A Day at America's Best Steakhouse

The Eighty Six's a the historic American steakhouse.

I have a 107 day age coffee and tobacco crusted strip

that's bone in.

We also have these beautiful spinalis dorsiesis.

We are licensed to carry 27 different prefectures

of Japanese wagyu.

I believe it's probably the best in wagyu

that you can ever taste.

One thing great about The Eighty Six

is we are small but mighty.

It's like an attack battle sub here.

Every little spot is hyper designed and focused.

We are unconventional, we are uncompromising,

and we are lunatics in hospitality.

[upbeat music]

[playful music]

Hello, I'm Chef Michael Vignola here at The Eighty Six

in the West Village in the heart of New York City.

Come on in. It's 10:00 AM and we're already behind.

10 tables, 35 seats, 102 year old restaurant

with some of the cool things about this room,

you have Hemingway's booth,

he used to pass out drunk there all the time.

Welcome to the kitchen here at The Eighty Six.

This is it guys, it's 200 square feet of pure power

and a little bit of mayhem.

Let's go check out the boxes and walk downstairs.

Heading down to the belly of the beast here.

You'll notice things that The Eighty Six

every square foot is hyper designed and utilized.

A storage for above, we built this little shelf.

We have pop-up tables for polishing and for it to go.

As well as our linen storage for our uniforms and jackets.

Watch your step as we navigate through dish land.

Right now we're in the prep area

as well as raw bar down here.

We have pastry underneath.

Into our walk-ins.

First thing we're gonna do

is check on what's in the aging box.

We have a few different specimens here.

This is our beautiful bone in American wagyu

coffee and tobacco crusted.

Stripped about 107 days old at this point.

So, coffee and a cigarette.

One of my two vices left

that I have are Marlboro Reds and cold brew coffee.

I also think they go amazing with steak,

they bring out the unctuousness and the beef.

They really pair well and give you a height of umami.

I wish you had Smell-O-Vision.

One of my other favorite cuts is here is the spinalis.

This is the deckle or the rib cap,

the spinalis muscle off of the ribeye.

A hundred percent prime American corn fed grain finished.

This has been lightly aging for about 11 days.

You can see the bark is really starting to develop on here.

It's got some great funk to it. This is just about right.

We're gonna portion this later.

We're gonna serve this up tonight.

We get these amazing ducks from Joe Jurgielewicz

where we utilize the entire animal.

You have these dry age breasts.

These, we have about six days on them at this point.

We get them fully uneviscerated

means guts, neck, everything is still intact.

There's comfy in the sausage,

there's foie gras around the sausage,

there's also duck meat,

and with these beautiful necks

that were natural casing for them.

I wanted to showcase the whole animal.

We're gonna go upstairs,

we're gonna start off with some of the butchery work.

Corner. Coming down. Behind.

I'm gonna pause right here. I gotta grab a cutting board.

Corner. Coming to mind.

We do as much as we can upstairs

and as little as possible downstairs.

Knife cuts and prep all happen downstairs.

Any of the live cooking sauce and stalks et cetera,

all made here in the kitchen.

If we're gonna fabricate

some of our beautiful Stone Axe eight nine filet mignon.

Marble beef score nine plus.

That means it is a nine of 11

on the amount of into muscular fat in the filet.

You're gonna notice the filet.

It's kind of got two different parts,

the eye or the tranche, and then this head.

So we're just gonna come in and free this gently up.

See the bigger pockets of fat? We're gonna pull that off.

All of this gets saved. It goes into what we call Beef Love.

We finish our steaks

in a variety of different fats and tallows.

Stone Axe in Queensland, Australia,

it's crossbred program of American and Australian bulls.

Really rich minerality.

They get to feed on sea grasses,

it naturally gives it

a little bit of a salinity to the meat.

I think it is the best filet in the world,

although, I'm not a filet eater personally.

I do, of course, you know, for science.

But, it is a delicious unctuous filet.

We open at four o'clock.

We found that four o'clock is the new nine o'clock.

There's a lot of diners now

don't want to eat this nighttime anymore.

I know for myself,

I'd rather take the earlier res and go to bed.

