A Day with the Saucier At One of New Orleans’s Oldest Restaurants

Arnauds' have been open since 1918.

We serve traditional Creole cuisine

with a little bit of a French flair.

This place is over 40,000 square feet,

almost five and a half thousand square feet

of kitchen space.

But we have an additional 16 dining rooms,

which can seat an additional 900.

It encompasses 11 buildings side-by-side.

I've been in Arnauds since 2009.

I'm responsible for all the soup, stocks and sauces.

Every single play here starts with me.

We do measure everything by the gallon,

sometimes you just get so busy it's hard to keep up.

But we always manage, we always do.

[mellow music]

Morning, it's a beautiful day in New Orleans.

I'm Bobby McNab, I'm the saucier chef

here at Arnauds Restaurant.

We got a lot to do today, so let's get this party started.

Arnauds is a family owned restaurant.

They've only had two owners

in the over 100 years that we've been open.

You'll see the tile changes as we go along

because Arnauds started off as just the main dining room.

Over the 100 years we've been open,

we've purchased an additional 10 buildings.

So you can see how each one of them

was a separate house at one time.

This place is haunted, you didn't know that?

[Crew] Who haunted it?

People that died in here, I guess.

[mellow music]

All right, here we go.

We're gonna show you the kitchen.

What you gotta keep in mind with this kitchen

is that it's a street.

You come in on the right hand side,

you go out on the left hand side.

It's just traffic.

This is a saucier and prep area.

This is where all the behind the scenes magic happens.

Every dish at Arnauds' starts out in this area right here.

[upbeat music]

We do requisitions the night before,

the store room keeper and the sous chefs coordinate this,

and they'll load us up with everything we need for the day.

These some diced tomatoes and tomato puree,

just take these and we have a shelf over here in the back

and we'll just start putting these items away.

So this is our store room,

we limit it to the basic items that we use every day.

It cuts down on the traffic whenever you're coming in,

we all bump into each other [laughs].

But we bump in we say, excuse me, please, and thank you.

And we just keep right on going.

[upbeat music]

All right, it's 08:30 in the morning,

we're gonna have a quick breakfast

before we get the day started.

Rochquelle she's like a sister to me,

but she's everybody's mama.

She prepares breakfast and lunch for us

and she's the heart of this kitchen.

Let's have breakfast folks.

Everyone at this table is family,

We've all known each other for years.

Rocky, how long you been here?

You've been here almost 20 years.

I started here in '93.

There you go.

I've been here 20 plus years.

Everything's intertwined here in New Orleans.

People say, Oh, it's a big city.

It's not.

It's really a small village if you think about it.

We have a lot of deliveries coming in.

I have some veal bones,

I have some whole chickens,

'cause we're making two of those

stocks and soups today.

And here in a few minutes

I'll be getting up with the banquet chef

and the banquet sous chef

to talk about what they going to need for this week.

His footprints are everywhere on this menu,

he charges every sauce, his is the foundation.

[Crew] Is he any good at it?

Yeah, he's pretty damn good.

So far so good.

Thank you chef, appreciate that [laughs].

[Chef] Yeah.

It is 9:00 a.m.

I have 30 pounds of chicken,

we're gonna roast them off to the nice and golden brown,

and we're gonna make a nice rich brown stock.

This is the stock pot,

this is the reduced pot.

These will hold about 60 gallons,

and it is big,

and I have almost fell in it many a times.

Because we have to make at least 40 gallons at a time,

sometimes 50.

In this stock pot over here, we have veal stock,

it's been going for about 19 hours now,

we still got another hour or so to go.

All right, gotta put the old back brace on,

I'm an old man.

So we're gonna take these chickens,

we're going to take 'em in the oven,

gonna roast 'em off to nice golden brown.

And we're gonna make a nice rich brown stock

for file gumbo that I'll be making later on.

[upbeat music]

All right, it's about 9:30,

we're gonna start draining the veal stock that we made.

We'll start off with a five gallon bucket here

and I got a row buckets

that we're gonna lay out and pour 'em into.

You'll feel it and your hand will start getting sticky.

'cause all that gel,

that's when you know you got a good stock.

This is what you use the back brace for.

And it is just a repeat until the pot is empty.

We'll take each one of these buckets,

we'll put 'em on the cooling rack.

It takes about a half hour to empty all these.

First of all, you gotta take your time,

'cause these spouts are are big

and you don't want it splattering all over the place.

And you will get a nice facial from it,

it will open and clog your pores at the same time.

Veal stock is used on almost

half of everything that we cook,

as far as sauces go.

'Cause this is like our base stock

for our au poivre, duck elsie,

veal chantal.

It's just a host of different sauces.

Arnauds is known for its consistency.

You can come back today, you can come back tomorrow,

you can come back 10 years from now,

and you're going to get the same dish.

I want the best product that I can possibly do,

'cause of my pride and my humility,

and the respect that I have for this city.

It all starts in your heart.

[upbeat music]

All right, got some nice beautiful golden and brown chicken,

gonna take out the last one here.

We'll let 'em cool off just for a second

then we'll transfer these trays over to the pot.

It is back breaking, but that's why I wear a back brace,

so like I said, it keeps me feeling young

until tomorrow.

We gonna put all these vegetables on here,

just like you're making a chicken noodle soup at the house.

