How An Iconic NYC Restaurant Makes 900 Pancakes A Day

[utensils clattering]

Wolfrano, whose table is B13?

Who?

Pedro. Did they get their food yet?

Hi, I'm Neil Kleinberg, chef and co-owner

of Clinton Street Baking Company and restaurant

in New York City.

You're looking at a real breakfast rush

inside the restaurant on a Tuesday morning in June,

which is as insane as any other busy morning.

We'll get like pops of 50 people at a time

with a line out the door

and you can easily serve 500 guests just for breakfast,

not including takeout and delivery.

I'm gonna show you

how my kitchen keeps up with the rush every single day.

So let me tell you a little bit about each spot,

and then show you how some dishes move through that.

[bell dings]

Let me tell you about the line kitchen.

Basically, it's like a classic old French line kitchen

where each person is responsible

for composing part of a dish and then it moves down a line.

This is our pancake griddle.

The pancake griddle is like the foundation of our restaurant

because of how many orders of pancakes we sell.

We probably make between 200 to 300 orders a day,

probably 1500 to 2000 orders a week.

Blueberry pancakes are the top seller by far.

We've taken a lot of time to buy the best possible equipment

with a very thick steel grill plate

and that helps with the heat recovery.

So even when it's loaded with the pancakes

it maintains a constant temperature

that allows us to do very high volume

and they can all be consistent across the board.

The griddle is also used for French toast

made from our house-made brioche

and biscuits for some of our biscuit sandwiches.

Ask Filensio.

I need blueberry.

How long is the blueberry?

30 seconds.

[Neil] Right next to that,

is the deep fryer in the grill station.

One of our best sellers over the years

has been our fried chicken and waffles

and we can't do fried chicken without the deep fryer.

So we marinate the chicken for a day or two

in buttermilk base with lots of great seasonings and spices

like onion powder, garlic powder,

cracked black pepper, a little bit of cayenne

and then we dredge it in a mix of corn meal

and all-purpose flour before dropping it in the fryer.

That's the key to giving the chicken

that really great crispiness.

We'd never be able to do big batches like this

or get the level of crispiness without

fully immersing the chicken in oil with a deep fryer.

So next to the fryers,

we have a charcoal grill with our briquettes on the bottom.

This gives a nice chargrilled flavor

to things like burgers, grilled chicken sandwich.

We're grilling off some ham right now

for the eggs Benedict and for some of our omelets.

And then we also use part of the grill

for keeping a bain-marie

for keeping some of our sauces and condiments hot.

The bain-marie is basically a hot water bath

another French term, so the sauces don't burn

and it's in a central location

for all sorts of different dishes.

That grill is really [beep] hot

I mean, I would say say 450 to 500 degrees

and it melted the camera.

It wasn't my idea to put a camera above a 500 degree grill.

This area is our waffle station.

If you look at the kitchen and the way it's set up

across the waffle station is the fry station.

So it makes sense that the waffles are made on one side,

the fried chicken on the other

and when it comes to putting out a final dish

of fried chicken and waffles, they work hand in hand.

So when you're doing the fried chicken and waffles

you have a bain-marie of waffle batter,

you have your waffle iron grills across,

you have your fried chicken in batches cooked

and then you're making waffles all day long.

I think what makes our waffles great is they have the

addition of some of our sourdough starter in it,

as well as a little bit of corn meal

in the waffle batter for crunch.

The sourdough starter is what gives it

a little bit of stretchiness,

it crisps up the waffle really nice

and you get that little something where someone says,

wow! These waffles are really good.

Moving down the line

we have our mise en place station or our cold station.

This has fixings for omelets, cheeses, veggies,

we only use whole freshy eggs,

all of our finishing touches

and other ingredients for assembly go here as well.

At this point I just wanna mention,

how we have a massive delivery and takeout operation

basically another satellite kitchen

right next to our main kitchen.

We have a separate griddle, we have six burner range,

with all of our to-go containers at our fingertips

with all of our mise en place

separate from the kitchen line.

So we basically have two separate kitchen crews

working in tandem, working together.

There's a crossover here so when it's less busy

I might have one person doing all the eggs

for to-go orders and delivery,

and I have another person doing

Benedicts or omelets for the restaurant.

Since the pandemic our delivery volume

has just enormously increased.

I see people on Houston Street on a bench

eating our pancakes in a to-go container.

So back in our main kitchen

we have a full range with a lot more burners.