So, for those of you kids out there,

I'm here for you, four o'clock, it's the new nine.

We're gonna kind of mark off

what a portion looks like visually before hand.

As you can see it tapers, right?

But, you wanna make sure you hit your weights on everything.

We're shooting for like a six ounce portion.

Oh, right on the money.

We're gonna talk about the endo muscular fat.

Look at that marbleization.

It's just really runs through there.

It's not like a normal filet.

Normal filets, you see, are just plain red.

This has beautiful amounts of that snowflake fat

or marble through it.

These are gonna get sent downstairs,

our butcher's gonna finish tying and trussing these.

What we do is kind of round them out a little bit

and we tie them up.

It keeps it uniform in shape and size.

It also ensures that my chef and cook,

who's cooking this piece,

is looking at it, inspecting it before it goes out.

Meaning, he has to cut this off after it's been rested.

So. he is judging the quality,

he's judging it's sear and has done this.

It's just another level to ensure consistency.

We truly believe you cannot be great

if you are not consistent.

Next up, we're gonna butcher our dry age deckle.

So, these are for tonight's service.

It's the spinalis, it's the outer rib cap of the ribeye.

So, as you can see it tapers, it's not a perfect card,

but what we're gonna cut

are these beautiful kind of five ounce bricks

so are like deck of cards out of it.

It's a really unique cut. It's extremely expensive.

After it's yielded,

it's roughly, you know, 80, 90 bucks a pound.

And we'll get four per steak roughly.

So, there's eight of these per steer.

In the grand scheme of things, not a lot.

So, really bespoke cut to us.

First thing we're gonna do is cut this little tail off.

This will grind, we'll use it in our beef jus.

It'll also go into our debris for our wagyu french dips.

And I just start with,

kind of, removing some of this excess pellicle or skin.

I am very fortunate enough

that I have some amazing partners in Allen Brothers

and in the Dakotas that they hold these for me.

And don't forget it is pulled off of a rib,

so, it's not that there aren't a lot of them,

just nobody does.

They don't wanna put the work in,

they don't want to dry age it themselves,

they don't wanna pay for it, it's a true luxury item.

It's nicely trimmed up.

See the difference from there to there? It's insane.

I think there's a lot of good dry age

and then there's some great dry age.

I think if you like funky blue cheesy,

I think that's way over wrought, personally.

What I love about dry age is the mouth feel it gives you

and a little bit of that funky Parmesan umaminess.

I love everything about this steak.

It's a loss leader,

I don't make a lot of money on this steak.

It barely brings even the covers cost of it,

but, it's an honor to be able to serve it to guests

and have them enjoy the experience of the deckle.

All right, we're gonna move on with our day.

Coming in, boys.

[Person] What's up, Chef? Hey.

Let's talk sardines, one of my favorite fish.

Beautiful iwashies from Hokkaido. They get full in rigor.

You can see they're still nice

and stiff as aboard beautiful clean eyes.

Everybody knows sardines from,

you know, their grandma used to eat x, y, and z sardines

on a pita crackers, this is not them.

I really prefer the Hokkaido Japanese sardines

versus the Mediterranean ones.

I feel like they're higher in fat.

Colder the waters, the more fat they have,

higher in those omega-3s.

It just tastes slightly better to me.

We take our beautiful iwashies

clean the head, clean the tail,

make a small incision here,

and then we're just gonna use our fingers

to really clean out everything else.

They are soft enough that we are gonna find the center bone

and gently just rub our nail around it.

Our amazing corporate sushi chef, Stanley

showed me this technique many moons ago

and it's stuck with me.

For those of you that are butchered sardines,

it is not easy to do that.

Once we have it cleaned,

we take off a little bit of the belly here, trim it up,

and these are ready for cure.

This dish ends up as a three piece kind of crudo.

It gets finished with a hot warm garlic oil,

a little bit of a minus eight ice wine vinegar,

some fresh herbs and breakfast radish,

as well as this amazing sardine toast on the side.

Sardines are done.

Going back down to get our scallops. I'm behind.

These came in just from mass today.

Beautiful live sea scallops.

We're gonna de-shell 'em, shock 'em,

they're gonna be an addition tonight.

