A Day at NYC’s Most Exciting French Restaurant

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French cuisine, for a lot of people,

they think of something that's rich and over complicated.

But I see something that is more celebratory,

homey and decadent.

French food can also be playful.

Being a chef owner is something that feels very special.

I'm 29 and I always dreamt of having a restaurant

at the early stage of my career.

Being in New York, I've never felt so in touch

with French food because I miss it.

So that's what I try to do every day, is just teaching

and showing people and giving them the love for French food.

[upbeat music]

My name is Alexia Duchene.

I'm the chef and owner of Restaurant Le Chene.

It's 10:00 AM, we just got back from the market

and we're ready to prep.

Come on in.

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So this is the dining room.

It's roughly 42 seats and we do 2 to 3 seatings

depending on how busy it gets.

It's time for me to get changed

and get it ready with an apron and a T-shirt.

This is the upstairs service kitchen.

This is where we do service,

but we also do a lot of heavy prep.

During the day,

we're ready to start putting things away and cooking.

This is Mathis my sous chef, and Solomon, junior sous.

We're just checking all the produce.

I like going to the market with Mathis.

It's kind of our ritual.

It kind of helps us be connected to what we're cooking

and be a bit more in touch with the season.

Also what I like about going to the market

is making sure we have the right size.

For example, for potatoes,

we really are looking for something that is small.

And when you order, you never know what you're gonna get.

And it gives us a bit more precision in what we choose.

So today's specials, Mathis, what are we thinking?

Turbot? So we have the Turbot.

From France, it's been dry, like five, six days?

Yes. Usually specials

are something that we don't get in huge quantities

and also something that's quite extraordinary.

I think specials are specials for an occasion.

It's like, you know, it's like birthday cake.

You don't want to eat birthday cake every day.

And that's the same with a special.

We're going to break down the Turbot that's dry-aged.

We're going to also do the tuna.

So it's 10:45 and now we're just going to focus on protein.

The Turbot we get flown in from France once a week.

It comes from Brittany.

It's really rare to find wild-caught French Turbot.

It just doesn't have the same taste.

The fact that the waters are so intense,

it makes a really nice collagen in the fish.

It's just for me, my all time favorite fish.

We usually like to dry it for at least 3 to 4 days,

ideally five,

just because the skin gets really nice and dry.

And when we put it on the grill, it really crisps up.

Breaking down Turbot is quite easy.

Basically you have two filets on each side.

You have to really stay really close to the bones,

but other than that, there's no bones to take out.

The final dish of the Turbot is actually quite simple.

we don't really wanna mess with how beautiful the fish is.

So it's a beurre blanc, which is a traditional French sauce

that is mostly butter, like most of French sauces.

And we do a mix of seaweed

and it brings a really nice umami.

We add a touch of dashi at the end and some lemon juice.

Turbot and beurre blanc is something that is quite common.

You know, we're not groundbreaking here,

but I think what's different is first of all the dry aging.

In France, it's not something that you're used to,

you know, fresh is best and stuff like that.

But I do think that the crispiness of our skin

really sets us apart.

with also adding a few components like the dashi,

the lemon that brings a nice little touch

without changing the identity of the sauce

is what we're trying to do here.

Some dishes that we do at the restaurant

are extremely classical, like the foie gras.

And then some of the dishes, it's like not really French,

but it's just for us, our interpretation of French food,

which is get the best ingredients, make a great sauce,

and make it taste nice.

Time to break down the tuna.

This tuna, we get it directly from Japan,

from Toyosu Market,

and we dry-edged the belly for roughly a week.

Because of the amount of fat,

it really, really dry-edges very well,

and it really gives a nice marbling

and those like deep umami flavors.

We're just gonna start by cleaning top parts

that has all the bones.

At the restaurant, we have like two rolls.

We try and go local as much as we can.

That's why we go to the market.

You know, our meat is from upstate and stuff like that.

But like once a week,

we get something that feels like extraordinary.

And that is like our way of treating our guests

to something that is like an indulgence.

You see the beautiful fat, it's just like gorgeous.

When we opened, I was here all day,

like from seven in the morning to midnight.

And I was trying to control everything

in a sense that I felt like, you know,

I had more experience

so I knew how to break down tuna better than anyone

and like Turbot.

And I think being a leader and a restaurant owner

for the first time, trying to micromanage everything

leads to nowhere.

[Staff] Chef, I've been informed

your truffle delivery is here. Great.

So here is our truffle dealer.

It's the beginning of white truffle season,

which is honestly my favorite mushroom.

And yeah, we're just gonna see what we have here.

It's huge.

We're gonna see how much it weighs.

Yeah, 240 grams.

When we choose a truffle, you're looking for density.

When you press it, you want something

that doesn't like kind of bounce

because that means that it's not as fresh.

It's also gonna be a problem when you're shaving it.

And then smell, you want this like rich aroma.

I think it's really nice when they're a bit bigger,

when they're at least like 70 to 80 grams

because it makes like really nice shavings

when it's on top of a dish.

It's gonna be really nice.

We have some really nice guests tonight and over the week.

