Making Pastry in Hollywood With 2 Michelin Stars: A Day at Providence

Providence is a two-star Michelin restaurant

in the heart of Hollywood.

There's only a couple of other restaurants

in the city that has two Michelin stars.

I started as the head pastry chef

at Providence when I was 23 years old.

In a tasting menu restaurant, everybody gets a dessert.

So if you have 80 a day, you gotta have 80 desserts a day.

We have to be very fast.

There's only two of us in the morning to do prep,

so we have to be efficient and ready to get to work.

[upbeat orchestral music]

Hi, welcome to Providence.

My name is Mac, I'm the pastry chef, come on in.

The menu that we serve here is a 10 course tasting menu.

So as a pastry chef here, two of them, my responsibility.

There's a lot to do, I gotta get started.

[upbeat piano music]

Morning.

Morning.

[Mac] Providence is a seafood restaurant

that primarily focuses on wild caught, sustainable seafood.

That's the fish side.

That's where all the fish, seafood dishes get worked on,

and this is the meat side.

I don't have to fight for space in the morning.

But at night, it's a free for all.

[laughs]

[door clicks]

It's 8:00 AM and the first thing I do is check the low boys

and our reach in, in the back.

I'm looking for anything that's gone bad,

or I'm checking what we need to make today,

or get ready to make for tomorrow.

This is a peach syrup that we use for the peach dessert.

I'm gonna taste that to make sure it's okay,

and there's dates on 'em

but you wanna confirm it by tasting it.

I have permu here that I know I made last week.

And this side, we have a bunch of our bulky prep.

I'm just checking for ice cream

that I need to bring upstairs.

So this is the cocoa husk gelato.

Now I've checked all our low boys and reach in.

I'm gonna write the prep list.

So for us at Providence, at least for the pastry department,

we kind of break it down between like the desserts.

We have a pre-dessert and the chocolate dessert,

and all the component that goes in that dessert.

And if I need to make it, I'll write it down here

where it says we need to make it,

or if I don't we'll put a dash on it.

We don't need to make it.

So what I'll do now is put our initials and individual tasks

so we both know where the day will lead us to.

Do you wanna make the mousse today?

Sure.

I check on the projects

that take the longest amount of time.

To kind of know the ins and out of the recipes.

Okay.

That's it.

I'll go change.

Gonna see you in a bit, Naomi.

Behind.

Morning, Matt.

Oh, the peaches came in.

Are they good?

[Matt] They're good.

[upbeat music]

[Mac] Pretty much I start my day up here

and I end my day up here.

I'm gonna paco the ice cream

that needs to be used for service.

The ice cream base that we make

we freeze 'em in these specialized beakers.

This is a California almond sorbet for the peach dessert.

Once they're pretty much rock solid, we put 'em

in this container with a blade and the blades bitten so fast

that it creates a very smooth ice cream.

Just delicious.

We do it in the morning

so that it has time to set for service.

When I go up here, I paco.

And then throughout the day I'll be going up here.

I'll check the ice cream

and I'll bring it down when it's ready.

This is where we dry age the fishes.

We have two separate dry ager for seafood or fish

and then one for proteins like duck or meat.

Anytime that I go up here,

which is pretty much every morning,

any tasks that are up here

while I'm pacoing the ice cream I will do.

Today's Paul's birthday, one of our sous chef.

So we're making him a cake.

Even though I am the pastry chef

I still make people's birthday cake.

We make our own chocolate at Providence.

This has been going for about three days.

The melanger really is designed to refine small batches

of chocolate.

This is actually one of our newest origin Indonesia.

This is a test batch to see

if it's origin that we want to use.

So this is a grindometer.

We're gonna put a little bit

of chocolate up here and we're gonna swipe it down.

We're usually aiming for 10 to 15 microns

and it's actually pretty there.

That's where the chocolate starts mostly breaking up.

This is ready.

We'll empty it later on when we finish downstairs.

This is the half spear Hawaiian chocolate mousse.