Back upstairs. Corner.

We actually have two entrances to the kitchen.

The main pass through our door here to slit

or the other way, come on.

So, it's through our service area.

Always got to knock.

Make sure you don't run into somebody. It's tight.

It's kind of a one way thing.

Through the alleyway they say.

Watch your step through the gangplank.

Here's where we keep our firewood,

head into the kitchen.

We're gonna shuck some of these beautiful sea scallops.

We're gonna do them slightly grilled in more of a crudo,

kind of a tataki style.

You wanna get your thumb in here,

really kind of just free it up from the shell.

Make sure you're not missing anything up.

Keep that guy for display.

Not really a knife, not really a spatula.

It is a flexible little guy.

It's great for everything from long distance

to short, small things, strokes.

You know as you, you go through your career,

you just kind of collect tools.

Whether you bought 'em, you stole 'em,

you borrowed and never gave them back.

This guy right here, it is one of one.

This burl came from my sister's backyard

in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Holly Springs to be exact.

The copper is from the flat iron building window casements.

The white between it is ivory from Steinway piano keys

where my brother-in-law worked for 25 years as a polisher.

And then it is a coil spring

that was also dug up in the area.

It is an extremely specific knife to me.

The three rings are for each of my kids,

Mia, McKayla, and Ronnie.

It's kinda like they're with me all day.

We're gonna take our beautiful shells.

We're gonna give 'em a boil oil. I lied.

We're gonna get a bigger pot.

You're gonna ask me how I get water.

Well, we go down here. Chef Winston likes to open up.

We have our beautiful tube off the combi line

and here is our kitchen faucet.

All you chefs out there that have dedicated culinary sinks,

I salute you.

We're gonna clean our scallops right here.

We have a little bit of cold water.

I'd like to put some Maldon in there

just to kind of keep that sea water flavor

while we're rinsing off some of that stand and silt

from the scallop dredging.

Clean gloves.

You'll see me reaching

kind of everywhere throughout the night.

One thing we love is convertible items like magnetic,

go sticks to the wall.

I have a small little cabinet up here.

This is everything that we use for the pass.

I also love these little organizers.

They hold all sorts of random stuff,

so I'm just pulling it apart,

cleaning off this beautiful frill and all the guts

and you're left with this amazing, beautiful plump scallop.

Leave 'em in there

just to get off some of that silt and sand.

We'll let it so for a few minutes.

We just got in our Dover soles from Jean Mark.

I'm gonna run downstairs.

Put it right here.

Beautiful. Dover soles. Wild caught.

You can tell by the whiteness of their bellies.

They are beautifully fished. Super pristine.

Came from the south of France. We got four pieces in today.

That's for tonight's delivery.

Yes. Thank you.

Looks like we're doing Dovers next since they showed up.

Behind, behind. Atras.

We are gonna butcher, brine

and get these ready for tonight's service.

First things first sanitize. We're gonna cut right up here.

You can see where it kind of naturally bends.

We're just gonna go in there, cut through,

make a clean incision, flip it over,

under this little dorsal here, score it,

and then we're gonna pop the center bone out.

These scissors are garden shears.

They cut through clean, they cut through the bone,

they also don't rip or tear any flesh.

And then we're gonna lightly skin this fish.

Should get your thumb under there.

This is one of my favorite tasks of the day. Peel it.

One shot. Knock 'em out.

Our Dovers are done. They're in the brine.

You wanna guys do cups up?

Cups up, this is where we come upstairs.

Chef Winston brings up the AM cruise food.

This is some of the mise en place

that we're gonna walk through for today. Let's go.

[Winston] Squash birria needs some lime.

Taste the squash birria. It's a little grainy,

it's not, it's, it's very under seasoned.

I taste the orange, I taste a little bit of the squash,

I don't taste any seasoning besides that.

[Winston] More salt. Oh.

The soubise is very good.

So notes were that this needs more salt.

Probably some nutmeg.

This is the Caesar dressing,

we need to get that blended a little bit more.

It's little grainy. We said the celery root puree needed.

You should blend like add and blend it like into it

like an emulsion, yeah.

