200 Employees, 3 Michelin Stars: A Day at Eleven Madison Park

[upbeat music]

Eleven Madison Park has had

three Michelin star for over a decade,

and we also got four star from the New York Times

and as well as getting Best Restaurant in the World

by San Pellegrino.

Our goal is to re-achieve our accolades every single year.

I'm the chef de cuisine and partner.

I oversee the entire restaurant.

During service, the chef de cuisine

is basically conducting an orchestra.

We are managing tickets, managing table,

working closely with the dining room,

so at the end of the day,

every single dishes that the guests are eating

is the responsibility of the chef de cuisine.

[upbeat music]

Welcome to Eleven Madison Park.

I'm Dominique Roy.

I'm the chef and partner with Chef Daniel Humm.

It's 10:00, we're about to get started, so come on in.

This is our famous dining room

that's been here for the last 27 years now,

where we welcome about 120 guests every single night.

It's such a magical place.

This is our kitchen.

Still in the morning, so not a lot of the team is there yet,

but we have all the sous chef already

that are getting started.

We have a total of a hundred team members

that work in the kitchen.

About 15 sous chef, about 50 savory chef,

about 20 pastry chef, so it's a big team.

200 employees total in the restaurant.

Over here we have garde manger,

everything that is cold is coming out of this station,

and then after that, we're gonna go on the hotline.

Here we have Savvas in charge of west line and east Line.

Basically all the hot food and everything savory

is coming out of these lines.

Over here with Chef Laura,

we have the entire pastry department.

The back half over here is all prep, commis, production.

It's all the labor-intensive peeling of onion,

peas et cetera is all happening there.

[upbeat music]

10:30 is family meal time.

In the restaurant, we do family meal three times a day.

One in the morning at 10:30, one at night at 4:00 PM,

and then after that, we do one around 1:00 AM

for the porter team at the end of the night.

The restaurant runs almost 24/7.

We're open seven days a week,

and also we have first team in the morning

starting bread at 5:00 AM,

and the last person from the porter team

leaving at 3:00 AM in the morning,

so there's really two hours

where there's no one in the kitchen.

Besides that, the restaurant is always open and running.

How you doing?

It's pretty good.

Mattia, Stefano and Davide are all gonna be

running the New York City Marathon this weekend.

Now, that's something that's really special, I think,

between running and work in a kitchen,

the way that it feels coming into work

and putting your head down and just starting the day,

and the way it's intense and we're pushing yourself.

It's a little bit more painful, but

it's a lot of fun, though. What, here? [laughs]

Yeah. [laughs]

I did a Half Ironman, I did two marathons

and three half marathons in one year,

and then just, yeah, it broke me.

Broke me.

Now family meal is over, we're getting close to 11:00,

we're gonna go back in the kitchen,

look at some of the production in the back, so let's do it.

[upbeat music]

We have anywhere from six to 10 commis in the back working,

plus one sous chef overseeing all the production.

The maitake skewer is a really signature dish

in the last five years.

one of the coolest part of the maitake skewer

is the seitan pork.

We were actually inspired from something called namafu,

which is a classic shojin Japanese technique.

We started to play around with those recipes

and created our own version, and we called it seitan.

You can buy seitan on the market,

it's completely different, it's really chewy.

I don't love it, but this is really different.

Basically, when you cut it,

it really looks like just a regular loaf of bread,

but the difference is the texture.

We're gonna be slicing those,

then we're gonna be frying them,

and then after that, we marinate them.

The marinade is made with a little bit of smoke oil,

some white soy, a little bit of maple,

and a little bit of salt.

When it grills, it gets crispy on the outside,

gets tender and juicy in the inside, so it's pretty cool.

We always have anywhere from three

to four people every day building skewers,

'cause we're gonna build about a hundred skewers a day.

From start to finish, this is about a three day process.

We also trim it so it's a beautiful perfect rectangle,

because sometimes if we don't, then with pieces coming out,

then some pieces are gonna burn and not cook evenly.