Carlos Serala one of our chefs who's been with us 20 years.

I started in the kitchen, Carlos was my right hand man

he was washing dishes and peeling shrimp and cracking eggs.

He's at the egg poaching station.

I like poaching eggs to order rather than part cooking them

because it's just night and day.

The difference of a poached egg perfectly poach coming out

and then put on a potato pancake

or put on a slice of grilled ham,

there's no substitute for that.

At the end of the kitchen is an area we call the pass

or the expo station or the finishing station.

It's the end of the line.

It's where the food is garnished and put out

as well as where we coordinate all the tickets.

So the expos job is to coordinate certain dishes

to go to certain tables

and this is one of my favorite parts of the line

is when actually the food is just about to go out.

This is the area where tickets come in, tickets go out,

tickets are going in multiple areas of the restaurant,

one is going to the bar for drinks and things like that.

Whose table is B13?

Who?

Pedro. Did they get their food yet?

But at the past we used tickets to assemble an entire order

for a table and add the finishing touches at the very end.

Carlos, what's this chocolate here?

I'm asking Carlos about that chocolate chunk pancake

because it's sitting here

and I don't see it on one of these tickets.

So it's either an extra one, it's a mistake,

or I'm wondering where it is.

It may be missing for a delivery order

that was already packed up.

It's my job or the expediter's job

to track every single dish ordered

just to keep the flow moving and not panic.

There's also a shelf

and under that shelf is a heat lamp

that's just to keep the hot food hot coming through the pass

ideally not more than a minute or two.

So how does this actually play out when an order comes in?

Let's track some of the dishes that we make

and watch them move through the kitchen.

Let's start with the blueberry pancakes

again, our most popular item.

Every order is three pancakes so I'll ask the expediter

how many total blues do you have on order?

Here they said three

so I'm adding a total of nine pancakes

which is three per order.

We're going left to right because I'm a lefty.

One of the great things about

cooks, chefs, expediters people is that the cook

is always asking the expediter

how many do I have on the board?

And it keeps them in the back of their mind knowing

okay I have three orders of pancakes,

I got nine on the griddle,

I'm gonna put three more extra

'cause I know another order is coming in.

You'll see batter being poured on the griddle

again and again and again throughout the whole day

just never stops.

With the blueberry pancakes,

if you add the blueberries to the batter too early

it makes them spread a little bit.

If you add the blueberries too late,

the batter is cooked too much,

the pancake comes a little tough and then the blueberries

won't get a chance to commingle with the batter.

If you add them exactly at the right time

they'll sink into the batter a little

and then when you're ready to flip them,

they'll be immersed in the batter almost like a cake

and the other side won't burn and they won't scald

and they'll really be perfect

if you want whatever's in the pancake to be dispersed evenly

and you want it to gain as much flavor

in the batter as possible.

Carlos, I got two blue ready.

You need? Yes.

Four here? Yes.

Okay the pancake is cooked, I take them off the griddle,

I ladle two ounces of our blueberry sauce on the top.

That blueberry sauce it's made in-house

it's our blueberries with the touch of sugar, lemon zest

then a little bit of vanilla

and that is the piece de resistance.

The pancake gets passed off to the expediter

and the expediter then pours the warm maple butter

in a ramekin and then right before they're going out

a little dust of powdered sugar.

The maple butter is our signature maple syrup

for our pancakes, our French toast, our biscuits

and it's pure maple syrup from New York state

whisked in with whole unsalted butter

kind of like the French technique of a beurre blanc.

For one gallon of maple syrup we use 36 pounds of butter.

The cult-like following is unbelievable

from the maple butter.

When we first started Clinton Street

we had a little sign in book at the front desk

and some person said

I want to rub this maple butter all over my partner's body

and then we took the book away.

Okay, so the ticket is checked,

we make sure the order is right,

we ring the bell and then out it goes.

Our servers, runners, waiters, managers

take orders to the dining room or our bartender

can reach around the corner to serve customers

sitting at the counter

Caleb, pickup for the bar.

Next I'll show you how the French toast gets made.

As I mentioned,

we also use our griddle for the French toast.

So here it starts with two slices of our house-made brioche

a quick side note on the bread.

We're called Clinton Street Baking Company

and restaurant for a reason

because in addition to everything you see here,

we're also a full on bakery.

We bake our own bread, we do our own brioche,

we make our own sourdough in-house, our seven grain,

our biscuits, our scones, our muffins, our cookies,

our cakes, our pies everything's made from scratch.

