A Day With the Executive Chef at NYC’s Hottest Seafood Restaurant

As executive chef, I've always wanted to create a space

where people like me can just come in

and focus on their craft.

It's a seafood forward restaurant

told through the lens of a lot of Ethiopian recipes

where I could cook my food from my culture.

It's a huge source of pride for me.

[Kitchen Team] Yeah.

All right.

[upbeat music]

Hello, early birds.

Welcome to Hav and Mar.

I'm the executive chef here.

My name's Fariyal Abdullahi.

Let's get you outta of the cold.

Come inside.

Hav and Mar is owned by Chef Marcus Samuelsson.

This restaurant pays homage

to both his Swedish and Ethiopian roots.

It shows not only in the menu and the food,

but also in the interior design.

The woodwork is very minimalistic

as you would see in Sweden,

but there's corners of this restaurant

that are supposed to resemble huts

in rural parts of Ethiopia.

Our menu is seafood forward

told through the lens of the African diaspora,

and I love it.

It is 8:00 AM and I really need to look at that prep list

that tells me all the work that we need to do today.

So let's get to work.

[upbeat music]

Okay, so the prep list is left by our PM line cooks

at the end of the night.

Once they're done with service,

they'll go through their stations and let us know

what they need prepped for today's service.

So, looking at today's prep list, it's quite abundant.

What I do in that case is I absorb some of the prep list

and I'll also delegate some of it to my sous chefs.

And I actually enjoy

when I have to hop on some of this prep list

because it keeps my skills intact and sharp.

Our prep list is broken down by stations.

Looks like garde manger got hit the hardest last night.

This is a very extensive list.

I can tell for me, today I need to make Shiro and ash oil,

but I also need to touch base with my prep team

to let them know what they should prioritize.

Well, I'm gonna call Maria over, she is our prep supervisor.

Maria.

Okay, chiquita. Okay.

Mucho, prep for today.

[both speaking in Spanish]

Okay, okay.

Okay, gracias.

[Producer] So how'd you learn Spanish?

I didn't.

That was the extent of it.

First, let me grab everything for the ash oil.

[upbeat music]

So it's 8:40 right now.

This ash oil was born out of our desire

to keep a close to zero waste kitchen.

We also have a really good compost program

where every day there's a guy who actually grows mushrooms

in this building on the top floor.

So we donate all of our compost to him.

He grows mushrooms with them,

and then he brings the mushrooms right back down here.

So that's as local as it can get.

So the ash oil,

I know this looks like trash to you but it's not.

I promise you I'm gonna make something super delicious

out of this.

Instead of composting this, we're like,

Can we actually make something edible out of it?

Right now we have skin of onion, scallion tops,

some scraps from red onion pearls.

So all of these things we throw into the oven

at 550 degrees.

Ha ha.

It's like the only time in kitchen history

where your goal is to burn your ingredients.

All this burnt ash is gonna go straight into the blender

with a little bit of salt.

[blender whirring]

It looks like dust.

Now's the time to add the oil.

That was like, you ever been around a campfire

and you inhale all that smoke?

This is what that tastes like,

but I don't know, in a very delicate way.

So we actually use this in our Hamachi with Black Ceviche.

The black ceviche part comes from the ash oil.

It brings a lot of smokiness into elements of the dish

that you wouldn't otherwise expect.

Now I'm gonna get started on my next project

which is the Shiro.

Shiro is an Ethiopians stew

that's made with ground chickpea flours.

This Shiro gets used in our Umi's Udon dish.

Umi is my mommy.

Even though Shiro is stew in Ethiopia,

it turns out Shiro makes a really good sauce

for some noodles.

Shiro starts off with classic Ethiopian sofrito.

It's onions, garlic, tomato, and Berbere.

Berbere is an Ethiopian spice

that's made out of sun dried ground chilies.

Shiro is ground chickpea flour,

and in most cases it already has the Berbere built into it.

So today, I won't be adding any Berbere to our our stew.