That's where I think you're getting the graininess from.

You're making pebbles of the cheese.

Black pepper, onion spread, a little bit of salt,

no acid either, it needs a little bit of cherry.

[Winston] We don't really have a whole lot of like acid in

in that. It needs it.

We're getting the rest the order together. Spot checking.

And then getting snap bay orders for Mark.

Let's rock and roll. Beautiful. Thank you, Tess.

That went pretty well.

There's always some tweaks, pivots,

talk through, discussions.

Hello.

We're always fighting deliveries here in New York.

One of our amazing partners in it all is Chef Arnold

as I like call him.

We've been arguing back and forth about butchery and specs.

Arnold and I were on a call as I was driving in.

And I said, cut me X, Y, and Z and let's look through them.

Less than 24 hours later, here they are.

This is the first cut off the west home.

short loin of Australian Wagyu porterhouse.

This steak is beautiful.

We talk about the best of both worlds.

It's this kind of piece right here.

I'm just gonna cut it out.

We'll save that for our beef love.

And this will be a great beautiful porterhouse for us.

Beautiful T-bone end to end.

Needs a little bit of age on it and tighten up

it just came outta cryo, so it'll start to bloom shortly.

How many ounces? 24? I could go bigger.

This is gonna be a special

as we head into the spring months and spring menu.

Oh, that's beautiful. So, this is a bone in Kansas City.

Cut off the shore loin again as it tapers down,

we're kind of left with these edges as I only want,

beautiful.

This is from Rosewood, one of the original wagyu in America.

Rosewood didn't start commercially producing wagyu

for sale until '96,

so they waited 20 years of genetics

that are really rich in this beef.

I think it is bared on the best American wagyu

you can purchase.

Arnold, again, I can't thank you enough for all you do,

jumping to the hoops for us and making us look good.

I'm glad to see you here my friend. Thank you, Arnold.

We're still running and gunning.

We got some more deliveries coming in.

My amazing friend Estelle, come on in. Beautiful.

[Estelle] You doing?

I've known Estelle for a very long time. Oh, yeah.

I brought you some Spring items.

Wild strawberries grown in Malaga, Spain.

They're super perishable.

They die before the end of service.

But, at their peak

they are like the best strawberry you can get.

We will offer these tonight for some VIPs,

we'll send them out

just a little thank you and gesture to them.

As we talked about, we love luxuries,

we like to showcase them.

We like to highlight amazing things in season

and you can't do these types of things with normal people,

being nut jobs, like Estelle here

who's amazing at what she does.

She runs around this city.

She used to be on a bicycle and now she's in a van.

She's got a whole big business and amazing children.

I take the subway. Subway now?

More relaxing.

[Michael] You're in full production?

[Estelle] Yes. How long?

For another couple of months

until it gets too hot over there, so end of June.

Okay. How much a flat? 325 for two kilos.

How many of these is in two kilos?

15. Okay.

That's doable. Yeah. Affordable luxury.

Thanks. For VIPs.

White asparagus coming from the long regions Southwest-

[Michael] Look at that Of France.

These are one of the items

that is gonna be featured on our spring menu.

[Estelle] Morels from Oregon.

Yeah.

A fresh burn or cultivated?

[Estelle] Fresh. Wild. Oh.

Black winter truffle. Those are pieces.

I don't want pieces. This is it.

This is it.

And then we're at a gap season.

Last week.

Gap season until the Australian black end of June.

You wanna use your scale or my scale?

I'll use your scale. I trust you.

[Michael] Are you still doing deliveries

or who's your normal guy?

I do deliveries, of course. Yeah.

I have to see the chefs.

It would be boring my job

if I was like not making deliveries.

It'd be too adult. I'll see you later.

[Winston] Thank you, Estelle. Bye, thank you.

The best. Estelle, Strega.

New York City chefs, you know, you know.

At least we got snacks.

Trying to get through things. Cooks are coming in.

We are in the proverbial poops as you will.

As you can see, the line is getting full.

During service,

it's only about three or four of us in the kitchen.

This is the crossover time with the chaotic.

This is what I love.

I still have to clean some foie.