Three-star restaurant, the aesthetic and the look

and what it's gonna look on the plate

at the end is really important,

so consistency and for everything

to look the same is important to us.

This is all looking great,

and now we're gonna go take a look at the butter production.

Sunflower butter was one of the first dishes

that we worked on when we went plant-based.

We started to make sunflower milk

to just basically recreate the milk part of the butter,

and then we started to ferment it

to get that sourness in the butter as well.

Butter production is happening right here.

Jasper's our fermentation cook.

Five years ago with Chef Humm,

we decided to go fully plant-based.

In the last few years, we realized that, obviously, as chefs

and what represents us the most

is not necessarily to be fully plant-based.

We're really excited to work with some proteins,

and so we brought back the duck,

we're working with lobster and scallops again.

Dairy butter is an amazing thing and is delicious,

but what we created five years ago, I think is even better.

One person is gonna work five days a week

on butter production.

It basically take a full-time job.

Every season, we try to incorporate a different flavor.

Right now, we do an allium butter.

We do a fermented sunflower and onion milk

that we use as the base.

We take the base, we incorporate liquid nitrogen

until it goes down to 20 degree.

When it gets there, then we're incorporating our onion jam,

and after that, we're gonna temper it back down

to being a little bit warmer now that it's emulsified,

and then we're gonna be molding it.

These silicone molds, we fill them up with the butter,

and then after that, we're gonna put them in the freezer

to get them back to being cold as quick as possible.

We're gonna be tapping the trays down

and working with the cake tester to remove all the bubbles

to make sure there's no air bubbles in the butter.

Beautiful is so important.

The four fundamentals of our food

that we talk about all the time

is creative, beautiful, delicious and intentional,

and if you have those four criteria as on the dish,

then it's a great dish,

and it's a dish that we can put on the menu.

[gentle music]

Let's look at the duck.

Here, Chef Stefano is cooking the duck with us.

Really simple, we take the duck

that's been dried for 14 days,

we glaze it with some honey,

and then sprinkle coriander, lavender, cumin

and Sichuan peppercorn, a little bit of salt,

and just roast it in the oven.

When it's about to be ready,

we usually start about 18 minutes,

and then we start testing it, so we go inside the breast.

So know that, basically, the end there is too hot,

the end there is too hot, and then you really want to go

and check the middle part, because with this,

you can have a much thinner needle,

so that it won't poke and make holes in the meat.

It would be easier to do it with a probe,

but the end product would not look as nice.

30 to 40 minute is ideal time to rest.

We're gonna be cutting the breast open of the cage.

We're trying to really just take away the extra fat

or just pieces that won't be nice to eat.

After that, we're just gonna brush it

with some brown butter, finishing it with Fleur se Sel,

and then after that, we'll be ready to go on the plate.

You sauce the table side for the guests.

So that's it for the duck.

This is what it looks like when it's finished

and where we serve it to our guests.

12:45, now we're gonna go take a look at the skewer

while we're grilling it with Chef Stefano.

So we brush the skewers with a mushroom tare

made with dry shiitake, maple syrup,

some black garlic fermented.

We dry it for a little around 10 minutes in the oven,

and then we start to grill, and we go really slow.

We don't want to burn,

but really like a nice caramelization.

We finish with a little bit of a pine powder,

so just regular pine that we dehydrate and then blend,

and then we put a little bit of fresh lemon,

we do a little bit of yuzu kosho,

and then we finish with a smoked dry portobello.

So we wanna make sure we have a beautiful, clean,

soft surface where we can put the plates on

to plate the food,

instead of putting them directly on marble or ceramic.

Often either with metal or ceramic,

it can just scratch the plates,

and when you put it on a white linen,

you're gonna get those black marks on the linen.

There's different ways that you can go about a dish.

There's times where we're gonna be centering things,

things where you're gonna be a little bit more

on the left, on the right.

At the end of the day,

it's all about making the dish beautiful

and what's gonna make the most sense with what we're using,

so right now we're centering the mushroom skewer,

so mushroom puree, wilted spinach,

and then some fresh baby spinach leaves.