So in order to control your food cost

at a restaurant level you do have

to know exactly the amount of everything that you put in

or else you won't get an accurate food cost.

So in this case, it's 30 grams of garlic.

So even though I follow it sometimes I'm like,

Hmm, I think my mom would add more.

350 grams of tomatoes that comes up to about two tomatoes.

But like I said, if it doesn't look like my momma's,

I will adjust.

Which is why I like to do this recipe myself

most of the time.

Because, you know, I'm the only one

that has my momma's heart in my veins.

It took a while for my mom to be proud of me.

You know, classic immigrant story.

She wanted me to move to America to become a doctor

as most of my siblings did.

And when I told my mom I wanted to be a chef,

she wasn't ecstatic about it.

But I told her, Mom, at the end of the day

I still wear a white coat just like your other daughters.

Now that, you know, she sees me on TV and stuff,

she could finally brag about me to her friends.

Yo, Herb, you got a bench scraper?

[Herbert] No, you want one?

Yes.

Thank you.

Bench scraper is actually one

of my favorite tools in the kitchen.

Just because you saw, that's why.

All right.

So I'm gonna cook down the onions and garlic

until they get nice and translucent.

I'm gonna add the tomatoes now.

I'm gonna wait until this cooks down a little bit.

I'm going to add some water.

We're gonna wait until the water boils.

So this is kind of a tricky name because Shiro

is both the name of the ingredient,

the ground chickpea flour,

but it's also the name of the stew itself.

So I'm gonna whisk it in,

making sure that I don't get any lumps.

Shiro is a common ingredient because the stew itself

it's one of the most well-known dishes in Ethiopia.

Chickpea is a thickening agent.

So as it reduces, it's going to start to thicken up.

So I'm gonna let the Shiro do its thing.

I'm not going to put a lid on it

because we want it to reduce.

I'm going to hand it off to one of my prep cooks

because last step is just to blend it.

It's about 10:30, I have to start tasting everything

that my prep cooks have been prepping this whole time.

[upbeat music]

Okay, Maria.

Hello, [speaks in Spanish].

So I see now that Maria has started making Berbere honey.

This is what we toss our fried chicken in

for a dish called Addis York.

What we're doing here is,

it's a very traditional Ethiopian stew called Doro Wat

that we serve in kind of like a New York style.

We serve it with a fried chicken,

and that fried chicken gets tossed in this Berbere honey.

So when I'm tasting things with Berbere

I always have to take into account

that my threshold for spice is much higher

than a lot of other people.

So if it's too spicy for me,

it's gonna be too spicy for the average palate.

Okay, Luis.

Yes. Tandoori butter?

Yes.

So tandoori butter is what we cook our whole fish in.

So in this case, I'm looking for spice level.

We have serranos in here.

The tricky thing about using any kind of pepper

is the spice level is never gonna be the same.

So all peppers are not created equal.

There's curry powder in here as well.

Cool, so tandoori butter is ready to go.

I didn't actually have too many notes for Maria and Luis,

and that's because their palate has been trained

in the last four months to taste what I taste

and to taste what I'm looking for.

So I need to start checking in on our other teammates.

I need to check in with our butcher,

I need to check in with our receiver,

and then it'll be time to go on our lunch breaks.

[gentle music]

So it's 12:30.

Lunch break is over, but it's perfect timing

because our deliveries just got here.

So I'm gonna go ahead and do some quality check.

[upbeat music].

On your back.

So Herbert is our receiver.

He checks in all our deliveries for me.

So making sure that we got everything that I ordered,

but also making sure that, you know,

our companies haven't sent us bad quality stuff.

So I ordered rainbows Swiss chard.

They sent regular, but that's fine.

Blackberries.

[Herbert] We got no cilantro.

[Herbert] I got cilantro. Nope.

It didn't come in. It didn't come?

Nope. Okay.

[Herbert] Cilantro didn't come in.

So that's a problem 'cause I ordered a pound.

And they didn't put it here.

So it's gonna have to be a store run.

[Herbert] Yep.

