- So this is what we make pretty
much like on a daily basis, our three different kinds or
four different kinds of dough. Basically a hundred sheets
of lasagna every day. And it's a lot. I mean, if you pick this thing up, I don't even know, it probably weighs 30 pounds maybe. I mean the crazy thing is, we
almost didn't put the lasagna on the menu and now it's like, the thing that everybody comes
to the restaurant for. - What's unique about this restaurant, every single one of our pastas... - [Scott] is handmade. - [Angie] There is a bit
of like an Instagram curse with this lasagna dish. It's not like we developed
it to be photographed and it just so happened
that people ended up liking taking photos of it. The rest was history, I guess. - What I do is, I fold it like this and you can see how long
this thing has gotten 'cause we just made it super thin, right? Straighten it out. And then we make each one about 12 inches. And then what I do is I fold
them all on top of each other. And again, this is just one
step in making the lasagna. It's insane, like, the amount
of work that goes into it. If you're gonna make fresh pasta, there's no other way to do it. Now we're gonna cut and then
you end up with the sheets. These sheets are for tomorrow. We're gonna, once we're done sheeting, we're gonna wrap them,
put 'em in the walk-in, and then we're gonna take out the ones she made yesterday and
start blanching them. We have to blanch each sheet individually, and there's no other way to do it. And this is boiling very,
very heavily salted water because we're imparting that
seasoning into the pasta, and then salted ice water
too, to like reinforce 'cause if you just use
salted boiling water, then you put it into unsalted ice water, it just basically washes out all the salt. So, salted, salted. It literally takes probably
two hours every day of someone just doing this. We only ran out of it once, and it was like the first week
we were open I think, right? - Yeah. - But since we did that, we always put on the menu
"limited availability" just in case something ever happens. But it's never happened since then, so. (upbeat music) - So this is Chef Denver. He's our executive sous chef. He's been holding down
the fort this morning. He's gonna show us how to
make the lobster butter. - We use two things for it. So, first one, the tail will
be used as a lobster meatball that goes as well with the pasta. And then on top of that
will be the lobster butter, which we'll be using the lobster body. The liquid gold in our restaurant. So, what we want to do is
just transfer everything here. So we have the garlic,
the Calabrian chile, and also the butter that
we'll be using for this one. First thing, we'll be
putting in the butter. So this is a total of
four pounds of butter. Before here I was working at Panda Express and then started here not
knowing how a kitchen runs. And we worked our way from there. Right now that everything's in there, we basically just let it
simmer for about two hours, and then after that we
strain it through a chinois. And then after the chinois, we pass it through a coffee filter, to make sure everything's ready and then that's when we store it in cups in the freezer and then whenever
we need it, we take it out. - Now I'm gonna stuff
the lobsters for tonight. This is like the main element
of our Lobster for Two dish. It's a two-pound lobster
that we basically prepare kind of like Thermidor-style,
quickly blanch them just to like, get the meat
to detach from the shell and we remove the meat, we chop it up, and then we mix it with
our smoked vodka sauce. We often joke that this is
basically like, I don't know, like a cheese restaurant. I mean it's like, the
amount of like, dairy that we go through in this
restaurant, it's pretty wild. So this is gonna then get baked for like, around 12 minutes. So there's a ton of effort
that goes into this in advance. During service, like, it comes
together relatively quickly. We're just basically gonna
like roast off this lobster. It's like the most expensive
thing on the menu, basically. We only make a few a night. - So our next major project
that we do almost every day of the week is our caramelle pasta. It's two different types of dough. So we use our classic egg dough
that we use for our lasagna as well as we use a black sesame dough, and then Carmen cuts it into strips and we basically apply it
to the top of the egg dough. The whole idea is that it
gives it like a tie-dye effect. When I make it they don't look as nice
as when Carmen makes it. Carmen, do you ever do a specific pattern based on your mood of the day? - Is there like subliminal messages in the caramelle?
- No? You don't write like, "I hate Chef Scott" or anything like that? - No, no!
(Angie laughs) - I say, "I love Chef Scott." - Oh thank you. (Angie laughs) Thank you Carmen. Carmen's worked with us since day one. She's literally touched every single piece of pasta in this restaurant except for when she goes on vacation. Then I touch the pieces of pasta. So she's gonna start sheeting it and she's gonna put it
through once and then click it and make it smaller and
it's gonna look awesome when she starts going through. It's gonna just explode with
all the different colors and kind of like, takes life and looks like something
totally different. And you see she doesn't fold it. When I do it, I always
mess it up in the end zone. But she does it perfect every time. I don't know how you did that so fast. - Well you just.
