A Day Running A Family-Owned Venezuelan Restaurant, From Prep to Dinner Service

[Ivo] Venezuelan cuisine is only known for doing

empanadas, cachapas, arepas.

I wanted to take it a step further

and showcase our culinary art in Venezuela.

Casa Ora is a family owned restaurant.

I am the bar manager.

My mother is executive chef.

My wife is our pastry chef.

And it's named after our daughter, Ora.

[Rachel] So what are we doing today?

[Ivo] I'm gonna check on the inventory

for the event that we have today.

Hey, welcome to Casa Ora.

It's 8:00 AM.

And this is the beginning of our day.

Come on in.

[Rachel] So we're gonna give you a lay of the land.

Let's go into main dining.

The seating capacity for this area is 68 guests.

[Ivo] It used to be 30 before we knocked down the walls.

And I built most of the furniture that you see in this room.

[Rachel] From YouTube, I have to add.

[Ivo] Yes.

[Rachel] From the mural in the front

to the photos on our walls,

everything is made by Venezuelans,

made for everyone to enjoy and to experience the culture.

This is when I usually go downstairs and do inventory.

Get your ass down there.

To the kitchen.

So here we have already some more prep happening.

This is where we usually make all the arepas

and the empanadas.

As well as the mandocas, hallacas, cachapas.

So as I'm coming in here, I can see now,

like things that we run out yesterday

that are priority for today.

This is where, to me, majority of the magic happens.

This is where we plate all of our dishes

during the night time.

So the space is divided into three different stations.

We have entrees, we have salads,

and then we have our fryers.

Let's check inventory in our walk-in cooler.

So now I'm just counting exactly how much we have

so I can have a better idea of how our prep day

is gonna go today.

Ramolacha sauce.

Okay, we need two.

A lot of the ingredients here

that are very important to us are,

you know, our sofrito.

Our sofrito, it's everything,

which is just basic ingredients,

such as garlic, pepper, tomato, onion.

And you add that to pretty much almost everything.

We have our sofrito.

We have 6, 6, 9, 12.

It's 11:00 AM now.

And this is when we are making all of our empanadas.

They weigh all the masas

and then we turn it into like a tortilla.

Venezuela is well known for our masa,

which is how we make our arepas.

And so with the same masa,

we always kind of go and do our empanadas.

So I just come in, I check on the tortilla sizes.

It's usually about three eighths of an inch.

You taste the masa, that's kinda like where you

get the essence of

this is not too salty.

It's not too sweet.

It's not too sour.

Grab some of that masa, there you go.

It's perfect.

It's nice, it's juicy.

We have a secret in our empanadas.

I won't tell you.

So yeah, we're making about 2,000 empanadas today

and it takes a huge amount of effort,

you know and we need all the hands that we can get.

All right, so this is how we differentiate the empanadas.

So like each individual empanadas,

if it's beef has a mark,

if it's chicken has a different shape.

The edges of this shows that these ones

are our chicken empanadas.

The beef ones are fully around.

And that's how we differentiate the chicken from the beef.

So it's almost noon.

My mom just arrived.

Hi mommy.

Hi.

[Ivo] I know Rachel is just about to start with the cake.

So you guys go ahead and I'll catch out with my mom.

The desserts don't usually take too long because

we do them in big batches.

So when we first opened the restaurant,

we had all the food set.

We knew what we were gonna do in the bar,

but we didn't actually have any desserts ready.

So Ivo asked me, he said,

Can you just whip something up really quick?

So I made my cuatro leches cake.

So traditional tres leches cake have whipped cream on top,

but the way I made it was I added

sweetened condensed milk caramelized.

I added Venezuelan rum to it.

I made salted caramel brittle,

and it just added a lot more complexity to this dish.

I do this about three times a week.

So right now I'm just doing one recipe,

but I'll usually do four or five recipes of this.

I was born super premature.

I was like eight weeks premature.

Because of that, I had some developmental delays.

I had memory loss, but one of the tools my mom used

was always having me bake and cook with her in the kitchen,

which was an amazing bonding time.

And it really was a start of my passion for cooking.

It's 1:00 PM.

Ivo and Isbelis are starting to make the hallacas.

Hallacas are Venezuelan style tamales.

It's just our own word for that.

[Ivo] It's our family recipe.

It went from my great grandma to my grandma and now my mom.

My mom is our executive chef.

Mom, you wanna say hi? Hi.

[Ivo laughs]

We usually do about

75 to 100 hallacas every single day.