[Fariyal] Once you're done putting stuff away,

can you go to Whole Foods?

Yeah, sure.

Thank you.

I just found out that we don't have

a key ingredient, cilantro,

so now we have to make a store run ourselves to buy it

because I can't do two of our recipes without it.

So frustrating, I'm gonna reach out to the rep

in a little bit.

Now I was making sure that they didn't charge us

for the cilantro that didn't show up.

I have my little order guide over here.

I know everything that came.

I know what they've used at this point.

They're almost done with the prep.

So I'm gonna go ahead and check our inventory

and place an order for tomorrow.

I create the order guide to have an efficient way

of placing orders so that we don't miss our cutoff time,

but also the parts are really important

because that's one of the ways that we control food cost.

As I go down the list, I'm marking

how much of each ingredient that I need,

if we need it at all.

Shallots, Cipollini onions, red pearl onions.

All right, great, great, great.

So a lot of this is a guessing game.

I'm not over here actually counting every single potato

'cause that would take me forever.

I do a lot of eyeballing.

Just fresh herbs is something that Chef Marcus

and I both really, really love.

It's a great way to bring so much brightness to the dish.

Okay, so now we're done with the walk-in.

I'm gonna go outside and check all our spices and dry goods.

The most important thing that I'm looking for

on our spice rack is Berbere.

Berbere is an Ethiopian spice

that we use in about 50% of our menu here.

It takes about a week and a half to get here.

So I have to stay on top of it

because if we run out, it's gonna be a bad day

at Hav and Mar if we run out of Berbere.

I'll tell you that.

We are pretty low on Berbere.

I have to reach out to my girl, Lemlem,

over at Workinesh Spice.

So I'm gonna go ahead and make a note

to place an order for it today.

I can't reach it, Herbert, you gotta put it back.

Thank you.

Anything tall you can reach for me

if you need something from the floor I got you.

I'm closer to the ground than you are, Herbert.

Ordering is done, but it's 1:00 now.

I really need to start breaking down lobsters.

[groovy music]

On your back coming down.

Okay, not too bad today,

I have about five live lobsters that I have to break down.

I'll be prepping these lobsters specifically

for our Mermaid Black Rice today.

We use Djon Djon mushrooms,

which is very typical in Haitian cuisine.

When we use the Djon Djon mushrooms,

it gives it like a deep brown color.

But I want it to be black,

so we add squid ink to our dish

to get the color all the way black.

The reason I'm breaking down lobster

is because our butcher has a very heavy prep list today.

So I'm just taking it off of his hands,

but it also keeps my skills intact.

You know, I can't get rusty out here

or else who's going to follow my instructions?

So today I have a stage.

A stage is a working interview in a kitchen.

So before anybody can get hired,

we actually have them go on a station

and kind of show us what they can do.

So today we have, Helena.

Helena was on collard green duty.

That's a very mundane typical job for an intern,

but I had a little chat and she let me know

that she has broken down lobster before.

I feel like you should refresh my memory.

Okay. No, no worries.

Don't worry.

There's like different ways of doing it, obviously.

Pointy end right in, push your knife down.

Curl the tail, you don't want it to snap on your fingers.

Twist, separate the tail.

Twist, separate the claw.

Twist, separate the claw.

Separate all the insides from the brain.

Clean that off.

Wash it.

Take off all the brains and all the inside.

Give that a nice wash.

So let's do the second one.

How do you feel?

Should I do one more?

[Fariyal] I feel good. You feel good?

Yeah. Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Hold the body down, yep.

All the way down, yep.

Fold the tail in because if it closes on you, there you go.

So that's your first time doing that?

Live lobster.

She did that like a pro.

Done breaking down lobsters.

I'm just gonna give these a quick steam.

Okay, it's 2:00.

My sous chefs are here.

I need to check in with them and talk about our shift.

You gotta meet my sous chef extraordinaires,

Chef Jay. Hello.

And Chef Mo. Hi.

A restaurant of this scale ran by all women of color.

