Only 16 People a Night Can Eat This 17-Course Omakase | On The Line | Bon Appétit

wow Royal Sushi and isaka is a passion project Under One Roof you have a boisterous isaka with some great food talk the way behind the norn curtains of the iseka I have my Omas service Omas literally means I'll leave it up to you so it's a chef experience where you get to see the chef's vision and there I do my 17 course $300 Omas for 16 people a night eight people a seating every Chef's dream is to have both things right you want a fun loud volume packed place in the same space I have my very serious Chef tasting meal where I get to make the food I want you know I get to control everything and that's I think a chef stream to have [Music] both hey I'm Jesso the chef owner here at Royal isaka 10 hours before omasi service fish is coming in right now from Japan let's bring it on [Music] in this is noou he's the owner of Yama Seafood he distributes to some of the best Japanese restaurants in the area this was caught on Sunday in Japan packed on uh Monday in toyosu brought an airport and then it arrived last night at JFK few hours later brought it over to you today is Tuesday this build's pretty big so long did it time set two pager 400 not your biggest but yeah but that that's just for today there's three more deliveries tuna lofin yep my God it's [Music] heavy it's 9:00 fish just got dropped can't stay on the ice too long otherwise it damages the fish I have to get it out cleaned gutted scaled prepared some's going to go in the dry Ager some's going to go in the walk-in and a lot of it will be used for tonight's service here are some Farm mackerel mackerel is my favorite fish it it's oily it's fatty I also gravitate towards fish that I think are a challenge for the like American palette growing up at my dad's restaurant mackerel was a fish that a lot of customers immediately said no to they probably had a bad experience it's a very technical fish because of the oil content has to be extremely fresh that fish gets salt cured gets vinegar soaked I like a good challenge I like to let diners know that things they may not have thought they like they actually love this is the Kua Japanese long Toth coer this one's going to get aged for at least a week you can kind of see it's already in rigor you got to Handle With Care cuz this could easily just mess up your whole day so what they've done here this little chop and there you see there's a little hole here this is the EKG process that's a Japanese technique they stick a metal rod down the spine to kill the nerves keeps the fish from decomposing in so quickly you can tell an immediate difference when you work with a fish that's EKG and one that's not the flesh kind of Tears a bit for the ones that are have not been processed that way whereas this one if I were to cut into it today it's like it's just so pristine so tight got a ton of fish I got to break down right now I usually have a couple more hands but since we have so much fish I came in a little early to get started but between three Sushi chefs we usually spend about 4 hours getting all fish broken down sorted out plus a couple more hours of skinning slicing getting ready for service I always start my fish prep with the fish that have to get salted or cured first cuz that takes time so we're going to start with the Spanish mackerel all right so first part cleaning process we always cut the fins off you just want to get as much as the guts out as possible that's what really rots it very quickly salt curing what it does is essentially pull out a lot of the excess moisture mackerels it's important because we're going to vinegar so later so it allows the vinegar to penetrate easier and better so that's going to stall cure for about 20 minutes so let me get the squid out this is the aori EA big fin reef squid I love using this squid specifically from Japan this one is super meaty sweet delicious you cannot get this from America this squid yeah this is a $72 squid to understand this cost woo there we go ink sack intact you do not want to Pop That this is the spine this is the only kind of like bone in this squid I guess it's not a bone it's like cartilage the squid has millions of layers of skin on it but you just take a towel or paper towel and if you just go like this you see this film like that you want to get this layer off rubbing squid skin off sticking my hand in fish stomachs to take all the guts out like that's my zen time so ishigaki D spotted knife jaw bream also known as bar knife jaw bream because of these crazy spines it has this is one of my favorite fish to work with I'm using it for the Omas this season this one's going to get aged so it has to get cleaned very well this process suiki is the knife scaling just removes the scales off of the skin fish like this one this ishigaki you have to do it this way because the scales are so compact that if you use another scaling tool they just won't come off and they'll end up all over your cutting board you have to do the entire thing by hand so this is going to take a bit of time growing up my dad's restaurant my dad's from kushu Japan he's a classically trained Japanese Chef my mom's from sou Korea they opened a restaurant in 1979 one of the first Japanese restaurants in South Jersey called Fuji I started working there when I was 14 so I learned everything like the foundation of what I know there these fish heads we actually saved them and the collars and we're going to use them in the ezekiah they're going to be fried it's a dish called kabut served with the panzu sauce getting the best meat available for a great price so we cross utilize a lot of things so there's zero waste it's 10:00 I'm going to break down the tuna upstairs I did what I had to do down here this is like 120 lb it's from a 500 something lb fish from Spain all right here we are this is the sushi bar this is where the yass happens I do two seatings a night 17 courses got you two three oh my God that is a big tun this is the belly cut all of this right here this is Otoro this is the super fatty tuna belly and all of here this is going to be choro and this is the akami the lean part this is the Kama so this does have K Toro here this is good if you grill it or torch it