So I wanna treat them to the best truffle.

Ciao. Have a good day guys.

See you.

Bye, chef.

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We're gonna cut the Turbot for the weights

and the price sheets.

The idea when you cut the Turbot is to make sure you have

different sizes for different imaginary parties.

So we wanna have some things that are big enough

for one, for two, for three.

Mathis is cutting the Cote de Boeuf that we dry-aged.

This has to also be weighed for us

to be able to do the price sheets.

Cote de Boeuf is basically a bone-in ribeye.

It's super, super, I would say French.

In France, we have quite a lot of Cote de Boeuf.

a lot of people come here and they're like,

ah, there's so much fat, there's this, there's that.

But it's just a really good steak that has been raised well

that you see by the marbling that it's eating grass,

it's being treated right, you know, like food.

When you see a produce that looks good,

you know it's gonna taste good.

That's it.

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It's 11:35.

Right now it's the time where I do all the spreadsheet

with the specials, the pricing,

Just to communicate that with the front of house team,

we broke it down in the Cote de Boeuf,

the boneless strips that we had from yesterday,

the Turbot that we broke down today, and the Toro.

Today we have two, four, six, eight, 10,

12 portions of Turbot, which is pretty nice.

We have two Cote de Boeuf, we have one boneless strip.

I always convert the grams into ounces.

I have no idea what that is.

Americans are more into ounces than grams,

So when we talk about the sizing of a special,

it's easier for them to understand.

Getting a Turbot for us is a big risk.

You usually get two Turbots a week,

which is roughly like $2,000.

And it's something that is scary for a lot of restaurants,

especially when we just open, to kind of bet on that

and be like, okay, we're gonna take that and,

you know, pay up front and not sure if we're gonna sell it.

This also breakdown really helps us calculate

how we make our money on the Turbot

and make sure we have zero loss.

The sheet's all done.

Now I'm ready to go back in the kitchen

and do a bit of pithiviers scoring with Arena.

Let's go.

We have an elevator here,

the building that we use,

which is super convenient,

but I feel like our neighbors hate us.

So this is the prep area.

We have our dry eaters, fish and meat.

We have our dry storage.

We just got some new deliveries.

And here is also where we do production,

mostly stuff for the cold side and pastry just here.

This is where we make all of our pithiviers.

We start by taking a sheet of pithiviers.

There already has been a first layer of egg wash.

Pithiviers is like a pastry that was created

about an hour outside of Paris in a town called Pithiviers.

It can be sweet, it can be savory.

The main component is the puff pastry.

I love the combination of something from the sea

and something from the land.

So the idea here is to do this pork pithiviers,

and I was also thinking of, you know,

what could compliment the pork.

So it was the smoked eel that caught my eye.

This is a dish that takes days to make.

We have to marinate the pork, grind the pork,

do the cabbage, blanch the cabbage, cut the eel.

We have to assemble everything.

We have to let it rest for a whole day.

And every day it has to be brushed with egg yolk,

dried, brushed again, then scored.

It's just a lot of work,

and a lot of chefs might be like,

Okay, I'll just make five a day and call it a day.

But now that it's become so popular,

I just wanna make sure that everybody

that walks through our doors feels that

they can get this little piece of craft

and that we never disappoint.

We've had the first layer of egg wash.

It's really important that when you touch,

the pastry doesn't stick anymore.

Then we're gonna apply a second layer of egg wash.

The more egg wash you have,

the darker it will be when you cook it.

What I like to do is to do what we call the chimney.

The chimney is what lets the steam out

because with the pork, with the cabbage,

a lot of steam is gonna be crating inside.

And then we're gonna start by doing the sides.

It has some function because the more puff pastry opens up,

the crispier it gets.

And so you really have something

that is like melting in your mouth.

And then you have this really like crispy,

rich, buttery puff pastry.

It takes roughly 35 minutes to cook.

And then I would say ideally a 10 minute rest.

And we serve that with the jus

And we also serve that with a beetroot ketchup

that's lightly spiced, really nice, bright.

It kind of cuts through the fat.

And light salad dressed with vinegar and olive oil.

Pithiviers are done for the day.

Right now, with Mathis, we're gonna prepare the foie gras.

So it's the terrine.

Foie gras is the duck liver

and it's really like a delicacy in France.

We usually have it for Christmas, for celebrations.

And like the terrine, the actual foie that we get,

we marinate them and then we steam them in the oven

and we're just gonna put them all together.

We put a layer of artichoke in the center,

which brings a nice earthiness to it

and kind of like press it overnight.

And the next day we put the fat of the foie gras,

that the drippings during the cooking process,

put it back in the fridge in between each coating

so that it creates a thicker layer of the fats

because otherwise it will oxidize.

But we serve it with a really cool condiment

that Mathis came up with.

It's like a burned grapefruit.

So we literally burn whole grapefruits in the oven.

And then we just take only the flesh

and brings this really intense, bitter, sweet condiment

that complements the fattiness of the foie.

And I feel like every person that's had this dish

always like talks about the condiments

and even like the French people,

they just love how different it is here

than what they've seen even in France.