It's never been done before.

So get a good look 'cause you better get used to it.

This is it, this is the future.

We like to greet each other with a little hand hug.

Hello.

[everyone giggling]

Another day. Another day.

130 in the books tonight at 6:00.

Gonna be a heavy push and then after that it's steady.

Smooth sailing. Smooth sailing.

Last reservation is at 8:45. Beautiful.

Everybody has to be on here by 4:30.

Mobilize the troops. Mobilize the troops.

Mobilize the troops. Yep.

[upbeat music]

So it's 2:30, I have about 30 minutes

before my nighttime crew gets here.

I'm gonna go and do some administrative work,

get the schedule out of the way.

Once a week I have a meeting with our CFO.

She gives me a projected goal for our labor

so we can meet our bottom line profitability.

So what I'm doing right now

is I'm putting in everybody's schedules,

and this system lets me know

how much my projected overtime is.

So on schedule right now I have 20 back of house employees.

I send this report to our CFO and she in turn lets me know

if I need to cut hours, if I'm okay to proceed.

That's how we stay profitable.

[groovy music]

Okay, so it's 3:00.

My line cooks have just arrived.

I'm gonna call them over to go over notes

for tonight's dinner service.

So we have four stations here.

We have fryer, saute, seafood, and garde manger,

which I kind of combined into one station, and then pastry.

Team, huddle up.

Some notes for today.

We have a new face, Helena.

[Chef] Hello Helena.

Jared's gonna go ahead and show her the ropes

for garde manger, right? Yep.

Obviously we're gonna do our.

Let's see who the winner is today.

You got sushi today?

[Chef] Krabby patties.

[Chef] Krabby patties.

You know the only way to incorporate your personality

into our uniform is the socks.

That's the only place that takes leeway.

And I always bring my sock game,

and then the team kind of took that and ran with it.

So since day one we've had a sock contest.

It's gotten aggressive throughout the time.

[kitchen team laughs]

[Chef] We got Krabby patties.

[Fariyal] Krabby patty.

Okay, okay.

You take the cake. Switch up, switch up.

So you get bragging rights for the rest of the shift.

Yeah, that's pretty.

Okay, let's have a dope shift team.

Let's do our, bring it in, bring it in, bring it.

All right, on three.

1, 2, 3.

[Kitchen Team] Yeah.

All right.

So right now it's a little after 3:00,

I'm gonna do my last couple of rounds with the morning team,

and then I'm gonna start setting up the pass with Mo.

[jazz music]

Just some last couple of things I haven't tasted yet.

We're almost ready for service.

Okay, it's 4:00.

We have one hour left for dinner service.

Last thing to do is set up this pass with Chef Mo.

I'm gonna check in with her and see how I can help her.

The pass is the, is the bridge

between the kitchen and the front of house.

So all the food that gets cooked stops over here

in the pass where the chefs get a last look at it.

And we also do the last minute touches,

we do all the garnishes.

So when we're setting up the pass right now

we're setting up all our garnishes.

I usually do one ash oil right here as well.

Everybody has their own way of setting up their pass.

We're doing it Mo's way now.

She's letting me know what she needs

to be in the pass all night.

At this point, my job is supporting the team.

Make sure we have everything that we need

to go into dinner service.

Make sure the shift is as smooth as possible.

You always wanna set up a station

that gives you the quickest access

to one things that you use the most.

It has to be closer to you.

And then we also separate it for cleanliness reason.

So the herbs are kind of separated from our wet ingredients

because you don't want to be reaching over

with wet ingredients over your herbs.

So everything kind of has a strategy behind it.

All our mise is done for the pass.

Front of house is already set up, ready to go.

It's 4:45, we have 15 minutes

before our guests starting to arrive.

So I hope you have a better idea of what it's like being

an executive chef here at Hav and Mar.

Well, it's been really fun having you here,

but I really do gotta feed some guests.

So if you want to eat here, make some reservations,

come back and visit us, but you gotta go now.

Bye.

See you.