This is the mushroom skewer as we serve it to our guests,

finishing it with the sauce

next to the guests in the dining room.

So that's it.

Now we're just about to call five minutes,

where everyone's gonna stop, start breaking down,

deep clean the entire kitchen, and then reset for the night

before we can go into family meal and then into service.

Ready guys? Five minute.

[Staff] Oui.

Okay, let's do it, guys.

[mellow music]

It's almost 2:30.

We're about to do pre-meal,

talk about a bunch of different things,

but today we're gonna have a guest speaker.

We're gonna have Chef Anthony come in.

Anthony's the chef at Una,

and this restaurant has been named many times

best pizza restaurant in the world.

Hey, what's up?

Okay, yeah, I'm coming. Thank you.

Okay, let's go get him.

Hey. Oh, hey.

How you doing? You good? How are you?

Good to see you. Great to see you.

Thank you for coming.

Oh, thank you. That's awesome.

Such an honor. Yeah.

Amazing. Where should I stand?

Yeah, right here.

Pre-meal.

[Staff] Oui.

Okay, good afternoon, everyone.

[Staff] Good afternoon, Chef.

Happy Wednesday.

[Staff] Happy Wednesday, Chef.

First of all, honestly, we bring you guys up

probably almost every pre-shift.

I'm not joking.

We really use you guys as sort of a benchmark

on what I think hospitality is.

I've always said, to me, food and hospitality,

when I know I did my job is

when I leave at the end of the night and my face hurts.

Like, it's funny, but you know what I mean,

you walk out and you're like, you feel depleted in your face

and you're just like, uh, and you can barely speak.

That's when I'm like, all right, I gave everything.

[chefs chuckling] Am I right, though?

You guys know; you're laughing.

I think a lot of us can relate to what you're saying,

and yeah, it's really, really special,

so thank you, appreciate it. Of course.

Crusher of the week this week,

someone who's been a silent crusher

for a really, really long time,

this week, it's Elizabeth.

[chefs applauding]

You've always been crushing it

from kitchen to going to pastry,

and I keep hearing Chef Laura, Chef Orianna talk

about how amazing you're doing your job.

Right now, it is critics season.

We've literally had three critics that have been coming.

There's gonna be more coming back.

We haven't been reviewed

on the New York Times in a long, long time,

so we're expecting that to happen anytime soon.

It could be tonight, could be tomorrow.

We're gonna be re-earning our four stars.

Now we need to be consistent, and you need to work

on all the single little details

that makes what we do really special,

so let's focus on that, let's re-earn our star,

and let's have a good service.

[Staff] Oui.

[bright music]

When we talk about consistency

and that consistency is everything,

this is one of the most important part of the day,

where we're just gonna go and look at every pieces

of mise en place and taste everything.

We're spending anywhere from an hour

to an hour and a half just tasting food

and double checking that everything is the way it should be.

Every guest is a VIP, but there's also critics,

there's super VIP that are coming,

and we do take an extra care to make sure

that every single little piece of their mise en place

of the food is gonna be perfect.

We usually do about six portions a night.

We always use them all throughout the night,

but this is what we usually use

if a critic walk in or a very VIP coming in,

like Chef Stefano.

At the end of the day,

we'll never change a dish for a guest.

We create a menu that we're super proud of,

and that's what we're serving to everyone.

It's really challenging when you have 10, 15,

20 different dishes to taste,

and they all have anywhere from five to 15 components,

so to make sure that we don't forget anything,

we have this checklist.

Let's start from the beginning,

but maybe let's start with the crudites.

This is a small version of a crudite

that we serve at the bar.

Bring up the seasoning a little bit, okay?

The plating is beautiful, Etienne, yeah.

Yeah, it's great, it looks good.

The cooking of the leek is great.

Oui. But we need to finish

with more Fleur de Sel. Oui, Chef.

Sometime, we have a completely different dish

so that we can have different options,

and sometime, we have a similar style of dishes

with the different vegetables.

For example, we do a really awesome kuri squash

with the kuri sauce,

and we also do it with sweet potato

in case some people don't like squash.