I wanna say monthly, about a thousand.

And so with the same masa,

we always kind of like go and do our empanadas,

which is corn meal.

Other parts of South America do it with flour.

Traditionally in Venezuela,

when we make hallacas,

it's everybody's sitting around the table.

It's usually a very fun activity.

And it's just like all about gossiping about everyone.

Making hallacas always reminds her of my grandma.

Aye.

[both laughing]

You're gonna make her cry.

She's about to cry.

It's almost two o'clock.

We're gonna go ahead and try all the components

for the main dishes.

On a daily basis, we do get about

eight pounds of black sea bass or red snapper,

as well as scallops and octopus.

So you just gonna check for like,

make sure everything is okay.

And you just gonna just make sure

it's not smelly or anything.

Just gonna keep it on ice.

Ooh, this looks delicious.

This is our sous chef, Diego.

And here we have our short rib brace.

It's looking pretty good.

Has a really nice burn to it.

Let's taste it.

This is for the Asado Negro.

[Diego] The most important thing

for the Asado Nero is the caramel.

We kind of burn the caramel.

It gives like a rich flavor

and also is what distinguished this piece of meat

from everything else that we serve.

Next, what I'm gonna try is the something

that I'm always worried about are the salsas.

So this is for the scallop dish.

I love having fun with some of our dishes

and the scallop is one where I can express myself.

You know, it like makes a splatter.

It's like making your own paint.

It goes with cherry tomatoes, cilantro, zucchini

and some added pizza puff.

It's good, but it has already gotten a little bitter

and a little too spicy.

So this is gonna need to be made again today.

Okay, it's about 3:00 PM.

I just change it to my bartender shirt.

And today we are gonna create a new cocktail.

So we usually create cocktails every six months.

We change it seasonal depending on seasonal ingredients.

We're creating a twist on a cocktail that Ivo made for me

when we first met called When in Paris.

She went to Paris and I missed her.

So I created a cocktail in her memory or not her memory.

She's not dead, no, she's not dead.

[everyone laughing]

Did you file for insurance as well?

So maybe we can do something like Rum and peach?

To make it more Venezuelan roots.

Dark rum and peach?

I don't like the color combination.

Okay, you choose then.

All right, here we go.

We're gonna do a little bit of white peach,

some fresh juices, such as lemon.

And I'm gonna pair it with a dark rum.

[ice shaking]

How would you like it served?

Stewed pebble ice highball.

Okay, the cocktail zone.

You can try it out now.

It's really good.

It's not sweet.

I almost feel like it could use cinnamon in it.

I use simple instead of cinnamon,

but I grab the cinnamon bottle and-

The cinnamon simple would-

And I literally put it down.

I was like, eh, maybe, maybe not.

Oh yeah, damn that's good.

I told you dark Rum would work.

Let me know when you wanna put it on the menu

and I'll print out the new menus.

And Ora's about to arrive.

Hi, Ora!

Hi, mommy!

Are you gonna help abuela make arepas?

Let's go.

Go, go with mommy.

Let's go get abuela.

[Ora giggling]

On the floor, it's four o'clock.

And I like to support the staff and help them set up.

So whether they need new menus or just helping placement

on the floor, I like to always check.

So I'm just gonna take a look around the room

and see how everything is.

But my team does a great job setting up.

So I think it's all set.

So in about 30 minutes, we have family meal

where we all eat together like a family

and just share some time together, not thinking about work.

We're all kind of displaced in New York city in a way.

So this family time is something we really

wanna facilitate to make people feel welcome

and a part of the team.

[Ivo] Today, we're having rice with chicken,

avocado salad, and fried sweet plantains.

Family meal is a time for us to bond.

And it is a time for us to get a little happy

before our shifts.

Okay, we're done with our family meal.

We are jumping right now to our pre-lineup before service.

All right guys, so it's Tuesday, April 26th.

We have about 48 covers for the night.

We have a few notes here for our service.

We have three birthdays and two anniversaries.

And we have a few dietary restrictions as well.

So please be aware.

Let the kitchen know.

Perfect, we're all ready for service.

Have a great service guys.

[Ivo] So it's 5:30.

Our doors are open.

I'm gonna go downstairs and expedite for the night.

All right, we're ready for service guys.

Let's go, let's go.

Every time the door opens, pressure is on.

A wave for people just comes and goes any minute.

[Ivo reads in Spanish]

[Ivo reads in Spanish]

All right, guys, it was great having you.

It's really busy.

We're getting slim.

Thank you very much.

See you guys soon.