysters
every day to make sure that they're getting
the best quality ever. We're gonna start with
soft-shell crabs today. It's probably gonna be our
special for the day, yeah? These are coming in from South Carolina. We use them for a bunch of
different applications here. A lot of 'em are -- spider
roll for sushi is a big one. So when it actually comes to
figuring out the sushi menu, I like to consult with
Akira, the sushi chef. I got four coming, two
tempura, two beer batter. Figure if we taste one, see what we think, maybe we can incorporate
the beer batter into it. I don't know. We'll try it, yeah? Akira always like to do things
in the same kinda fashion, like say almost traditional Japanese. We're gonna try and
change it up a little bit, see what we can do. We're gonna drop the crab into the tempura batter
and then crisp it up. So now we're gonna try the
soft-shell crabs and beer batter. I'm pretty sure Akira's gonna hate it, but we'll see what happens. It'll be fun to get someone outside their comfort zone a little bit. As far as the actual dish creation goes, a lot of times it just starts with me. I'm like, "I'm bored with this,
I'm gonna change something." Ultimately it comes from
me and the sushi chef. Okay, so there's two here. I'm not gonna tell you which one is which. - [Akira] Oh, okay. - [Preston] You try this
one first, then this one. - Okay. (tense music) Mm, Very good. - That's delicious. - Hm, I like it. - You like it, huh? - I like the miso.
- Yeah! That's the beer batter. - This is better. - It's better? (laughs) All right! Normally when we make this, it's just a regular tempura batter, a little bit of spicy mayo. I think the tempura batter's crispy and I think the beer batter's
a little bit more crunchy. And then we're gonna take that crunch, we're gonna add some
chiles, see where we're at. Avocado, cucumber, spicy mayo. So then this will be
our special for tonight. It's gonna be our beer
battered spider roll. We'll use a Japanese rice beer
to make the tempura batter. It's a little bit more
crunchy versus being crispy. Definitely get a little
bit of beer flavor. I think it's gonna go well,
you know, with the eel sauce. The hint of spiciness from the spicy mayo, freshness from the cucumber, smoothness, creaminess from the avocado. That's why he's the best. It's bomb. Good job, bro. Way to nail it. (upbeat music) Hey guys, how are you?
Nice to see you all. So we're going to be serving
our spider roll this evening but we made it a little
bit different today. - [Waiter] Yeah. - We made it with a beer batter. This one is a little bit different than our classic spider roll because it's a little bit more
crunchy instead of crispy. I think everyone's gonna really enjoy it. I wasn't sure Akira was
gonna like it, but he did. And we're ready to roll. I got one here for you guys all to try. Please give it a try. - All right. - Have a nice service. - [Speaker] Go. - Hey! So like one of the last
things that we do right before service is we like to
cook up the shrimp cocktail. We cook shrimp cocktail almost every day. We keep it as fresh as we possibly can. The biggest secret is to
not overcook the shrimp and proper ordering. You know, if we order
too little, we run out. If we order too much, you
know, we risk spoilage. That's the last thing we want.
Nobody wants to hear that. We got a nice flavorful
liquid going on here. Court boullion, it's got bay leaves, peppercorns, soup vegetables. This is like one of the
super important parts of the shrimp cocktail making process 'cause what we're really looking
for is internal seasoning but we want the shrimp to be
seasoned from the inside out. Once the liquid comes to a boil, we double check for seasoning then we pretty much turn it right off and let the shrimp just kinda poach. Tasting for succulence,
tasting for seasoning, make sure we seasoned it right. We know right away. That's pretty much the last step for cooking it for the raw bar and getting set up for the mise en place. Those shrimp will get cooled then they'll go right into the raw bar. These guys are in the back now, just getting set up for service. It looks like it's gonna be a big one. We got about like 300, 350 so we'll see what happens. (laughs) We're putting together our
grand platter right now but you get a sense of how much
ice we actually have to use 'cause this is one level and this platter's gonna
end up being three levels, all filled with ice and
this is just one platter. So the amount of ice we use is insane. We go through, like I
said, maybe a hundred, 150 pounds of ice a day. We have our clams here, our little necks. We have our Blue Point oysters. These are like the local
oysters that we use. These are Pebble Beach is what
we're using for West coast. So we make sure the East
platter has East coast and West coast oysters. We're gonna add a couple
beausoleils to this one 'cause it's my favorite oyster. This would be the first
layer of our tower. For our second tier, we have about four different
little dishes on side. This is our tuna tartar. This is our kanpachi sashimi
with a little bit of like, a fresh wasabi leaf vinaigrette. This is our scallop crudo with toasted black sesame and chive. Then we have our seafood salad. This is like, one of my favorites, my favorite seafood salad. I love it. (customers chatting indistinctly) That will be the second layer. This will be the final top layer
level of the grand plateau. It's more about like the chilled lobster and the shrimp cocktail. We add our sauces. Here's
our cocktail sauce. Here's our dijonnaise sauce, lemons. You can eat it however you wanna eat it. You can eat it from the top down, you can eat it from the bottom,
you can start in the middle. There's no wrong answer.
