We Put 13 Cameras In New York's Busiest Noodle Bar

[Chef] Wagyu to egg, how long?

[Chef 2] Two minutes, sir.

[Douglas] You're watching a bowl of Wagyu Ramen

being made in real time.

At the Jeju, assembling a bowl of ramen is raced

against the clock,

with only a five-minute window to execute

before the noodle lose their texture

and the bowls start going cold.

We are talking about a $45 bowl of ramen,

and guest expectations are high.

My name is Douglas Kim, owner and chef at Jeju Noodle Bar,

located at West Village, New York.

We serve 120 guests every night.

Roughly 110 of them will order ramen.

That means 110 times a day,

we have to serve 110 bowl of perfect noodles every time.

Adding to that challenge is the fact

that we have one Michelin star,

which means our guests expect consistent quality

and great service.

On top of that, we still have dozens

of other orders coming in, cooking at the same time,

throughout the kitchen.

But before we get to all that,

let me walk you through how dish is made

from the beginning.

Two Wagyu, family, all day.

[chefs talking]

[Douglas] When an order for ramen comes in,

few things happen at the same time.

First, we open a package of noodles.

They cook in these basket

of the boiling water for 60 seconds.

We have to think about carry-over time

because a lot of our guests take orders at the table

and the dishes are sitting there longer

than what we expected.

We slightly undercook the noodles to account

for this extra sitting time.

Ramen order comes in in waves.

Sometimes you might be working

on the four different bowls

each at a different stage of the process.

So we use these timers above the stations to stay on track.

As a noodle cook, we grab the matching bowl for this dish.

All the bowls are color coded.

Black balls are Wagyu Ramen.

Red bowls are for Gochu Ramen.

And then the white ball is for Family.

One of our cooks grab the black bowls

and the dash of a seasoning and the garlic puree.

Then the stock.

For this dish we use a veal stock.

This is our cook, Jun.

He pulls the noodles and fold them into the bowl.

This folding action is to make sure the noodles are aligned

and straight.

If we don't do this, the noodles come

out of the bowl tangled.

As the noodle come out in the order,

that's five minute clocks start

to ticking for texture and temperature.

This is one of the biggest challenges

we deal with every day.

The last thing we want to serve is a cold bowl of noodles.

We add a braised beef brisket, sliced thin.

On top of that, we add an even thinner slice

of raw A5 Wagyu, one of the most popular style

of beef in the world at the moment.

It's very decadent.

If the ramen is done, we have to bring it to the pass

and the chef on the pass make sure, check the quality,

and we finish it with a Terry Cherry fresh pepper.

The runner takes the dish to the guest

and then they explain how to eat correctly.

Let's take a step back

and talk about the how the restaurant works.

The first floor is the dining room

and we have a kitchen in the basement.

We have four different stations, which is hot app,

cold app, and garde and noodle station.

On Hot App Station you have a fryer,

plancha, charcoal grill.

On noodle station you have a French flat top

to warm up the stock and you got pasta cooker.

And then we have a stock burner.

And the cold app station focused

on Toro Ssam Bap

and you have a Garde stations focused

on all other cold dishes.

Once every dish is done, you make sure we have to go

through the pass.

Our executive chef, Will, is the expediter,

holding out the orders as they place the end trying

to find the errors before dish leaves the kitchen.

All night long our runner takes the dish

from the basement up the stairs into the dining room.

It's a lot of exercise.

And the runner will go down, up and down and up and down

at least a hundred times

and that will be easily 12,000 step per night.

On a busy weekend, we'll have four big rushes.

In every rush, one of the most popular dish

to the order is our Toro Ssam Bap.

Let's walk through the dish.

[Chef] Toro.

[Chef 2] Toro.

[Douglas] On a weekly basis,

we getting a sustainable Blue Fin Tuna.

Toro is the fatty part of the tuna.

Before service, I break down the Tuna belly

and portion it out for dinner service.

To be honest, this is not my favorite dish.

It started as an elegant solution

for some ingredient challenges.

We had a lot of overcooked egg

and it kind of clicked my head.

In childhood, my mom used to make a scrambled egg

with the sesame oil and soy sauce

and the same time we getting a tuna

the fat content was very inconsistent

and every time we get a very fatty tuna

I didn't know what to do with it.