Hudson Valley foie gras. Grade A.

It's the most unblemished liver.

Foie is the engorged liver of a duck or a goose.

It is fed corn until the liver kinda gets fatty and unctuous

and then it is chilled and served.

It's two different lobes attached.

To clean the fois, I'm really gonna use two tools.

Offset and a spoon.

It's literally just coming in, coming under,

not blemishing the outside of the skin

'cause that's gonna help seal our torchon later on.

Torchon is French for towel.

It is gonna be a rolled tarine

that is lightly poached in plastic,

we cure this foie in a mixture of salt, coriander,

dark brown sugar,

a little bit of pink salt or sodium nitrate

to help keep the color beautifully pink

as well as Cognac saw turn and Muscat.

All that saves when we push it through a sieve later on.

You can see the vein runs right through it.

The healthier the foie is, the less veins it has in it.

See the vein there gently work it out.

We're all done here,

we're gonna run to a PX meeting with Leigh.

And we'll just be there. Let's go.

[playful music]

Lemme introduce you to our general manager, Leigh Kodzoman.

Leigh's been with me nine, 10 years now

and we're gonna go over our PXs.

PXs are any friends of the brand,

friends, special notable guests,

special occasions that we're dealing with.

We have 17 first time diner reservations.

Love that.

[Leigh] So we can have a little fun tonight.

Yeah, absolutely.

Are we doing white asparagus tonight?

We'll have white asparagus, probably four orders.

And we'll figure out through the book where they go.

Whoa. Holy [beep].

The World's Best 101 just came out

that we are the best steakhouse in the US

and number 12 in the world

and that's pretty crazy for this little joint six months in.

I'm gonna be real guys.

This is pretty humbling and it's a little surreal.

Wow. What the [beep].

Do you guys just hear that?

[Michael] Yo, just became best in the US.

[Winston] [beep] yeah, dude.

Forget number 12 in the world, we're best in the US.

Holy [beep].

This little [beep] hole, this [beep] tell you.

You guys did that [beep].

You guys. I'm so pumped right now.

I'm sweating. I'm excited.

I am really like, ha, I'm so excited.

It's so hot in this restaurant right now. That's wild.

Let's go. We're behind.

03:30, time for pre-shift.

We're gonna check in with the team,

see where we're at for the day.

What's up guys? Happy Wednesday.

[Unison] Happy Wednesday.

Tonight, we are featuring,

you have five orders of stone cribs.

I have one held back for VIP

if we need some more to up them.

We changed the endives for the Waldorf salad,

so, I'd like some feedback on that tonight.

It's a new organic endive.

We also shock them in a little bit of ice water

and assigilate them or move 'em around.

It tends to lessen that bitterness kinda like broccoli rabe.

It was something that my aunt had mentioned.

We tried, we did it here. It's fantastic.

A little while ago I got a insane phone call.

We became number 12 in the world

on the 101 best steak house list.

So, the crew that does this in and out,

in a basement, up a staircase,

through a doorway, in a hallway,

and you guys make it all happen.

I can't tell you how incredibly grateful and humbled I am

to work amongst you all.

And you've made this kid from Queens extremely happy

and very grateful.

And, if I talk anymore, I'm gonna cry.

So, I'm gonna stop talking and this is for you guys.

To number 12 in the world, number one in my heart.

Eighty Six on me, Eighty Six on three. One, two, three.

[Unison] Eighty Six.

[upbeat music]

All right, it's 03:50, we flipped the kitchen,

we've now taped the pass or our folding table,

lights come down.

Chef Winston and I do our dance for the night.

Before that, It's fitting in the pass. Chef, you have it?

You can see these very custom brackets we have you.

So it comes, sits in, lock it in.

Lights up, chef printer goes in.

We've talked about it all day now it's time, it's battle.

Service starts.

My station is here.

Look at the that, right on cue.

Orders are coming in.

Walk it in. Churro, lobster pasta on back.

Waldorf deckle mid well. Whip.

[Unison] Whip!

[upbeat music]

Guys, as you can see, service is getting hectic.

I'm gonna need you get the [beep] outta here.

Have a good night. Thank you.

[upbeat music]