A Day Making NYC’s Most Viral Burritos

[upbeat music]

Son del North can sell up to 10,000 burritos a week.

We went viral for our carne asada.

And then after that, it was our bean and cheese.

Now we are very lucky,

and every day for lunch and dinner,

we have a different [indistinct].

Those carne asadas.

Our characteristic is not to have rice.

We fill 'em up with proteins

like chicken, and steak, and shrimp.

I was raised in Tijuana when I was younger,

and my mom will pack a couple burritos for me

and make them in the morning,

and then I'll go and sell them.

A lot of the flavors here are based on my mom's cooking,

and that's the way that my family show love

and it was through food.

That means that I'm sharing love to everyone else

in order to make this thousands of burritos

that we make weekly.

[upbeat music]

Hi, my name is Annisha.

I'm the chef and co-owner of Son del North

here in New York City.

We're gonna be here today making a thousand burritos.

[upbeat music]

So we are in Son del North, our West Village location.

This is 900 square feet.

So this is basically it.

We use the right side to prep mostly.

And then we use the left side

as the entire line of production.

So the first thing that we do in the morning is the beans.

We go around 400 pounds of beans a week,

and we're just gonna let it simmer.

It's a mayacoba bean or canary bean.

It grows the size a little bit bigger.

It's not as waxy as a black bean.

[indistinct] burrito is because I love beans

and that's my favorite burrito.

My entire idea was like,

why we don't make it like a grilled cheese?

You know when you get the crust of the grilled cheese,

I was like, instead of like only having cheese,

let's make beans.

So that's where this idea came from.

It wasn't that popular until people start talking about it

and now it's like she's the it girl of our burritos.

So let's go over and make the salsa.

[upbeat music]

[food sizzles]

All the prep has to happen in the morning

because we have such a limited space.

So we are very good at doing multiple things

at the same time, like beans over here.

And now we're gonna start with the Son del North sauce.

That is another signature thing that we have over here.

Everyone wants this. We have one ounce in each burrito.

People call it the TikTok sauce.

People call it like the green sauce. It's random.

I can believe that I'm like doing this secret right now.

No, you're gonna go like millions,

and people just gonna start replicating this.

And this is like my, this is how I'm living my best life.

We use sunflower seed oil,

serrano peppers and jalapeno peppers.

A lot of people don't know,

but peppers get spicier in the summer

because peppers get stressed with heat.

So we do a modification in the summer

because if we do the same [indistinct],

it tends to be really spicy.

We're just gonna let that get a little softer.

Very easy what we do here.

It's complicated, it's a confit basically.

Confit is cooking anything in fat,

low temperature, long period of time.

This takes about like an hour.

If you give it more color,

you're gonna release a little bit of bitterness.

We don't want that.

This is halfway,

and this is the way that we want it, okay?

Now it's all watery and oil.

So the confit is almost done.

This one is still not, but it's a slow process.

And then here, he just add the onion.

It's not translucent yet, but it has oil,

and it's gonna reduce.

It all goes in a blender.

We do 60 quarts of salsa every day.

You see, that's what we want.

[upbeat music]

They're the best chips.

She's a chip master.

So Son del North, everything happens at the same time.

By 10:00 AM when the service starts,

we wanna have the prep all move into that direction.

Now they're grilling the meat.

They start with, I think, 60 pounds.

These are chicken.

North Mexican food is about grilling.

I love grilling.

Tijuana, everything has a grill and it's cold.

So you get like super charred flavors, big proteins.

That's what we do every weekend.

Like you bring anything and then you grill it.

Part of being authentic was having a grill.

Asado means grill. That's it.

And asado is not flat top.

It's not in a pan. Asado has to be a grill.

A thousand percent.

Perfect grill and juicy.

[upbeat music]

Okay, guacamole.

We're gonna do the guacamole for the day.

This is the first step.

We pass it through the rack.

Instead of having like all the halves in a bowl

and then mixing it by hand,

we're basically like making a paste of avocado.

I tell them not to mix it,

a lot of ones that is like this,

because then it will get watery.

Avocado is a fat,

so we don't want it to be in a lot of movement

because it gets watery.

Yeah, I'm doing a couple hundreds and I have a dishwasher.

It gets annoying to do it at home like this.

I don't do it at home. We are doing two cases today,

which is 48 avocados per case.

So this is serrano like a little bit of lime juice.