And then I started scraping off and chopped it

and then we decided to put tuna

and the egg together and it became Toro Ssam Bap.

The first thing I do after Will called out the order,

grab the pre portioned tuna belly,

I scrap off the parchment paper

and then begin building the dish.

Adding seasoned rice with a vinegar

mixing with a black tobiko, egg salad,

then I add a layer

of jalapeno, shallots, season with a soy dressing.

It's finished with caviar.

Let's talk about the caviar.

Our Torah Ssam Bap is a $55,

and then if you want to just want to get Toro itself

it's about $60 per pound.

After pandemic happens, all the stuff that we used

to get better price went double or triple.

After we raised the price for Toro Ssam Bap,

people are complaining, why this is expensive.

So we have to come up with the different solutions

to eliminate that complaint.

So after we add in caviar, people are willing to pay extra.

Even though it's a higher food cost

we actually make more money than before.

After I finish this dish, I bring to the pass,

then runner goes to the table

and explain to them how to eat the dish correctly.

We started out with the ramen

but then I would like to take back

and talk about how do we make the broth.

We have a veal stock, we have a pork stock

and we have veg stock and we have lobster stock.

Making stock is two day process.

First day, when we get the bone,

we blanch them and then take all the impurity out.

And next day when we come in

first thing we do is put the old bone

into the big stock pot and we add a water.

We cook about 10 to 12 hours.

End of the night, we strain it,

cool down again and ready for next day service.

Can you see?

Jun is using a tool called refractometer.

I'm pretty sure you never saw it before.

This device is test for thickness of our broth

as well as the sugar content.

[Chef] You guys are skimming the fat, right?

[Douglas] So if it's too thick,

then we add our extra water.

If it's too thin, then we reduce more.

In order to serve 120 guests per night,

we need to build the stock consistently.

It's a simple food

but then everything is a science behind it.

This is Kevin, our dishwasher.

He is one of the most important guy in the restaurant.

So all night we'll have 120 covers

and each person will use about 15 different cutlery,

glass, plate, things like that.

And then we have a three, four rushes every night.

And you do the numbers.

Among things that go into the dishwasher area,

oh, is humongous.

Without the dishwasher area or dishwasher person,

restaurant will not even go for next service.

This is the pass during the first rush of the service.

You will see that Will barely has time to finish dish

before they are taken by runner and replaced.

[Chef] Yeah, you guys got like 15 minutes, all right?

[Douglas] Between the every seating,

normally we'll have a 15 minute downtime.

[Chef] Now's time to go to bathroom if you wanna go.

[Douglas] Between the downtime,

set up everything for next rush.

And if you want to go bathroom, you can go bathroom now

and now's the time to wipe the floor

and make sure your station's stacked up for next pickup.

[Chef] Make sure it doesn't build up like this.

You got chicken working?

[chefs talking]

[Douglas] Our second seating has begun

and fried chicken orders start to coming in.

A fried chicken is a very big part of our culture in Korea.

Normally Korean fried chicken is a marinade method,

but since I study cooking in the states,

I like to follow traditional fried method.

The fried chicken will take about 20 minutes

so we fry it in two stages.

One, after we bread the flours,

and we pre-fry them for about eight to 10 minutes.

Since we brine the chicken,

even though we fully cook the chicken,

you'll see a little bit of pink side.

Our line cook, Jason, looks to every chicken nearby the bone

and we fry them again and we will take the pink out.

This means everybody's confident we're serving

fully cooked chicken.

[Chef] Pick it up, pick it up.

[Douglas] Here you can see our runner is making

a ice bowl for the caviar.

Even though it's a simple fried chicken,

we took literally almost four years to become what it is.

There was a lot of trial and error.

Now we kind of understand, we know our style,

and in order to compliment that texture and flavor,

cavier is a great vehicle for that.

Since we have a Michelin star, many guests come

into our restaurant

and they want to have a mind-blowing experience.

However, what we try to do here

in the Jeju Noodle Bar is we want to make sure

all the food goes out is very consistent and tasty.

That's all we try to do.

We're not trying to reinvent the wheels

and we not trying to create something very new.

We just want to serve great food,

great service, in a very casual manner and unique way.

[upbeat music]