Every Job in a Michelin-Starred Kitchen | Bon Appétit

🎵 My name is Stephen Bordino and I'm a line cook here. The short story of that is basically whatever chef requires of me is my job. You know, everything's about my knife work and presentation. We're doing a small dice on the shallots. It's for the arctic char crudo. It's supposed to be basically invisible almost. It has to be as fine as possible so that it blends in with the rest of the dish. My name is Jae Yong Bok and I'm from South Korea. You can call me just Ryan. The chef entremet is in charge of each garnish and the sauce base for the every dishes. So I'm going to prep for garnish and sauce for each dish I probably make about 30 to 40 pastas on a busy night. Pasta wasn't really something I was passionate about before starting with the station. And then once I started on it, I kind of started enjoying it more and learning more and getting really into it. My name is Parth Bhatia and I work on the fry station during service. My name is Richie Lu and I'm a prep cook at Franchot. So we're taking nori chips that have been painted with mochi rice flour paste. And then we fry them, press them out, and we cut them into threes for our pretzel box. My name is Gene DeVries and I'm one of the tournants in the kitchen. Essentially, I float around and fill in gaps and help. Today, they're a little short on the Garmo station, so I'm helping with them. I'm Garmo Jae. Day to day, it changes. I'll work brunch one day, grill one day, plancha one day, entremet one day, and prep one day. So just depending on every day, it's different, you know. So today I'm on plancha, so that's fun. But favorite is grill, for sure. I'm the grill cook, basically in charge of preparation for all proteins during service. It definitely gets hot. Like, if you guys are here around, you know, 7, 8 o'clock, it gets pretty toasty back here, so. My name is Alfred Nebbiar. I am the chef de cuisine at Franchot. I'm in charge of running the day-to-day operations of the restaurant, from all the admin stuff, like hiring and worrying about food costs, to the creative side, menu development, to service, and just making sure that the quality is up to our standard. I think something that was an active decision was trying to give the cooks time for themselves, and we can try to encourage them to, like, go have lunch and go see things and find inspiration in the city before coming to work, and trying to move away from the 70-hour work weeks and these insane hours that everyone's been doing because it's just been a habit. There's only four of us on the management team, and we have to come up with 12 new dishes. You know, that crunch to really, like, come up with things and be creative is, I think, my favorite aspect of this job. It's my job to make sure the kitchen runs smoothly as far as, you know, managing the cooks and making sure the food looks good. I'm a pastry cook at Franchot. I usually get here around 2.30, and I'm done around 12. I work service. That means that I'm taking bread out at the beginning of every table's meal, and then desserts when they fire. I'm a butcher. I've done everything. Since I got to New York, my job has always been to prepare cutlery. Preparation, design, organics. Everything is pretty difficult, but for me, it's easy because of the years I've been doing this. I've been here for two years, but I've been working in this area for 12 years. Carlos Infante. I'm a cook. My name is Yomaira Jacobo, and my job is to prepare the kitchen. Right now, I'm washing the saucers. These are delicate things that you have to do with love to make them look pretty, and my project is to clean them delicately. My name is Luis Alberto, and my position is a receiver. The main function of the receiver is to take care of receiving vegetables, meats, everything that the restaurant In fact, it's not laborious. You just have to have everything in place. My name is Justine Cortez, and I am a barback and prep person. So my goal is to be a bartender pretty soon. Right now, I am filtering some tea that's going to go in an old-fashioned type of version, and we're going to freeze some olive oil whiskey. I am Anusha Sharma, and I'm the crown chef pastry sous chef. I have a pretty big team. I help out with the production. I jump on on the line, so kind of everywhere. Every night differs, but a slower night, about 200 breads and something around 200 desserts. I like what I do. I really do, and I like working here. It's why I've been here for so long. It's my second week, so I'm still training and learning all the different dishes. So I work production, so that means I'm prepping all of the, like, cakes and breads and ice cream bases and different components of the desserts and everything put out by the pastry team. I'm the sous chef that takes care of AM production for Saga and Crown Chef. We are the sauciers for the rest of the restaurant. So we essentially keep that prepped, so when the line cook comes in in the afternoon shift, they can just pick this up. We produce the base content, and they use finesse to kind of get the final product. So my name's Wei. I'm an expert here. I guess that's my goal, to, like, just learn and train and maybe be a great chef one day. And I feel like this is a great place to learn and do that. I'm Isabel Vega, and I'm the chocolatier for Saga. I make the