We have some amazing, talented bakers downstairs doing cakes

and cookies and key lime pie.

We actually started 20 years ago as a bakery

and now we still have that full component

of the bakery in our back pocket.

We even have a takeout window just for the bakery.

Okay back to the French toast.

So our house-made brioche gets thickly sliced,

it gets dipped into our amazing batter.

Right behind that, it's browned on the griddle

with a little bit of whole butter.

Next to the griddle we keep our caramelized bananas.

It's our version of bananas foster

which is like brown sugar, a little bit of butter,

caramelized bananas, a touch of cinnamon,

and it's like a nod to New Orleans.

Next it's taken over to the cold station

where it gets organic Texas pecans on the top

then down the line to the expo where it gets maple butter

and a little bit of cinnamon sugar over the top.

It's really a crowd favorite.

Next I'm gonna take you through the omelets.

The omelets require a little more attention

'cause you can't just leave them alone

or scramble 'em up or whatever

or just throw the eggs on a griddle they're made in a pan.

So I'm working on one of the ranges here and behind me,

I have all the toppings when I'm making an omelet.

And that's the whole thing about mise en place

is that you have to have things at your fingertips.

So I'm dropping in spinach in the middle,

as you can see the eggs aren't fully cooked yet

so that gives the filling a chance to heat up

while the eggs finish cooking.

And then I'm taking the omelet

and I'm putting it underneath the salamander above me

so that it warms the ingredients in the middle

and melts the cheese a little

if there's cheese in the omelet

and you kinda pull it all together

and then just gently get them to the right temperature.

Then I'm folding the omelet right onto the plate

and plating it is super important to me.

I'm a little neurotic about it, wiping down the plate

and rearranging everything to look its best.

Even the toast has to be perfect

so if I get a side toast or I get toast with my eggs

I want the toast to look like toast

I don't want it to be blonde.

Tell Alex just to toast the seven grain a little more.

If it doesn't look toasted, put it in again.

Sometimes it takes a little.

We got a salmon Benedict and a blue for bar one.

Just came in.

With all of this going on

it's really easy to make a mistake or to miss an order

which is what's happening right here right now.

I don't have it.

You want it on the fly? Yeah.

Salmon Benedict and a what?

And a blue.

So on the fly means like right away

prioritizing the customer's order

because we mess something up

like as fast as humanly possible.

If that means taking an order of pancakes

from the next order that's coming out,

and then getting another order on the grill,

that's on the fly.

Caleb, buy him a biscuit loaded from me

that's coming right out.

So buy them a biscuit means I'm gonna send this customer

this loaded biscuit right away to smooth things over

for the long wait, and I want everyone to be happy here.

I wanna overcompensate for the customers

so they don't feel like they got shafted.

The dish we're doing here is our Latke Benedict.

DeDe my business partner and wife

inspired me to do a potato pancake dish

since we're famous for our pancake

so why not a potato pancake?

So instead of the English muffin

as the base for the Benedict

we have two potato latkes or potato pancakes.

The latkes are made earlier on the griddle

but get crisped here in the fryer to order.

The expediter or the chef on the line doing the cold stuff,

will receive those and then top them

with house cured smoke salmon.

We are actually curing

and smoking salmon downstairs a few times a week.

We smoke it, we season it, we slice it, paper thin

and it's really, really good stuff.

After that, poached eggs are put on top

and we finish with our hollandaise.

Hollandaise is like one of the mother sauces.

It's an egg sauce made with butter, egg yolks,

lemon juice, little bit of cayenne pepper

so, to finish this dish, we use a little trout caviar,

which is really great.

It has a little nuttiness to it

and they kind of pop in your mouth

and then the chives and that simple garnish

that really pulls the whole dish together.

Potatoes, eggs, smoke salmon and caviar it's very luxurious

yet it's kinda light, so you have room for dessert.

I'd say the hardest part about keeping the kitchen moving

is having the right people, in the right place

and having all of the ingredients that go behind every dish

prepared thoughtfully, meticulously and consistently.

It's kinda like a symphony when you see an orchestra,

you'll hear an orchestra

and you hear like something being done

all of a sudden after the whole thing is composed,

you'll hear this beautiful piece of music

and I look at the kitchen like that.

As a customer, you'll feel you had an amazing experience.

You'll only see the finished product

and you won't know anything that's going on in the back.