How Delmonico's Serves 400 Pounds Of Steak A Day | Full Service

We're inside America's first ever fine dining restaurant, Delmonico's in New York's Financial District. Each night the chefs here serve up to 200 pounds of lobster, 300 pounds of potatoes, and of course what they are best known for, steak. They go through 400 pounds of it every night. The restaurant is so popular reservations open up six months in advance. Overseeing the controlled chaos is Delmonico's brand new executive chef, Adam Plitt, who is figuring out how to bring his own twist to a restaurant that's been around for nearly two centuries. Just put no onion on there because the sauce has it so we just won't put the sauce. But this isn't just a one-man show. And we have close to 200 people working here. On any given day you have five bartenders, two maitre d's, you have about four sommeliers, 15 waiters, six bussers, five runners, and you have obviously a kitchen staff. In order, hamachi, caesar, steak tartare. You're about to see everything it takes to run a full service at one of America's oldest restaurants. It's seven in the morning in Manhattan's Financial District. As waves of people are heading to work on Wall Street, the staff of Delmonico's quietly begins the ritual they've repeated for almost 200 years. Welcome to Delmonico's kitchen. A very, very tight space down here. This is one of the oldest kitchens in New York City, if not the oldest. We got dairy coming in, produce coming in, all the meats coming in. Pretty much everything you see, we're going to rip through most of this today and we'll get a fresh delivery tomorrow. Chef Plit hasn't been here for long and he's eager to prove himself. How do you say muscles in Spanish? Okay. Everything starts in the prep area. All the prep for the upstairs service kitchen is produced down here pretty much. Only finishing touches happen upstairs. All the sauce making happens on the back prep kitchen over there. Any intricate details, knife cutting, things of that nature, happen down here. Product comes in, gets put in the produce box, protein box, dairy box, and then it gets prepped and put on racks ready for service. We have the kitchen broken up into the cold side here. The broiler station here, the meat cook, sides are done over in this area. The sous chef and the chef's job, the person that's expediting here is the person to bring that all together, communicate with everyone, make sure everyone knows what's going on. At this station, all these guys do for hours is slice and trim nearly 400 pounds of ribeye, New York strip, Wagyu, and more. It's sourced from a ranch in Southern California. Our Delmonico's ribeye is from Brandt Family Farms. We believe their beef is the best for what we're looking for. Super consistent, beautiful marbling. Every single cut of meat goes through the hands of one man. Without this guy right here, there's no Delmonico's. Angel butchers all the meat, cooks all the meat. The ribeye has a ton of flavor to it, and generally being fattier, some people stay away from it. It also has that kind of nugget of fat in the middle, which melts as it cooks. This is a product that's completely clean, ready to rock. But there's a lot more that needs to get done before the restaurant opens. Cleaning 20 pounds of shrimp, prepping 50 pounds of fresh seasonal vegetables like asparagus, and spiraling potatoes for Delmonico's famous crab cake. They're shredding the potato through the spiralizer and wrapping the crab cakes in phyllo, rinsing the potato, make sure there's no starch on it. They wrap that, that gets placed in the walk-in, and then brought upstairs for service. Those get inspected by the getting ready to cook them and crisp them up. At $36, they're one of the most popular items on the lunch menu. Delmonico's has defined the power lunch. This would be the first one. This is where it all started. Right here, the Wall Street crowd, coming in on the lunch break. How many deals have been closed at the table? Countless. The restaurant started in 1837, at a time when most dining spots were simple taverns, serving a single meal at communal benches. Delmonico's changed all of that by introducing private tables, printed menus, white tablecloths, and one revolutionary idea, letting guests order whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. If these walls could talk, you had Nikola Tesla with J.P. Morgan in the dining room raising money for his next project in Long Island. Mark Twain celebrated his 70th birthday party, Charles Dickens, every sitting president, and athletes, as well as some actors and actresses. As soon as lunch wraps up, chefs start working on dinner. Shortly before 5, the front of house staff gather in the dining room for a team meeting. We're going to have a beautiful, beautiful night tonight. We have 220 covers on the books, two private events, 22 guests in the Epicurean room, and 24 guests in the Tesla room. We're changing from dinner to spring menu. We are right on the schedule, as tomorrow is the first day of spring. So I'll let Chef Adam to go over new spring items. We're going to change some of the classic stuff. Okay, I'll go over that with you real quick. First off is the lobster Newberg. Okay, we're going to bring it back to the classic rendition of lobster Newberg just plated with puff pastry, traditionally. Again, we're going to change the pasta, working towards changing almost everything. Okay, thank you, Chef. We're going to taste this in a minute. They'll look yummy. You like it? Good, right? You like it? It tastes with the red wine. It's a little like surprise. It's just a little different every bite. Back in the kitchen, the crew is doing its last bit of prep before orders start coming in. New order, tuna tartare, bacon. It's going to be a busy night. We have three events this evening, so it'll be a packed house tonight. These days, around 25% of diners are regulars. We want people to come and experience the tradition of the first fine dining restaurant in America, as well as have a unique experience in a steakhouse setting. Of all the dishes served here, the $89 Delmonico's ribeye is the most popular. The heart of this kitchen is obviously the broiler. That's where 95% of the product comes off of. Super important position. We believe in letting the flavor of the meat shine here, so we don't do any special salt rub or spice rub. It's just salt and pepper. Put it in the broiler, cook it to your liking, and then let it rest. We give it a little re-sear in the broiler right before it goes on the plate, so the juices are all settled, and out it goes. I think the most difficult part of running a fine dining restaurant is ever-evolving and ongoing. You can't be stagnant. You have to keep pushing yourself, because everyone else around you is, especially in New York City, everyone's always trying to get better. And one way Delmonico's continues to evolve is by paying close attention to its ingredients. At this moment, we're serving Kumamoto oysters from Washington State. What's very important to us here is freshness, obviously, and consistency. We probably use about 400 to 500 a night, depending, and then on weekends, we could serve more. We want to source the best seafood we can really have great quality fish, super fresh, and that wow moment when it comes to the table. The grand seafood plateau that we put out, we're really trying to capture that super luxury event, that special event. We pour liquid nitrogen in it so that it billows out the smoke, and it looks really, really cool. Back in the finishing area, chefs put the final touches on dishes. It can get a little frantic, but again, we have a pretty stable staff, so everyone's kind of used to rolling with the punches. I think everyone here does a really great job at that. Halfway through the service, Chef Plit has been keeping his cool, calmly overseeing and approving every dish as it leaves his kitchen. I believe in creating an environment where management is a team, it's a team environment, and if they can't do it without me here on certain days, then I have them provide them with the tools they need to succeed, as well as themselves. No one wants to be in a job where their presence is required 24-7. Around 11 p.m., when the last table clears, they reset, and tomorrow, they'll do it all again. To be able to walk into this restaurant every morning is truly exciting. I think about all the have dined here, all the famous people, all the deals that have been closed at the tables, and it's an exciting responsibility to maintain that, to honor the tradition, and to drive this company forward into our next chapter.