Everything is really good,

but it's like we're scared of seasoning everything today

a little bit, you know?

Everything is just a little under seasoned.

3:30 now. We're getting closer to service.

We're going to Clemente Bar

to taste the food and do a similar tasting.

Come here. I need a hug. Oui.

At Clemente Bar, it's a cocktail bar,

but also a studio on the other side.

Here is more focused on the studio,

which is a nine-seat counter

where the chef and the bartender cook

in front of the guests.

It's a really cool experience.

I'll start with this first over here.

I think this is my favorite thing

on the menu that we have right now.

It's a portobello burger, so fully plant-based,

and then we cook it sous vide,

just to get it really tender and flavorful,

but then tempura fry it,

just brush it with a Nashville hot, a little bit of ranch,

mayonnaise, lettuce, tomatoes.

Yesterday, it was too juicy, it was dripping.

This today is perfect. Oui, Chef.

Did we find a way to make sure it's consistent like that?

Yes, Chef. Oui.

We dried them a little bit more,

and then yes, fry a little bit longer.

Yeah. Lost some of the moisture,

but yes, Chef.

That's awesome.

Can we take the recipe of the onions from the beginning

and just go back and forget about what we've been doing

and just take the recipe, read through it,

and just do exactly and do a small batch of it?

Oui, Chef. This is good,

but it's not amazing.

There's something missing.

Oui, Chef. Okay, we're good, no?

It's almost 4:00.

Now we're gonna go downstairs.

Family meal number two. Yeah.

[mellow music]

As you can see, there's a lot of people.

Our entire team right now is going on family meal.

Yeah, it's pretty amazing how many people there are.

We have two lines of family meal today.

Where's Marissa and Pooja?

Come. Yeah.

Yeah, there you go. There you go.

So Pooja and Marissa, they both came today

cooking family, which was awesome.

Every day, we usually do family meal

where we have each station doing one component.

Today, they took care of everything. It looks amazing.

I'm super excited and really hungry.

But yeah, thank you, you guys are the best,

and some of the toughest sous chef in the kitchens.

Let's go eat.

[mellow music]

Now it's 4:30, we're going to our reso meeting,

and basically, we're gonna meet with the sous chef,

the manager, the reservations team,

and talk about every guest that is coming tonight

and make sure that we all have the information that we need,

whether it's allergies, aversions,

special celebration or anything like that,

so that we can make every single experience really special,

so yeah, come on in, we're with the team in here.

[Caitlin] Good afternoon.

[Group] Good afternoon.

At Clemente tonight, we have 88 on the books,

with six in the studio, 82 at the bar.

We also have a PDR at 7:30 now for 24 guests.

We have 39 reservations for 94 guests, two available.

For the bar tasting, we have the nine reservations

for 21 guests, two available,

and we have one bar a la carte reservation for two guests,

and a total of 117 covers.

6:00 PM party of two,

the wife has an allergy to honey

and is averse to lamb and goat cheese.

Attention, captain, please advise. The duck has honey.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's just a no.

You can't do the mushroom.

[Kayla] That's all for tonight.

Thank you. Thank you.

Back into tasting, and then service.

5:05.

The first few courses of the meal starts in garde manger,

so that's why we always start

in doing tasting earlier there.

Here at 5:00 on the hotline,

it still give us a good hour

before we start firing some

of the food down the hotline.

It's great.

[Stefano] Thank you, Chef.

This is much better. Consistency is good.

Thank you, Chef. The potato itself

needs a little bit more seasoning.

The color is beautiful and perfect,

but I wish it was a little crispier.

Dry a little bit more, fry a little bit more, and that's it,

because the look is beautiful.

Let's do another one, and I will taste it all again.

I'm gonna be helping them seasoning the tea right now.

I feel like seasoning things is one of my favorite thing,

and I feel like just working on your palate,

working on seasoning thing and understanding

how food works is so important.