The same exact concept except for

we're just making 20 gallons of it.

So now we're gonna do,

we're gonna add 20 gallons of water,

bring it up to a boil,

let it simmer for about half hour, 45 minutes.

It's 11:30, what we're gonna do next is

talk to the banquet sous chef,

talk about what they gonna need for this week,

and then me and Mike will start preparing that.

Probably one of my favorite parts of the day,

because the banquet sous chef happens to be my son.

What we got up and coming in banquets that we need then?

A gallon of marchand de vin,

and that'd be good for tomorrow.

That's for Wednesday?

Yes.

How's this weekend looking?

This weekend's looking all right.

We have a party of 75 at six o'clock,

and it'll be au poivre,

we'll need about a gallon of that.

And I'm gonna need about a half a gallon

of marchand de vin also.

Okay, sounds good.

I'll go ahead and get that started

so it's ready for you tomorrow.

I'll have time to set up.

Yeah.

He followed me into the culinary industry

back when he was a kid.

He became the sous chef at other various restaurants,

and then when a position came open

Chef Tommy went and recruited him.

We get along, we got the same vision,

I think we're good pairing for what needs to be done.

We all need to be on the same page all the time,

100% communication all the time.

We take care of it.

[upbeat music]

[Voiceover] Coming up on 1:00 p.m.

We're making a veal stock.

We got four cases of veal bones.

each one them's 50 pounds,

we're looking at 200 pounds of bones.

We gotta take 'em.

You gotta give 'em a little snap a couple of times.

All right.

These are the femur bones, which is from your hip,

got that good marrow in there.

what we're going do, I got some,

they got started a few minutes ago.

These bones are ready to come out.

This is what you're looking for,

all the fats and the meat is all dried out.

Marrow is all nice and cooked, and golden and brown.

This is gonna give it its color,

its flavor and its texture.

You want all that fat, nice and crispy, and crunchy,

we are gonna take all these out.

These fresh ones that we just got in,

and we gonna take these and cook these in oven

for about three to four hours.

Let's go get this over in there,

and get it ready to go in the pot.

Carefully. that's why you got the back brace on.

Let's hold it up,

let's carry it on to the back.

Coming around hot.

Let 'em rest for a couple minutes.

This is roasted vegetables that goes into the veal stock,

so we put these in the oven, we roast 'em down.

I made this a few days ago,

and as you can see, it's almost a gravy consistency.

If you see all this floating around the top,

that's the gel that we got from making the veal stock.

This gallon of gravy, if I had to guess,

it's probably $100,00.

It's a very expensive gravy.

Oh yeah, that's some good stuff.

This is marchand de vin sauce.

So we gonna hook this up about a bottle and a half of wine.

[Crew] What do you do with the rest of the bottle?

We gonna have it afterwards.

Quality wine,

if you can't drink it, don't make it.

The amount of ingredients I'm using today

is gonna make about a gallon.

Typically when we make this for a large amount of party,

we'll do eight gallons of it.

So we gonna pour this Bordelaise in there now.

A lot of flavor in this little bucket.

Everything's just starting to just flow together now.

I think she's ready to go so we're gonna shut this off,

and once it cools down I'll put it into another container

and the banquet chef will take care of it from there.

[mellow music]

Three o'clock we're gonna make some shrimp creole,

we're gonna throw in a little bit of clarified butter.

Celery and onions,

do just sweat out all that natural flavor,

give 'em a little caramelization on it.

We got our bell peppers,

we weren't gonna make an entire batch for this one,

but it was a special request.

We gonna season all that up,

we got our fresh thyme, bay leaf, salt and pepper.

This is a very classic New Orleans dish, Shrimp creole.

This is a base sauce.

You can use this and turn it into a sauce piquant,

use with alligator, use it with shrimp, chicken,

some people throw it in pasta.

This is ready to go.

We'll put it in our fresh local shrimp,

'cause shrimp are like sponges,

they will collect any sauces, any spices

or anything that's that's being used in it.

As you can see, the shrimp,

the tails have started to come up.

Shrimp creole is complete.

The saute chef here will finish plate up

when our guests arrive in about 10, 15 minutes.

We got a lot to do guys,

let's get back to work.

[upbeat music]

All right, it's four o'clock.

Fitting to get set up over here with Chef Honome,

he is our oyster chef of the evening.

All these take a few days ahead of time to create,

because they have to set up.

Oyster toppings we start off in the tilt skillet,

so I had to make just ahead of time.

Chef, we got a banquet coming up tonight.

Yeah.

We need six dozen of the Rockefeller

and the two dozen of the oyster bienville.

And the rest will be the oyster [indistinct].

He'll be assembling those this evening.

This is Rockefeller,

traditional Rockefeller, that's world famous.

This is oyster bienville,

this is our recreation that we came up with in the 20s.

This was to rival our competitors,

the Rockefeller.

Chef Honome is going to stuff these oysters,

I'm gonna leave this to him 'cause I got other things to do.

[upbeat music]

Okay guys, it's 5:30,

we got people starting to get in.

As you can see the crew's getting ready.

Thanks for coming out, we appreciate it,

but it's time for y'all to get the hell out.

We got things to do,

fixing to open for business.

Have a good one, thanks for coming.

Come on, go, go.