Let Me Show You My Restaurant | Kenji's Cooking Show

hey everyone it's kenji i'm here at my restaurant wurst hall in san mateo california um it's a monday night uh after hours so we are closed for service right now um so i thought right now might be a good time to show you around the restaurant just so you can see what a restaurant is laid out like people have asked me um how restaurant kitchens work um so here we go let's take a look all right so this is the main dining room right now we are closed because of uh coronavirus so we're using it mainly for paper plate and uh package storage because that's what most of our businesses are right now up there is the mezzanine you can rent that out for parties we also use it for normal service over here is the kids table which is again not being used for anything but storage right now so let's go through this way let me show you the server station so right here actually is the pass-through so this window is where servers will take dirty dishes and pass them through to the dishwashers we'll go in here and we'll take a look at that from the other side on this side this part is called the pass so right here this screen is where all the orders come in from the the pos system the point of service system that the waiters uh put in with their little keypads on their hands um orders come in here so that the person on this side is called the expediter and that will either be the sous chef or sometimes someone from the front of the house is here and what their job is to basically coordinate between all the cooks who work on the other side of this line [Music] about when to get dishes ready so that five different cooks can get all the dishes for the same table ready at the same time so the person who stands here is called the expediter that's their job um and then this is called the pass so this is where all the ser each different station when they finish a dish they put it out we have a we have a very sort of streamlined menu right now so we have basically specific places where different dishes are supposed to go on the path so that the expeditor can grab them easily through here is the server station um and then here we got down here there's storage for basically table condiments and extra stuff like that right now it's basically empty because we don't have table condiments um this is our our to-go our sort of retail packaging pickle prisma those are chef eric's pickled fresno chili's water bottles coffee machine tea machine big industrial ice machine restaurants go through a lot of ice both for service as well as for sort of things like shocking vegetables and chilling down large quantities of food at a time now in here is the dish pit so this is the this is our industrial dishwasher if you've never seen one basically you grab you lift lift up this side um and inside there you can fit two of these trays um so you basically go here give them a pre-rinse slide them in it looks like they were cleaning fry baskets at the end of the night before they left you slide two of them in you slam this down the machine runs it takes about two minutes and things come out sanitized on the other side um pots and pans extra pots and pans up there um over here we got our big ass pots and pans this is what we use for cooking our potatoes for potato salad and for our triple cooked potatoes um down here oh these are called hotel pins so this is a sixth pan a ninth pin and a third pen they're called that because each one of those is a sixth a ninth and a third of the size of a full hotel pan this is a full hotel plan so if someone says give me a deep hotel they're talking about this they also we also have shallow hotels perforated hotels extra deep hotels um and then all those little pins are just fractions thereof so you generally have half third sixth and ninth pins of varying depths um different cutting boards for different needs so we do all of our meat cutting downstairs so you'll see red cutting boards downstairs but the green cutting boards are strictly for vegetables the white cutting boards are all-purpose yellow cutting blue cutting boards are for seafood but we actually don't do seafood here anymore so those are those kind of just get used for general purpose as well um down this way oh so this is a three compartment sink this is where we do our big pots and pans so wash rinse sanitize that's sort of the standard layout for a hotel sink uh sort of restaurant sink um these are house knives so a lot of cooks will bring their own knives and pretty much all of our chefs and sous chefs bring their own knives but we also have house knives in case people want to use them or in case they forgot their own a hand washed sink this one is on a knee lever so that you can turn it on and off without having to touch it with potentially contaminated hands uh hand wash stations are very important at restaurants and mandated by health code the positioning of them our dual fryers so we we go through a lot of fried potatoes and a lot of fried chicken here the big fryer is for meat the smaller fryer is a vegan but we use both of them pretty much at capacity all the time because people love fried food with their beer and we serve mostly beer now on the line there's various stations so on this line we have saute station here which has all these burners although currently with kovid we don't really use the we don't really have many dishes coming off of saute station so this is mostly used for prep but here this is where all of our smash burgers come from um our impossible burgers down here is where our sausages come from and on each station across from it on the other side you have one refrigerated part um and there are these drawers that pull out so up here so we have our sauerkraut quesadillas various cheeses condiments and then below is where all the meat goes so right now this is our impossible meat and this is our regular burger meat and that's sort of standard layout for most kitchens you have these drawers that pull out on the line and then up above you have all your various garnishes and side ingredients um and you can see these these things are all designed to fit various size hotel pans so you can slot different different pans in and out third pans ninth pins half um six pans depending on what you need so the layout of this of these these things is something that um you optimize for efficiency um so a lot of time you know when i was first designing the line of this restaurant designing menu items what i would do is i would have um on graph paper i