it has a lot of muscle tendon so very chewy but delicious if you cook it when I do this I'm measuring for a Saku cut so this is like the length of the fillet you want to work with for sushi when it gets cut into that like long rectangular shape this is the size so I'm going to just cut it down in usable chunks parts of it that are more chewy the tail end or end bits that'll be put off to one of my Sue chefs some of it's going to get dry-aged some of it's going to get used today and some of it's not going to get dry AED it's going to be stored in pra use tomorrow this loin right here is $2,500 yeah this is $2,500 a fish tuna is a quintessential Sushi fish because of just the flavor I mean when you eat blue fin tuna like this there is nothing that tastes like this the Umami the depth of flavor the fattiness the richness this paired with nice acidic rice soy sauce it's like the perfect bite this is a special paper called Muro paper each roll cost $10 I mean it it's a highly absorbent thick paper that just maintains the quality of fish especially for tuna but we use it for everything so 12 20 lb of that blue fin we're going to go through that in 5 days truly wild go birds so this here is Edwin he's one of our Sushi apprentices here he's going to be wrapping all the tuna to put her away in the walk-in that's it for the breakdown as of right now it'll continue through the day but I'm going to get the rice started since that takes some time okay it's 11:00 let's start washing we do three batches of this a day but my Omas rice I used special grain special vinegar this is called the hit bore it means love at first sight this is my akazu rice vinegar it has to stay closed and contained to keep the acidity of the vinegar you can't keep it open this is the rice washing process sui rice is a little sticky it's mainly because of just the natural starch on the rice you see the starch coming off right now you don't want it to be too sticky where it's like unmold a you also don't want it to be too soft too hard so it's so technical to get this part right I always equate ngiri to Clay work which is what I love doing in Pottery you're just molding the rice and the better the rice like the better clay the better your product but this is the most technical part of the day actually rice is way more important than the fish obviously you need great fish great product to make great sushi but if you don't have good rice it doesn't matter how good the fish is so rice is straining for 8 minutes hey timer just went off got to cook the rice this is the Rice net we use the net so we can easily pull it out otherwise the rice kind of sticks to the pot do 36 minutes in this gas cooker always double check that the flames on I in the beginning I have um hit that switch and the flame did not go on and then 36 minutes later you're left with some really wet raw rice and a really really messed up day while the rice is cooking let's go over here this is another Sushi Apprentice Elmer he's been with us for over a year started as a dishwasher super skilled he is taking all that Toro that muscle part that's super chewy scraping all out and then he's going to go in it again to take out even more connected tissue so it's like a super labor intensive process this takes a lot of time a lot of effort but if a restaurant like can do this that's how you utilize a whole tuna rice is cooking while that's cooking this is the dry Ager dry Ager built for beef but I mean I think and fish right dry aging what it does is it concentrates the flavor this this is the kuay you saw one of these earlier so you can kind of see how it's completely dried out leathered out this is the ichigaki D the way we cut it we retain the fle we're going to use later so looks like um I'm like the fish Hannibal Lector in a way right this is the age blue fin tuna beautiful piz we're going to use this tonight I'm going to cut into it got 15 minutes till the right rice is done and I'm going to have to do the shizo so let's break this down this is not every day that I use AG tuna I just started incorporating it it's very different than beef there's no fungus or mold that you're trying to build up that doesn't form on here and you don't want it I this is going to be eaten raw coming through rice if you're [Music] here rice is cooked this is the Shizu this is the process of incor separating my rice vinegar mixture into the rice it has to happen right now when it's steaming this process is important one for germic the acidity prevents it from building up mold or building up any bacteria the other process it encapsulates every grain of rice and it protects the flavor and it makes it super malleable so this thing the hiri is made of Japanese Cypress Wood super resistant to rot warping mold and it doesn't have so much of fragrance so it's great to do rice in it this thing itself the size is it's like $500 $600 so these things you try to keep for years what a lot of people don't know about sushi is Sushi actually means sour rice so originally before nigiri Sushi became a thing where it's pressed molded but I do it at omasi Sushi was a fermented fish they took fish they took rice salt vinegar and they essentially barreled it up for years and the lacto fermentation from the rice would ferment the fish and then they would Grill it later so we're going to let this sit for about 10 minutes air out flip it then put it in the [Music] warmer all right 1:00 still lot to do but caviar should be here any minute Gary yeah what's going on got the goods oh I brought you some of the delicious gavar we got the premium MRA from Italy very nice texture we're going to use these in the next 5 days between Omas and isaka so on a any given piece you're probably going to get like that much cavier I don't believe in like I hate it when you get like two Grands and I'm like what is that so amazing it's perfect thanks like always it's 1:30 time to get slicing on some of this fish get ready for service so first I'm going to start with the king salmon belly from New Zealand this is a yagi Japanese fish slicer single bevel it's a special Damascus metal you can kind of see that design it's made from the noi this one takes like a year or two to get I like it cuz it's just very agile I do a