This is our third layer here. So this is our grand plateau. This is definitely one of the most popular things
that people order here. They come here, it's like eating
like a king. They love it. Like walking through the dining room, you see the heads turn. You know, people think that, you know, it's kinda funny to send people a raw bar because you're not really
doing anything to the oysters. You're just kinda opening up the oysters. But I definitely think that the platter has a
touch of my culinary hand. The sea urchin sauce that we have here, the way that we like to
make the court boullion to cook the shrimp, all different culinary techniques
that I've kind of acquired over my career. Well I definitely think that this is one of the signature offerings
here at Lure Fishbar. (upbeat music) So it's like 3:00 now. We're pretty much done with lunch service. We're gonna just really start
to get prepped for dinner. We had a nice run on oysters for lunch, so we're gonna replace all the oysters in the drawers for dinner. Usually kinda try to pack 'em in for dinner just to make sure we don't have to make too many trips
going back and forth. Right behind! It's about 4:00. The
line's pretty much set up. We're gonna head over and
taste the oysters again, make sure that they're pretty good. (Preston laughing) No, my doctor doesn't know
I eat this many oysters. All right guys, it's about 5:20. Dinner service has officially started. It's getting ready to get wild. Just gonna start with one of our whole fish we
got ordered in, daurade. I mean as far as services
go in other restaurants, it is a dance. It's a fast shuffle and I think that we
manage it very, very well. Plate with the salmon, I
put the greens down first. Grilled fish goes down,
artichokes over top of the fish and finish the dish with a little bit of agrodolce and garnish with a lemon, a little bit of sea salt, finish
with a little bit of herbs. This is the whole fish
dish for the spring season. It's got everything that you ever want, artichokes, charred lemon
adds a great flavor. It's delicious. So this is the rice station.
This is Carmen and Jose. They make the most crispy
rice in the whole city. So this is our crispy rice. This one is uni. We sell a
lot of this too. (chuckles) We run the kitchen in Spanish. Okay guys listen up, new
call. (speaks in Spanish) Fire two crab cake, fire two shrimp then border fire two edamame, please! And you have to be able to make money. It's a very important
part of being a chef, being able to understand your
financial responsibilities. You know, your staff is here for jobs. They're here for their families. They have to provide for their families. And so you have a responsibility
to them to make sure that you are putting the
best product, you know, forward that you can. You gotta make sure the sushi and the main kitchen food
is, the timing goes out so it all goes out together. And so we're doing food for the lobby of the Mercer Hotel as well and room service and our
outside dining area. (chuckles) So it's quite a bit. I dunno if I would say running
three separate restaurants. The sushi bar, absolutely. The sushi bar could be its own restaurant. It definitely gets challenging
because what happens is, the sushi tickets are really, really long. It's really just about communication, being able to communicate
between the stations. Sometimes it's a matter of the
chef just kinda running back and forth out of the door. Hey M-6, can I go? M-6? Okay guys, let's go. M-6,
that's the burger, yeah? Lower medium, shellfish
allergy. Sushi is ready. Once everything's
working, it's a beautiful, organized confusion and
it's like an orchestra. (upbeat violin music) Make that hot. Yeah make it hot. - [Chef] Yes, chef. (Preston speaking in Spanish)
(upbeat violin music) - Guys, how's sushi on
table 31? Is this 31? Fantastic. Very good,
very good, very good. And this is the to-go
order? Very good, thank you. Lemme see this dress combo. When this dress combo comes
up, lemme see it, okay? (upbeat violin music continues) One of the big showstoppers here in the restaurant obviously
is our grand plateau. Once it walks into the dining room, it starts turning heads right away. Once those platters start
rolling out, people get excited, they start ordering 'em and those guys start shucking oysters, like you've never seen. (upbeat violin music continues) (Preston laughing) If you approach making food delicious, it becomes interesting on its own.