Saying to someone that food is not good,

as a chef or as a cook or as sous chef just sucks,

because it doesn't really give you really much directions,

so it always makes me happy to be able

to do it with the team so I can make sure

that I also understand the food just as much as they do.

Savvas, can you come and we do this together?

[Savvas] Oui, Chef.

Right now, it's good, but it's still like,

the acid needs to be a little higher,

and then it's still miss a little bit of the seasoning.

Needs some of the salt, and then this is a lot.

It needs just a little bit of the umami.

The spiciness is better

now that we added a little bit of base.

Oui. But it also needs

just a touch of a white soy.

Okay, let's mix it. Let's taste it together.

Now the acidity is there, but it's not fully round.

This is a really comforting allium and celery broth,

kind of reminds you a little bit of the chicken soup

you would have when you're a kid,

and it's a really, really cool way to start the meal.

This is great.

Makes a huge difference.

It's crazy when you taste something that is good,

it makes you smile.

Now it's 5:30, we're right about to start.

It's gonna get busy.

[upbeat music]

We basically are starting with anywhere from 40 to 60 covers

within the first 30 to 45 minutes of service,

so it starts really fast.

So now, we're already ready

to start sending the first dishes.

We're setting up the pass.

We have little plate wipes here, we have sauces, oils,

dry wipes as well so that we can just polish

and finish all the plating,

and as soon as it's ready, we get the orders,

we finish the sauce in all the plates,

and then after that, it's gonna get going

and start to go right away.

On the pass here at night,

there's a few things that happen.

We have two boards.

This is my expediting board.

This position is intended to be able to oversee everything.

I see garde manger, I see pastry, I see the hotline,

the production in the back,

so I can tell if there's anything wrong

or if anything is on the pass

doesn't look the which should look,

and I expedite the first three courses,

three to four courses,

and then the rest is expedited

by a member of the dining room team that we call expediter.

We have little hidden things here, hidden tools.

A few things about the covers, spreads of the night,

what is the first table, last table,

what size of tables we have,

reservation report that we went through earlier

talking about every single guest that we have,

and then also, really important,

the dining room plan of the night,

so basically who's working where and what section,

who's the sommelier, the captain,

the server, the assistant server.

So every time there's a ticket, if there's something wrong

or there's something happening with the table

or the timing or the ticket, whatever it is,

then we can easily know what happened with who

and get the team to come and communicate with us.

And same thing here, we have a plan with everyone

who's working where in the entire restaurant,

so that helps with logistics during service.

That's it, every single sous chef

is gonna be staged on their station,

and basically, I'm working with all the sous chef,

all the sous chef are working with their cooks,

and then all together as a team,

we try to do the best we can every night

and try to re-earn those three stars over there.

[upbeat music]

Service is starting now. Let's do this.

Okay, ordering two top at the bar.

[Staff] Oui. Oui, two top at the bar.

Oui. Let's have a good service.

[Staff] Oui.

Savvas, we're gonna have one tea, no spicy.

[Savvas] One tea, no spicy.

All right, we need two top.

Oui. We need two top.

[Staff] Oui.

When service starts, we always call the tickets,

we call the amount of guests that are at a table,

so everyone gets ready, especially in garde manger,

but also the hotline knows that they have a new ticket

and an order they need to get ready.

Besides that time, everyone is really quiet,

so that we can just focus on what we were doing.

Can we go check 17? Make sure they're ready?

They didn't send a fire.

Bring the other cup here.

Gonna need two teas behind that.

Oui, Chef. Thank you.

Smoking hot, right Kevin?

[Savvas] Oui, Chef.

No, not enough. Take it back.

It has to be smoking hot.

[Kevin] Oui, Chef.

That means this is not good, so let's fix it.

Oui, Chef.

Let's get it back on the pot. Much hotter.

Okay, let's go, guys.

Two more teas. Two by two.

[upbeat music]

It's getting really busy and intense service.

We're gonna be here until probably midnight, 1:00 AM,

so now we need you guys to go and focus on service,

so thank you for today, it was awesome.

Gonna need two top at the bar.

[Staff] Oui.

Do we still have anything to taste?