would draw out that line and i would write down on paper and figure out exactly what i'm going to fit into each slot sort of to optimize the efficiency here and then of course as service goes on and you and you find some things i use more than others you iterate and you and you modify and then the cooks sort of eventually take over their own station and figure out what the best optimal way to arrange those things is but the idea is that you you want when you're cooking in a restaurant you want to be able to have everything that you need within hands reach without having to move from your spot so you turn around you cook you turn around you have your things ready to go you don't really have to move from the space very much down here we normally have bun storage as well as at the very bottom we have bins for used saute pens stuff like that um up top normally we would have stacks of saute pans and we would have our plates uh for service but right now we're doing all compostable plates because we don't um have full service during coronavirus um this is sausage station right now we have all these little sort of we changed our menu recently um so we have these kind of cheat sheets just for the cooks to use as a reference that they can study while they're waiting um and then over here is garde monge where sort of like salads and cold dishes stuff like that come from salads deviled eggs various things like that these are our seavap ovens so these hold very precise temperature to within a degree and also precise steam level so um they're essentially they can be used um thought of sort of as bagless sous-vide um so what we do is mainly we use these sausages we also pre-cooked the chicken for our um our seared chicken sandwiches in there but our sausages go in there at the beginning of service 100 steam 140 degrees um and that's fahrenheit 140 degrees fahrenheit and then they take about 45 minutes or so to come up to temperature there and then they can basically be held at that temperature without losing any quality um because of because of the steam and because of the precise temperature they don't overcook they don't dry out they they hold very well so that when someone orders it you then open this up grab the sausage that you need put it over here on the flat top to sear it and then within four minutes of the time that someone orders it we can get a sausage to their table that's perfectly cooked perfectly browned we know reliably juicy time after time four minutes is sort of our internal standard for how long for pick-up time so pick-up time is uh the time that a ticket comes into the kitchen till the time that the food can be out of the past we set a four-minute limit on that forever so every single dish at a restaurant um from the time it's ordered until the time is served it can be done within four minutes which means a lot of prep work this is excuse me this is the backup fridge so um i don't know what's in there right now there we go backups of mustard potato salad various condiments and things that we go through a lot that don't all fit on the line they'll leave them here so that when they need them they can just reach over and grab them and let's go down actually let's stop behind the bar first so this is our bar um we have 28 taps i think it's 28 i'm gonna pour myself a beer 28 taps including uh some nitro taps uh what do i want fieldwork fieldwork is a local local brewery ipa [Music] very good 28 taps including some wine and some nitro taps we currently don't have all of them full because of covid's so some of these you see the handles are not on none of the wine handles are on um all of our bar wear our logo bar wear and on this side of the bar you'll see oh down here we have cocktails and soft drinks and stuff like that and these lowboys on this side you see sort of like a mini version of the dish pit so over here is a single rack dishwasher also washes in about two minutes hand wash sink this is our three compartment sink here so uh wash rinse sanitize um another another hand wash sink our ice bucket here um let's see all right let's go downstairs and take a look all right so we're gonna downstairs is where we have our prep kitchen by the way our kitchen is not ideally laid out ideally you wouldn't have to walk up and down stairs between prep and uh service but you know here we are these are the pigs that i put here for my daughter i bought them all at ikea i put them here because she likes seeing them every time she comes in and we'll go down this way oh while we're here so this um oh hi this we finished building out um after the after the pandemic after the shutdown so this has not been used yet but it is ready to be used as soon as we are open again as soon as we're able to take guests again um so this is a bookshelf there's going to be you know one of those secret you pull a book and then on a pneumatic thing this bookshelf is going to open up and you are inside our new bar um we're calling this vunderbar you know going with the whole german word theme pun clever i think it's pretty nice what do you think i think it's pretty nice right now we just use it for meetings because it allows us to have some privacy and also keep our distance from each other but it's going to be pretty cool so these tables here they they fold down well right now it's blocked by a keg but they fold down um for when we're busy like on a friday or saturday night but on a normal weeknight they pull up so that you can seat two people there i think it's all pretty slick all right let's get going uh oh two-way mirror so you can you can see out from here but you can't see in from here of course that's not true right now because the lights inside the bar are on but normally when the lights inside the bar are off that's how it's gonna work all right this way is the prep kitchen this is our prep kitchen um let's start by looking at sous chef eric's sausage room this is the sausage room so this is where the sausage is made we have our grinder grinder parts stored in rice so that they stay nice and dry over here we have our sausage mixer as well as our piston piston style sausage stuffer and over here is a dry aging aging fridge i'm not sure what he's got in there right now but it looks like looks like two different types of pancetta we'll see what those are um in here is our walk-in freezer mainly we use it for potatoes sausages and buns so right now you can see these are our potato our triple cooked potatoes what we do is we cook them once by boiling them with baking soda bay leaf garlic