Because if we blend the entire lime juice here

with the friction of the blades,

it's gonna oxidize the lime.

And then we get like a paste.

If you are making guacamole at home,

chop your onions incredibly fine

and add salt in a bowl with it,

and then let it it set for a while.

And you will see the difference in how the flavor changes,

and it's not that strong.

Also, stop, for the name of God,

putting like garlic to guacamole.

Leave that idea alone.

Or powders or like, oh, let's put a garlic. No, no.

Okay, so we're done with the guacamole.

We're gonna do beans.

[upbeat music]

We've been cooking the beans for three hours.

They're super tender.

Pinto beans has a thicker skin.

The skin that the mayacoba

or the canary beans has is way thinner,

which allows them to fry easily.

And then you don't find this pieces of like skin

when you're refrying beans.

We're doing two batches.

It's a quarter of diced jalapeno.

But I like to add a little by little.

We smash them by hand.

So you get like,

do you see the pieces having this consistent?

You see how creamy it's getting?

So our beans are more like a spread.

You can see here, they're not like whole.

Since they're seasoned very well,

they should have like a good flavor right now.

Mm, it's very hot. Okay?

So good, right? Wow.

This type of beans,

you will not find them anywhere in the city.

But I think food in general is generational.

The more you'd follow those simple steps

that you grew up with and then make you feel happy,

life is about that, right?

We're just supposed to share all those things.

My team is gonna finish the beans right now.

We still have three times to do this.

Let's do it.

[upbeat music]

We're gonna go downstairs

and make sure that portion of the prep is being executed.

Every basement in New York City is on the sidewalk.

We all have irrational fears of falling down on this stairs.

Just watch your head [speaks in foreign language]. Okay?

Welcome to my basement.

Our basement is incredibly tight.

This is common here. Common here.

Tortillas, all portion steak.

Salsitas, that is a Son del North sauce.

And then cheese.

This should be empty by a certain point today

before all those orders arrive.

And the shrimp is on the bottom.

Mm, 250 pounds daily, probably.

She's doing the pico de gallo.

This preparation, it was very important for me.

This is for our shrimp burrito

'cause I'm not a huge fan

of the tomato being like in big chunks.

So we dice it with the dicer.

And then she's gonna do a mix with the onion

and the jalapeno.

So she's gonna do like a paste.

That is gonna go in the pico de gallo and then lime juice.

So we cut the shrimp small,

and we throw it on the planchas.

We had questions of like,

Oh, how many shrimp is in the burrito?

I don't know. 12, 20, because we cut it really small.

My burrito is the best in the city.

I don't know other boroughs but here, I know.

This is a steak.

This is a Son del North steak.

It is in a specific cut that they send us.

So the texture a lot is like the skirt steak.

'Cause we work with one of the highest,

like meat purveyors in New York City.

We work with Golden Meat.

And he is like top.

He does for like Peter Luger's.

He does for like every top steakhouse in the city.

Because we cut our meat so small,

we can play a little bit with what type of cut we're using.

So what Marco's doing behind here is taking all the fat out.

He put oil already, but you see the difference.

So we have a nice piece of fat, still nice grain.

The carne asada burritos inspired on this taco spot

in Tijuana called El Poblano.

My mom's been going there since she was like 14 years old.

That's more than 50 years.

So I was aiming for that flavor of the steak.

So we're gonna wrap up the prep.

I think they have probably chicken still to do,

so we should go.

[upbeat music]

So it's a little bit out there at 12:00.

People start coming at lunch hour,

and we actually about to start getting busy.

So I'm gonna help in the line a little bit.

We're gonna go through some tickets,

and I'm gonna show you guys all our burritos.

Jasmine.

The way that we make the burritos

is basically an assembly line.

So we have our backups of steak and meat right here.

Chicken, steak, and then we have beans as well.

Then over here, we have our tortilla warmer,

which is actually is a crepe maker.

And we usually will be someone here calling the tickets.

[Annisha speaks in foreign language]

Someone there chopping the meat or grilling meat.

And then we're gonna have a builder,

and then we are gonna have someone

that's gonna be in the grill, flipping burritos,

even grill or griddle.

[machine buzzes]

The thing that I like is like starting here,

and then he'll put cheese, and then he'll finish it.

How I make a thousand burritos,

I mean, I say I is a mistake.

We have an amazing team, honestly.

They're very good at what they do.

I don't think that it has to do a lot with,

if I show them how to do something or not.