- So fast. It's more challenging to do this than it is to do another pasta 'cause if you do make a mistake,
you can't reuse the pasta. There's a couple tools we use
in making pasta every day. One is the expandable cutter
which comes in super handy. One side is fluted, the
other side is straight. And then we also use a ruler. That's the way we make the consistency and everything the same. We measure everything before we cut it. You can't just guess
on this kind of stuff. That's how we keep it
looking the same every time. - So this is filled with
a buffalo milk ricotta that we import from Italy. So we intentionally flip this dough over and we fill it on sort of the backside so that when we create the shape, the black design is on the exterior. This is basically, we're
forming the caramelle shape. "Caramelle" means candies in Italian. The shape basically resembles
a little candy wrapper. So at this point, we
put them in the freezer. We intentionally freeze this pasta. When it cooks in the boiling water and the exterior cooks
at like a perfect rate and the interior is like runny and not overcooked, essentially. - Caramelle. It's a cool looking dish. I think that's why it's kind of been such a popular dish since we opened. - [Angie] And then the
pasta itself is served in a brown butter sauce with
honey pickled persimmons, a little bit of black sesame oil, and then the dish gets finished
with some black sesame puree and some opal basil. - So this is like one
of the last big projects we do every day before service. We actually make this
for the following day. The dough is very simple. It's just flour, salt,
olive oil, and water. It's a process where
we make all the dough, and then we portion
all the dough, roll it, and then we flatten it out, and then we actually stretch the dough like almost like pizza. We take a little 10-inch pizza pan and we actually stretch the
dough on top of the pan. When you stretch it, it
looks like the top of a drum. Well how many are you doing today, 50? (Aleida speaks indistinctly) Okay, 45? So she's gonna do 45 today, and then we're gonna fill
all of 'em with cheese and the garlic chives and
then we're gonna stretch another one on top of it and
then it rests until tomorrow. It's crazy right? - I feel like with all of our recipes, when we develop 'em like
you always like come up with efficiencies and smarter ways to like achieve the same end result. And with this particular one, like, there's like no
other way to do this. So Alei's gonna lay down
an even layer of that. This is a sofritto made
with Japanese garlic chives, garlic, and chiles and olive oil. We usually make it a day in advance to make sure it it cools. Parmesan, this is actually a
top-secret cheese blend mix. We don't typically share
the the secret of that one. So basically for efficiency's sake, the move will be to like
top all these at once. After that the next move
is to top that bread with another layer of the stretched dough. We're doing like 50 of these a day, which is a lot considering how labor-intensive this little task is. There are a few dishes here that are kinda like all-hands-on-deck because it's like such a big prep project. So the chrysanthemum greens, picking of the greens is a big thing because we literally are like
picking like leaf by leaf. - We get over 200 pounds
of chrysanthemum in a week. We've definitely put a
dent in the chrysanthemum that's shipped to the east coast 'cause it's all grown
in California mostly. Each leaf has to be iced down. We spin it in a salad spinner, and we have to pick like,
30 pounds of it a day and we have to make sure
we don't pick anything that's dead or brown. After we let it sit in here for about 20 minutes or so. If you can see underneath we raise it up with like this little raise thing. This way air can kind
of get underneath it too and it stays nice and fluffy and any liquid and stuff
can go to the bottom. This chrysanthemum salad
that we have on our menu, we make the dressing every day. Once the salad's done it gets the shaving of Parmesan over the whole thing, looks like a heavy snowfall. The station sells so much of this salad that like the people
that work garde manger are just like, oh my God,
you learn this one dish, you basically know 90% of the station 'cause we sell so many of 'em. Your arm gets so fatigued from shaving it that I s*** you not, we have three cooks that got a tattoo that says "Parm arm" on their arm. (gentle music) - People always ask us like,
oh are you sick of the lasagna? I love that, you know,
it's become like, you know, this thing that people recognize from this particular restaurant. - I think it's awesome and I think for the volume we do like, it's, we make it the best we possibly can. - This is the process
for rolling the lasagna. These sheets have been
blanched, cooled down. There's three sauces
that go into the lasagna, the Italian sausage Bolognese,
the other sauce is bechamel, and then the third one is
the San Marzano tomato sauce. So now it's a scoop of, Scott just put a scoop
of the Parm on there. So then the same move with the mozzarella, a quart of mozzarella. - [Scott] Two things
we don't skimp on ever: tomatoes and Parmigiano Reggiano. - And how much Reggiano
are we going through? - I would say two full wheels a week. - We just go through like copious amounts of all different types of cheeses. Parm, mozzarella,
stracchino are the big ones. This gets another layer on top. We just put down a little
bit of bechamel on the top. That's again gonna just
like seal the whole roll up when we're done here. So this is our Italian sausage Bolognese. This sauce needs to be made
a day in advance and cooled. Very important. If you try to do this with warm sauce, it'll just like totally fall apart. It's a little chunky. Next move is just to roll this. So after the lasagna