candies for Saga, so that's two types of bonbons, a nougat, a caramel, and a rice brisket. My name is Jamal James Kent, and I am the chef and owner of all these restaurants. I am here always, all the time, all hours. What I do in these restaurants is I lead the team, I inspire the team, I nurture, I teach. So my role is to grow our businesses and then also teach our chefs and our teams how to run these restaurants. Going forward, our kitchens are going to be smaller because running restaurants are a really tough business, and it's all about the efficiency. Restaurants are super labor-intensive, and it takes a lot of people to run any restaurant. What it takes to manage a team this large is, A, trust. People need to trust that you're making good decisions for the right reasons. I think empathy is really important when you manage any group of people. Following through on your words is really important. So if I say something, I'm always going to follow through. Hi, I'm Jasimran Singh, and I'm the culinary director for Kranjai Overstory Saga. Developing is, I think it's a huge role because we don't want to repeat a lot of the same things. We come up with the ideas, and teams kind of present their way of serving dishes. We go back and forth for several weeks, and then every new season, we change dishes. Hi, I'm Tyler Silvestri, and I am the head sommelier. A lot of people think my job is a lot of drinking wine, which, I mean, it definitely is, more so tasting when I'm on the clock. But really, a lot of my job is running around and helping out, clear tables, taste wines with distributors, and also make sure that the partnerships that we have with them are positive and fortuitous for everybody. The sommelier is like a bass player in a band. Our job is to fatten out the sound. I open wine, talk about wine with guests, help facilitate pairings, and I clear an enormous amount of tables throughout the course of the night. My name is Ivan Tosky. I'm a bartender. I'm a drinking consultant. My favorite thing to make is actually my least favorite thing to make, a Negroni. When you don't like something and you really thrive to understand it, it actually becomes more fun and more interesting. Favorite drink to make here? I'm going to be a little biased. It's our smoked butter Old Fashioned. It's got some nice plum, apple notes to it, a little masala chai. It kind of brightens it up a little bit as well. Yeah, we have about 21 different cocktails. And also all the classic cocktails that we kind of put all together. There's a lot to memorize, and then there's also, like, stuff that kind of based off, like, muscle memory, which helps out a lot. My name is Noelle. I am a server here. Today, we all get in here at 4, so, and I'm a closer tonight, so probably it's, what is it, Tuesday? Probably going to get off at around midnight. Every server has their own side work based on what section they're in. I'm in the back corner of the dining room today, so I am in charge of waters. I'm a big proponent of getting people to have cocktails, wine, full meal, and make it all the way to dessert, and an after-dinner drink. That's something that I really enjoy doing. I don't think many people do that. So that's my job, to make sure people have dining experiences they normally don't have. I have a bit of a theater background, so I like to approach every table like it's its own play. You know, I have my lines, my marks that I need to set. There's a little bit of improv. But for the most part, like, it's, this is my audience, and it's the first time that they're experiencing it, or they're back for the show for the second time, so I always have to hit those marks. So my name is Andres Ramos Carrasco, and my title job is a floor manager. I basically just take care of any issues that come up on the floor, make sure everything's running smoothly. Before service, we just sort of answer e-mails or make the floor plans so everyone knows what they're doing for the night. My name is Cristobal Lava, and I'm a kitchen server here. Hi, my name is Tobias Reyes. My hours today is 4 to 10. Yeah, my name is Johnny Tuafanta. I'm a kitchen server here at Conacher. I would say kind of like what Chef James Kent says. We're in the industry of splitting hairs, so we're just, like, very attentive to detail, make sure everything's done right and precise and consistent. I'm Daisy Wither, and I am the assistant general manager of Crown Chi. I am basically the mom of the restaurant. I started in this industry about 11 years ago as a bathroom attendant. If someone wants to work for me, all I ask is for dedication, for somebody who has the hustle, somebody that works as a team member for everybody, not just in their sole position, but for everybody. It's one team, one dream. Hello, my name is Jessenia Valderrama. I am maitre d' of Crown Chi. The maitre d' is the one that runs the book, so they'll be the ones coordinating where the guests go. The hosts are kind of the ones that greet them, bring them to the table. If they have any questions, they can kind of ask both, but the maitre d' is the one that runs the book. Crown Chi, I feel like, has a very, like, welcoming environment, even for guests and as an employee myself. I feel like I've always felt welcome. We're one big family, even between the three teams, upstairs, downstairs. It's very welcoming.