All the different layers that you see here,

it's just all the different pieces of foie

that we put together.

And once we push them all together,

they're gonna create different levels

where we're gonna have some fat

that's gonna come at different angles.

The next we're gonna put this back in the fridge

and Mathis is already gonna start like

doing the coating process for another 30 to 40 minutes

just to make sure it's ready for service.

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It's three o'clock, it's ready to set up the pass.

So the idea is to just set up all the little things,

the condiments that I will need for service.

During service,

I'm using these to kind of finish the dishes,

a bit of olive oil, extra virgin, some fresh lemon juice,

red pepper puree to build the uni French toast.

We have a bunch of spoons, some spatulas,

and little tweezers, two plates.

I'm just gonna add some warm water to them.

I just regularly put warm water to take off all the residue

that you will feel throughout service and the spoons.

We have some Maldon sea salt, and then some little wipes

that the front of house does for me.

So I can just put a bit of vinegar that we have here

and kind of like wipe the plates.

During service, I just am here with Mathis.

We move around and we just have a good vision.

We kind of also go help the line if needed.

The idea is for us to really focus on expediting

and making sure that food gets out the fastest as possible

and also the hottest as possible.

So my station is all set up.

Now it's time to take a break and eat family.

It's 4:40, I'm done with my break,

and now it's time to explain all the specials

to Front of House.

Tonight, four specials, the same as yesterday.

We have the Toro from Japan.

We have, I would say, 10 of these.

Turbot, we have 12 portions, different sizes.

We have one that's quite small,

that's good for one person, the 135.

I wouldn't push it for more than one.

And we have a huge truffle tonight.

I think it's a really nice show.

I think people are going to enjoy that.

so we have no count on potato and truffles tonight.

And if they want to add it to some truffle to the Turbot,

I think it's a nice touch, okay?

Thanks, chef.

Okay, guys, we're gonna go through the VIPs tonight.

We have a ton.

Now we're just going to check everything in the kitchen

and do a little briefing for service with the kitchen team.

So the idea is to try all the components of every section,

just to make sure we're on the same page for texture,

salt, and just overall taste.

The idea is each person from each section sets up

their own tray.

It just makes us accountable for each of our stations.

Maybe put a touch of acid on top of the mayo.

The jus is good, yeah.

Yeah, it's good.

How's the cream?

Here we check the peaks to see if they hold tight,

so that when we do the desserts, it doesn't kind of fall.

Let's do a quick lineup.

Tonight, 76 on the book.

I think we can expect 85.

A lot of cool people coming in,

some investors, some regulars.

We have Martha Stewart coming in at 7:00,

with one of our regulars. [laughs]

Great. Good.

Hell yeah- Let's do it.

Let's do a good service. Yeah, do a good service.

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It's five o'clock, we're ready for service.

We're not crazy, crazy busy at the start,

which is going to be nice for us

to kind of take our time and make it nice.

I stay during the whole service.

I call out the checks.

And then I'm very hands-on, especially for specials,

especially because they're kind of created on the fly.

So it's extremely intense for back of house team

to be okay with roll with a bunch

of new dishes all the time,

which is also what keeps it exciting.

Let's do a label here, guys, for the mise en place.

Hey. What's your pre-shift drink?

Matcha, coconut water, salt and lemon juice

I used to drink Red Bulls,

but it's not really good for you, so.

Okay, check on.

Two uni, four by razors, four by short rib,

four by clafoutis.

Oui. Oui, chef.

[laughs] In French cuisine, saying oui, chef back

is a sign of you've understood your assignment,

you know what's going on, and it's a good,

like, cohesive way of all being on the same page

and pushing together to get the service going.

We always send complimentary bread first.

So that's really important for us

because we're a French restaurant in France,

you never pay for bread and butter.

So that's something that we will always do here.

So we cut the bread, put it in the oven.

The idea is just have a warm bread to serve with the butter,

which is right now some dill pollen,

a bit of honey and salt.

This is the Uni French toast.

It's our second best seller

after the sweet shrimp tartelette.

So we start with the uni.

We do a bit of lemon juice on each bite.

We go with a bit of salt, some pepper,

and then we go in and we take our bone marrow

kind of sit in the center and then we finish

with some nice marigolds, I think it's the perfect mix

of like brine-ness saltiness comfort

and a perfect way to start a meal at Le Chene.

Check on! Two shrimp, two uni with white truffle

followed by pithiviers, Cote de Boeuf, 850,

830, sorry, medium rare, followed by clafoutis,

it's on the Cote de Boeuf is the boneless strip.

Boneless strip? Yeah, now two people

Living well.

Being a chef owner for the first time

feels extremely freeing.

I feel very serene that if something bad happens,

I can handle it.

And if something good happens,

I can choose what to do in the kitchen.

I can choose what I want to focus on as a restaurant.

And I'm at a stage of my career where I really needed that

to kind of just make a place my own

and be a bit more genuine when the food

and the hospitality comes together.

Hey guys, now it's time for you to go.

We have a lot more people to feed and I'll see you soon.

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