has sat in the walk-in and kind of chilled and set up for a bit, now is the time that we cut it. So each of these logs basically yields like one and a half orders of lasagna 'cause each dish gets six pinwheels. - This is only four lasagnas, and we sell about 60 to 70 a night. This is our lasagna dish that we use. We spray each one of them. We put six ounces of our
tomato sauce in each one, and then we just put in the lasagna. It cooks really fast,
it eats a lot lighter, it's really easy to serve
to individual people, and the whole entire top gets crispy. And when we were growing up,
like everybody would always fight over the corners of the
lasagna, the crispy parts. But this, like, everybody
gets a crispy piece. We put a piece of like, deli paper on top. We stack two on top of each other and then we keep 'em in the
walk-in until service starts. On the weekends we're
open for lunch and dinner we sell over a hundred and we
only have a 50-seat restaurant so it's pretty intense. - So it's 2:20. Basically the whole squad's rolling in for tonight's dinner service. So this is like usually the
most hectic part of the day 'cause we have like crossover between the morning team and the PM team. - And we just have a lot of people running around in very tight quarters, so. - So one of the desserts
we've been doing here since we opened is our
fior di latte mochi. Basically kind of just like
stretching and flattening this. We basically like pound out
homemade mochi every day and we make our own like
fior di latte gelato. We wrap the mochi around it by hand, and then it's a pretty like, simple dish but I think it's like, pretty complex in flavor and pretty interesting. I feel like we just like,
work really well together because we kind of like,
compliment each other's like, strengths and weaknesses and stuff. - But when we first opened, in the morning I would open every day and then Angie would basically expedite almost that five days a week. - I would close the restaurant. I'm like a night owl and
he's the morning guy, yeah. - So it works out good. We're lucky because like, most restaurants only have one leader or one
chef in the back of the house. But we kind of have two. So it is 4:05 probably. We open at 4:30. We have already a line started. Have you been to the restaurant before? - Yeah, a few times. - You have? - Yeah, I live around here. Am I getting in today? - You're the first person
on line, of course you are. Well thank you so much for coming back. - [Customer] I appreciate it. - Hi, how are you guys? - Hey good. Yeah, we came from Phoenix. We saw this on TikTok. - I hope it lives up to the excitement. - [Customer 2] It will. - Yeah, thank you. Now we're gonna walk over
to the private event space and we're gonna go see Angie. She's making a new amaro. So let's go see how it is. - The beauty about this
private event space is that during the day it's
like our menu development. Love the Italian tradition
of like, weird elixirs and like, after dinner drinks. I've been messing around
with one with broccoli rabe, we'll see what happens. So it's like a two part process. First part is steeping a
bunch of aromatics and liquor and then the other part is
mixing it with syrup at the end. So this has Calabrian
chiles, black peppercorn, orange zest, lemon leaves. It also has some lemon
juice, water, and sugar. Soon as that's cool, mix this all up and then get the final product. - It's pretty good. It's 4:15. We're gonna go downstairs and have the meeting with the cooks. - This morning, everything
was really tight with walk-in organization and everything. Has that been going pretty well with the new sort of structure of that? - Keep the mise en place really tight. Just remember to, you know, FIFO everything, organization, make sure we're keeping
everything really neat. - Cooking, cleaning, breaking down. Whatever you guys do, make yourself proud. And I believe whatever you guys are doing is making yourselves proud right now. I would love to be part of this team of like line cooking beside you guys. - Let's have a great service guys. (team claps) - Part of the daily mise en place for the cooks is also their hydration. So we got electrolytes, yerba mate. - Please sponsor us. - I told Lauren she needs
to buy stock in this company 'cause she drinks like four of these every day so.
- Yeah. - [Chef] They gotta stay hydrated. It's hot down here. - This is the pasta station here. We have this nifty container here. It insulates our pasta so that it stays really cold, really fresh. - [Chef] You know, this is
our bread and butter here, but we have our lasagnas coming off of the plancha or the flat top. During service, the cooks
know exactly what to expect. There's a very big push in the beginning. It's just getting a lot
of food out very fast. - Order in, steak mid-well. - Pick up three lasagna. - I just want to have a restaurant that people want to come back to. - We want our food to be like
kind of interesting and unique and like surprising, but we
don't want people to have to like think too hard about it. - Crudo master, he makes some sick crudo. - [Chef 3] Coming up, corner, corner up. - [Chef 4] Pick up lasagna solo. - [Chef 5] For 201, the salad?
- [Chef 6] Yeah, yes. - It's my Parm arm. I put in many hours to get
this stamp of approval. - [Chef 7] Just do the cauliflower trivet and then the regular lasagnas. - [Chef 8] And then we have one caramelle. - [Chef 9] Yeah, that's
everything right there. - [Chef 2] Our food is hopefully like soulful and like comforting. You guys have a lobster on order, right? Even though the restaurant's super full right now, super busy, you know, the team has everything under control. It's like a nice, nice flow. - Pick up flat. That's three. We're very lucky. Like we've been open six years and there's still almost every day a line of people waiting to get in. People want to come here and that really makes
me excited every day. (classical music)