[Annisha speaks in foreign language]

Breakfast con extra steak. No pico.

And also I'm very specific about the way

that the line is set up.

It's kind of like everything has to be like a dance

when you're cooking.

The idea it was that people can get out of here

in less than 10 minutes with a well done burrito.

[upbeat music]

Generally in an hour that is lunch hour

that we have two big rushes that it will be the lunch hour

that starts at 11:30 to two o'clock, we'll say.

And then we have another one

that starts from like 5:30 to 7:00.

About 130 burritos, 200 burritos for those two hours.

So carne asada, this one especially,

I got inspired by my favorite taco spot in Tijuana,

El Poblano.

So I try to take a version.

So we did beans and then we go with cheese.

And in this case, we put grilled onions, almost caramelized.

I like the sweetness of it.

And then we have the acidity of the salsa.

This is salsa roja.

All our sauces except for the Son del North sauce,

they're raw.

For me, it keeps freshness.

So a big scoop of guacamole and we're gonna fold it.

Folding technique, [indistinct].

You smash it a little bit,

make a rectangle, bring it all the way up,

and then you wrap it.

I like to tuck their corners so they're safe and sound.

[upbeat music]

When you think about Mexican food,

people put one and one together, having beans and rice.

But I would rather in my food, in general,

have a good amount of beans and not rice.

And then whatever is like the [indistinct],

you're getting more value in general.

I will definitely,

would love to have more burrito food meat than rice.

What type of question is that?

We grill our burritos

because it was actually an afterthought.

I love grilling stuff just in general.

We were closing the burrito the way that you guys saw it,

but the tortilla will come open.

So now it's completely closed.

Now it's like beans and cheese.

That's the thing that has to touch the grill first.

So the cheese actually melts.

And we realize like it was the way

of like us keeping the burrito warm.

And then now it has this smokey flavor

and it just become our staple.

[Annisha speaks in foreign language]

So we got an order for the pollo asado.

The pollo asado inspire all the pollo con salsa verde.

Rajas, rajas. This is a Anaheim pepper.

We fry it first, take the skin off and then peel it.

And then we have pollo asado.

We're gonna do salsa verde.

This is my favorite burrito actually.

I love the fact that the pollo asado is so juicy.

And I love rajas.

I think people have it underrated.

We're gonna make a bean and cheese.

Bean and cheese is my baby.

Incredibly simple.

I like to do what we call like a little nest,

and then we're gonna do our beans.

So we're gonna put a scoop.

So you see, it's the easiest one to make.

If the beans are too wet, it will break.

So the fact that it has the cheese on it

and it goes to a plancha, it melts perfectly.

It's just gooey and it's delicious.

It's very comforting.

It's my favorite thing to eat

if I'm had a couple of drinks.

We're about to end with the lunch rush,

and the only thing that we have left

is we have a catering order

that our team is gonna start getting ready for it.

[upbeat music]

This one is very simple.

So we're just doing like 15 carne asada, 15 pollo,

five frijol con queso, and five cauliflower.

Usually the orders get days in advance,

and the team will prep accordingly.

They're only 40 pieces,

so they're gonna go directly to a box,

and then they're gonna pick them up.

I really don't know how other people work,

but this is how I work.

If you're working with two people, you start right to left.

Start with the chicken,

and then she's gonna go with the sauce.

She's gonna start with the green sauce.

So I can start rolling.

I think we're gonna be ready in less than 30 minutes.

Also for catering, we do a different size.

We do nine inches.

People eat it at their desk a lot.

And then we wanna give customers a chance

to try two burritos while they're in their office.

Fortunato wraps them here.

He's on the grill and he will wrap them.

And Ana Paola will pack them.

I mean, I think it's very important for a restaurant

to everyone know what is their job. [laughs]

To run it in the way that we're doing it, yes.

They probably know at this point

how to execute it in a faster way than I can.

[upbeat music]

I know that for a lot of people,

doesn't seem like very interesting

to be like doing burritos every day,

but we put a lot of intention in everything that we do.

So it is important to have staff

that also have intention of being here.

And then this last pollo.

Our boxes get lined with our paper.

We have a sticker here. We have another sticker here.

We bought this recently.

Well, this is the things that make lives better.

So this goes here.

Frijol con queso.

[upbeat music]

Okay, we're about to be done with our lunch service,

and we have to get ready for dinner.

So it's time to leave now.

Very happy that you guys were here. Thank you.