lot of unique slicing based on the fish based on the way it eats the texture if it's going to get torched or not presentation you'll see some pieces get double cut that's either for looks or it's also in case there might be a pin bone that broke off so if you do a double slice you'll catch that also just looks so pretty I say Omas Sushi is just raw fish that's why you got to make it look pretty it's only eight seats it's only 16 seats a night it's only one of me [Music] it's 2:45 we're in the isaka I'm here with Chef Justin he runs the iseka menu I run the Omas Justin and I have been working together for a few years now he's super talented we you know depend on each other for each other's opinions on the food it's nice to kind of have that backing or that person to bounce ideas off of them so uh we're doing Yaki Gan which is grilled beef tongue we raised the beef tongue and then it is marinated in mirin soy and sake and then there's two sauces there's a salsa matcha and then there's a shio Nei which is like the traditional Japanese garnish for this dish charred scallion raw garlic Sesame some lime to tie the two sauces together that sounds really amazing so while I'm a sushi chef restaurant tour type of person I also love photography and I do all the social media photography for the restaurant so let's head on upstairs to get this shot so we're in my office right now standing right on top of the isaka this is where I do all my photography to get all the specials done to get the menu photographed I got my uh light box here um big diffuser this is my Canon R6 Mark II uh I just upgraded finally I go for up close and personal normally if we have a isaka special I'll set aside about 1050 minutes to get it photographed I do have to upload this on my computer get it edited I'll send it over to my GM Nicole and she'll get it up on Instagram it's 3:25 uh we still got a lot more to do what I'm working on right now is the Omas menu it's dated so I do it every day and obviously there might be some changes I have to do it right now to get it to the team so they can print it get it folded stamped and ready to go so let's get going 4:00 Let's uh pop into the kitchen this is my father Masaharu Ito he's from Japan he taught me everything I know Sushi Master making the tamagoyaki for tonight this is a very technical thing he's way better than me not exactly I think he doing very well I think couple more year to come his prime time we come he had to think about why he going to do rest of life but I'm very happy right now working with my dad in this context is much easier you know back in the day when he was teaching me I was a resentful young cocky kid now it's great he gets to go home early I handle all the problems and uh it feels good this tamago Yaki is essentially like a sweet Savory egg omelette it's the most technical egg omelet you can make just because of the motion required to do it you can see he's kind of doing this flipping Motion in a square copper tamagoyaki pan so it's very technical very hard to get that motion down okay it's 4:30 I'm going upstairs to take a 20-minute break this the only time I get so let's go going to eat my [Music] lunch okay 5:00 got my break ready to the final prep we got an hour to go 30 minutes till pre-shift so I just have a couple things I still have to cut I got the squid I got the live scallop ban the shrimp been doing this for a long time but there is a lot of pressure to [Music] execute it's 5:30 time for pre-shift I'm here with Samantha she's my omasi server my wingman she's been here for 7even years working with me what do we got tonight so two allergies tonight one guest at 6:00 has a mackerel allergy and another guest at 6:00 cannot eat shm that is all today we are booking Tuesday February 20th and Wednesday February 21st it's pretty far it's the first date we have available great for tonight the shimaji the KU the ishigaki nuro and the akami and Toro are all dry-aged for add-ons I have the A5 wagu cavier Toro Hokkaido uni so I have a very special one in case people want to get it we have the spicy crunchy tuna Tamaki Toro uni caviar Tamaki and my dad's Pago it's 5:40 we got 20 minutes till service starts Samantha we can start seating uh 10 UPS so in 10 minutes otherwise you know we're about to do what we do every day the show begins soonas is a performance in the sense that everything leading up to it is very physical technical fast-paced precise work and the clock is just ticking ticking ticking and everything leads up to this one moment where the show Begins the guests are seated and we get going at that point everything's pretty much prepared it's just assembling the nigiri but the assembly part is to me it's like a dance kumoto oyster with Toro tartar to start use your hands make sure you do one bite okay it's all besing in 30 seconds the C is also a performance in the sense that I am directly engaging with all my customers I am live for them and if there's any type of emotion in the day or any type of thing that's on my mind I have to clear that and I have to be ready so the katua tataki charred Japanese Bonito these people have waited months to get in to experience this with me they're paying a lot of money and it's important to make sure that energy wise and personality wise I'm there too to be with them I want it to be a great experience and part of what makes Omas great is you are right there with the chef who you're watching them make every piece they can explain to you what's going on you guys see the process and they can explain to you the best way to eat it in their mind and that's a very special connection

Channel: Bon Appétit

Views: 3,138,564

Keywords: authentic japanese food, best sushi bar in philadelphia, best sushi restaurants, bon app, bon appetit, bon appetit on the line, bon appétit, day in the life of a professional chef, day in the life of a professional kitchen, food, how restaurant kitchens work, inside a professional kitchen, inside a restaurant kitchen, japanese cuisine, japanese food, japanese sushi, on the line, royal sushi and izakaya, royal sushi and izakaya philadelphia, sushi, sushi restaurants

Id: 3ptagZOU_Wg

Length: 20min 21sec (1221 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 03 2024