-[ Swiss accent ]
I am very proud of the way we cook the product, the way we treat the product. I think this is
a very almost forgotten art. I'm actually blown away
how good the food can come out cooked on the street. No charge for him, please. -Okay.
-Yeah. Push. My name is Thomas Odermatt. I am the owner of Roli Roti,
a mobile rotisserie business headquartered in San Francisco,
the Bay Area. Are those people taken care of? What are you waiting for? -Sandwiches.
-Oh, okay. Let's push, push, push. Let's get it done. I started Roli Roti in 2002 out of one single food truck. Yes, a food truck. I'm known for three things. I started with
the rotisserie chicken. What I really wanted
when I founded Roli Roti is to provide
a rotisserie chicken that is as good, if not better
than a restaurant. For me, I want
to serve something that's hot, fresh,
off the grill. Then the potatoes. The potatoes are
my signature dish. And then the last
that I'm very well known for is actually the porchetta. The porchetta is basically
Italian street food. ♪♪ The philosophy of Roli is to source really impeccably
good raw materials. Rotisserie cooking,
you cannot rush it. You just cannot rush
the protein. You have to be very patient. We're running the oven
at about 425 to 460 degree Fahrenheit. Back home, we didn't really use a lot of potato
underneath the porchetta, but then my wife, Yumi,
was saying, "Hey, why don't you
put some potato under?" We start with the fingerling,
and it's a hard-cooking potato. So the potato doesn't mash out.
It stays intact. But it has the ability
to soak up many, many flavors. So we cook them
with the drippings, almost indirect frying. It really creates
a really nice product. A typical day starts basically, the chicken gets loaded in
the morning to the food truck, and we start roasting
outside in the parking. Then when a truck is loaded,
finished, and situated, we move to the farmers' market. Just arugula? -Yeah, arugula, a little salt. -We sell throughout the day, and hopefully we go for sellout. Thank you! We're at the Ferry building that is Pier 1 in San Francisco. Push, push, push. I come to this
farmers' market 18 years. -We know Thomas because when he started
his business here initially, which is probably
more than 15 years ago, we also started coming
to the Ferry Market. He does a phenomenal job in
terms of roasting the chicken. And so every Saturday,
literally since 15 years ago, we come to Thomas' business
and buy roasted chicken. -You're here every week. [ Laughs ] How's it going? I forgot to actually mention where that funky accent
might come from. Can you give me a sandwich
and then take her? You possibly would say, "Well, he has an accent
of an Italian." No, not really. An accent
of a German? Not really. Actually, that is
a Swiss accent. I'm from Switzerland. I grew up in a butcher shop right on the foothills
of the Alps where my father
is a master butcher. So I really was early on exposed to some
butcher's technique. I was interested in becoming
my own entrepreneur. I wanted to have my destiny
by owning a company. I came then
to the United States, to UC Berkeley, where I studied
marketing and management. And at that moment,
I kind of didn't think that actually I would be
probably staying here. I just wanted to really
write a business plan that has a little bit more what I call nowadays
meat on the bone, has something
that's really real. I presented that to a professor, and I still remember
the sentence he said. "I hope you're going to stay.
This works." Everything was risk, but I was not afraid
of taking the risk, because I know
that with hard work, I can possibly make it
not to a big company but something that I can enjoy
and maybe live on. -I know Roli Roti because
I come to the Ferry building quite a bit, and this is by far
the most popular stand. There's always a ginormous line. Every single weekend,
I'm here in line waiting to get
the porchetta sandwich just because the food
tastes amazing. There's no ambiance, right? It's just the food prep.
It's really clear that the founder really cares
about his craft. -Food trucks, in 2000,
they were called roach coaches. I felt like
what's very, very important is that I present myself
as a chef. So I thought to wear
a white chef shirt and just be pristine. And that alone
was the icebreaker. So now they know
they're buying it from a chef. They're buying it from a person who knows a little thing or two
about cooking. I jump on the line! [ Chuckles ] -Yes, Chef. -[ Laughs ]
No, don't! Don't call me chef. My family's
in the meat business. We know how to make porchetta. Today, we are making
a porchetta. That's our signature dish. It's a pork middle. That is the belly on it,
and it's the loin. This is my spice rub. I made that yesterday
in the kitchen. So, it's rosemary, fennel,
Pinot Grigio, salt, lemon juice, lemon zest, pepper, and it becomes
this really aromatic herb. What makes a very good porchetta is obviously starting
with a really good pork. I use heritage pork, so I like to have the fat
and the meat balanced. The loin is the leaner part, and the belly
is a little bit more on the fat. So, I'm going to make
a porchetta now. I want to use one string
from the front to the back, and I never cut it, so that I have the same tension
from the front to the bottom. This is pretty tough work. This is about 26, 28 pounds. [ Chuckling ]
It's a good exercise. I want to show you
what real porchetta inside should look like
when it's tied up. Every piece is nicely arranged, so there's no gap and evenly
distributed seasoning. To make a really good porchetta, there is a little bit
of a trick. This is a beautiful
ciabatta bread, locally sourced from Acme Bread. It is a little bit more sweet. It's soft inside
and has a good chew. So, we take the sauce,
the juice from the porchetta, so it's nicely,
beautifully coated, and I cut the porchetta. The key is the thinner,
the better. So you bring much more flavor
into the porchetta. I take two loins, put them on, little bit of the belly
in the middle, and then... this crispy skin. Just go right over it. So, I take onion marmalade. This is onion that has been
cooked for 72 hours, very slow, no oil,
no fat, nothing. Just simple onion. So, make sure
it's nicely coated. Then a little bit
of a wild arugula, some salt. Alright. That's about as good as it gets. Three weeks into the business, I was invited
to a farmers' market. I was loading the truck
at night, and the next morning,
the truck was gone. So somebody
was stealing that truck. I had a big chicken
on the roof of the truck. It was like maybe 5 feet long
and maybe 4 feet wide. So it was really noticeable. I was contacting
a friend of mine and said, "Look,
I guess I'm out of business." And he said,
"Let's call the media." 24 hours later, I got a phone call
from a police office, saying, "I found your truck." So I went there, got the truck. Well, sure, the truck
was almost gutted out. They took the engine
and everything. So, we rigged the truck out, put them on a flatbed,
washed it out. I had an event
that I committed to. So we pulled the truck
down to Santana Row for the grand opening. And on the way down,
people on the highway, they were slowing down
and honking and, "Yeah, yeah, yeah!"
[ Laughs ] So the food truck, that Roli
truck, became kind of known. We pulled the truck down there,
and we sold out in two hours. Would I have made it
without that? I'm sure I would have. It gave me a boost
for the business, but I don't want anybody to
go through something like that. So the truck will stay. I am. Thank you.
-Aww. I needed to really look hard
at the Roli Roti business. And when I did that,
I really said to myself, "Let's go back to the roots, the cooking food,
making products. We know chicken. We know
potatoes. We know porchetta." Yeah, if you want to
write down your e-mail, we're not going to sell
your e-mail address, but I'll make sure
you get some bone broth. Yeah. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you so much. The farmers' market and
the food truck will not go away. That's our --
That's our livelihood. That's our basis.
I am really proud of that. I want to stick with that. ♪♪ What we're really looking for
is the ideal caramelization. We achieve that with slowly,
slowly, slowly cooking. We have patient about the food. We let it go. We don't rush. What we're really looking for
is the ideal caramelization. We achieve that with slowly,
slowly, slowly cooking. We have patient about the food. We let it go. We don't rush.