and black peppercorn until they're soft and then we take them out of the oil rough them up we give them one fry at a relatively low temperature then we put them onto the sheet trays uncovered into the freezer for at least one night and that helps the exteriors dry out um and and also sort of creates a as they freeze there's a crystalline uh water you know the water freezes into ice crystals and that crystalline structure breaks up um some of the cells on the inside so it makes it easier for the water to then evaporate when you fry it a second time so we fry them straight from frozen the second time to order uh and they come out extraordinarily crisp like sort of like they almost have like a sort of glass-like texture on the outside but it's like chewing glass but in a pleasant way um we also freeze most of our sausages um sausages and a lot well almost any cured meat and especially fatty cured meat and our sausages are quite fatty um freeze extremely well so freezing them allows us to basically make sure that we have enough sausages um so so that we can focus on one sausage at a time rather than trying to produce um a little bit of every batch of sausage it's all about efficiency um and here is our regular walk-in walk-in fridge um so we got meat over here cured meats at the top raw meats at the bottom also that's also just sort of a basic food safety thing chicken is separate from the other meat over here is our prepared foods um so pickles i guess chopped ingredients for some sauces that they're going to be making various sauces that are already made um yeah all those different sauces that are made over here oh these are chicken bites so we do a similar process to our fried potatoes where um we fry them once at a low temperature the chicken we do once at both our chicken bites and our regular fried chicken sandwiches we do them once at 250 degrees for about 15 minutes until they are cooked through they are not crispy at that point but what we do is then we put them in the put them on trays into the walk-in overnight uncovered so that again so that the exterior can dry out a little bit so that when you cook them a second time to order you fry them at a higher temperature to order they come out extraordinarily crispy so these chicken bites and chicken wings i've had them i brought some home and put them on my counter uh and let them sit overnight and they're still crunchy crispy the next day um what else do we have okay so over here is all our vegetables right now the walking is pretty uh lean because well first of all we're operating lean uh because of covet but also because we were closed today so we'll get a big delivery of produce in tomorrow and then this is all our dairy over here more containers you can never have enough containers when i set up this restaurant i ordered a bunch of containers thinking it'd be enough and then of course it was like a third of what we actually needed so we added added more and more and more and more and more and then you have different containers with different sizes and it becomes a nightmare and then he throws them out you have to get new ones anyhow uh all right so this is our vacuum sealer um we don't vacuum seal the cook anymore because we do everything in the c-vap but we vacuum seal a whole lot of stuff for storage this is our regular mixer and then this is our like big-ass industrial mixer this is a robocoop which is a basically a very high-powered uh food processor um with some bells and whistles and then this is our vitamix also just a very high-powered blender oh and then this is the this is the real big robocoop this guy does um all kinds of stuff so this one dices vegetables it shreds cheese it uh well that's about it it dices things and it treads things but it does a really fast um more sinks uh this is dry goods over here and pickles so this is where we where we ferment all of our sauerkraut and our pickles um big uh i don't know what those are i think there's our 20 gallon 15 gallon containers that we that we pickle at a time and uh dry goods spices more stuff this is oils and canned things and then this is the uh this is the office very exciting and then what else is there to show oh um let me take you through over to here so this is our beer walk-in so this is where all of our kegs are so all of these kegs they run on these lines that run all the way upstairs to the tap system so the taps pull straight out of these cakes so uh if we run out of one beer and the bartender says they need to go change a keg they are coming down here to do that this thing is pretty cool so some of our beers um are nitro beards which um so nitrogen is what gives you that sort of foamy if you think of guinness it gives you that sort of really foamy creaminess that's a nitrogen infused beer so we have this nitrogen tank rather than having to swap out that nitrogen tank every time it gets empty we have this machine which is it extracts nitrogen from the air and it pushes it into that tank so that we never run out of measurement sort of it's sort of like i think of it as sort of like the uh you know like an instant hot water heater like an on-demand hot water heater but for nitrogen instead of hot water um anything else to show you i think that's about it so uh yeah i hope you enjoyed that quick tour um if you have any questions or if i missed anything or if you saw anything that you want more details about leave and leave a question in the description and i leave your question below and i will do my best to answer them and if you saw anything that was like a health code violation or anything like that also let me know because i would like to make sure that we fix that i don't think i saw anything questionable today and we usually keep nice and clean so i hope nobody saw anything all right see you later guys gals non-binary pals next time

Channel: J. Kenji López-Alt

Views: 408,170

Rating: 4.9767075 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: JqlgsRJiyWs

Length: 19min 47sec (1187 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 01 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Aardvark1044]

Really cool. I like the thing that swipes nitrogen from the air so that you don't need to mess around with buying nitrogen tanks from the beer gas supplier.

[u/nekomancey]

Can't wait to get off work and watch this. I kind of worship Kenji, his temperature over time guidelines for cooking meat have literally changed my life. I haven't eaten out in months ❤️🥩

[u/KingCrimsonFan]

That speakeasy part was really cool.