That's the base of the chocolate dessert.

Usually the morning after we make 'em.

Whoever's up here, usually me, we'll unmold 'em.

We make sure that we work really efficient.

There's only four people in the pastry team.

And it's a lot of work really.

So kind of wanna make sure

that you're working very efficient.

This is lemon verbena pâte aux fruits.

In English, pâte aux fruits means fruit dough

but really it's just jelly.

Usually it's made with fruit

but here we have lemon verbena from the garden.

I'll lay 'em out in a rack

like this so the outside can desiccate a little bit.

These we just got today.

You never want to squeeze your peaches.

It's gonna bruise 'em.

You're looking for around this area for it to not be green.

When you smell it, smells like a ripe peach.

Next thing I need to do is get these peaches ready

for the peach dessert.

But before that we gotta grab some herbs in the garden.

[lighthearted music]

We're literally on the famous Melrose Avenue

smack dab in the middle of Hollywood.

We also have our very own bee neighbors.

I don't wanna mess with them.

Right now the bees are very active.

This is their time to collect pollen.

So this is red shiso we're using for the peach dessert.

This is what we poach the peaches with.

This is white alyssum.

We use it to garnish the peach dessert

and we're gonna pick it for service tonight.

Speaking of bourbon, we're in the middle of our fence

but we do have like the lemon verbena out here.

This we use for the pâte aux fruits that I cut.

When I'm feeling like writer's block,

I'm out here trying to figure

out what dessert I should do next.

It's very inspirational when you're out here.

It's very peaceful.

You get a lot of ideas.

So now I have all the herbs I need.

It's time to head back to the kitchen.

[upbeat music]

So right now the peaches are the best as they can be.

It's very nostalgic to have a poached peach dessert.

The peaches are cut in half.

We'll finish it with alyssum flowers topped

with almond sorbet that we pacoed earlier.

And then we make a syrup

out of the poaching liquid that's poured tableside.

In the poaching liquid we have water, sugar.

I'm gonna add the sake

and then I'll add red shiso that we picked earlier

and then I'll finish it with a little bit

of yuzu juice and I'll bring it up to a boil.

I'm going to blanch the peaches.

Before that I'm going to score the peach with a razor.

We've been doing this dessert

at least a version of it for about three years now.

We used to do it with Prosecco and lemon verbena

but upstairs we have a bunch of shiso

which really works well with sake.

So that's why we're doing it.

So it only takes a couple of seconds.

Now I'm shocking the peaches so that they don't cook.

You kind of just want to loosen the skin.

See how it just kind of peels really nicely?

We usually make about 80 peach desserts a day.

I mean, at a tasting menu restaurant, you kind of

have the advantage of knowing how many desserts

you're going to do.

But also in a tasting menu restaurant,

everybody gets a dessert.

So we brought the poaching liquid to a boil and now

I'm gonna add the peaches.

And then we'll put a cartouche on such a big pot.

So I'm gonna put three.

So the cartouche keeps the peaches submerged

so they cook evenly.

Also, sometime the top part of the peach will pop out

of the liquid and it'll turn brown.

It'll oxidize.

This is a French top and if I move the pot

towards the center, that is the hottest part.

Now we just want to cook 'em very, very, very gently.

So I'll pull probably half of it out

of the French top itself.

So that's just touching pretty much the outer part

which is the least hot.

And we'll leave it there for 30 minutes.

Now it's time to make the mousse.

Let's go

[playful music]

The chocolate dessert.

It starts with a half spear of chocolate mousse.

We dip it in chocolate and toasted coconut.

And then we'll top that

with a long pepper and chocolate premier.

Garnish it with a tempered chocolate

and a cocoa husk gelato.

And then we'll finish it with a long pepper

and chocolate cru salon.

On the table, the servers will finish it

with a coconut and fig leaf coolie.

Chocolate dessert is the main dessert.

We've been serving this dessert for about a month now

but even now we're thinking

of the new dessert that we'll replace it with.

I'm just gonna bloom the gelatin

in the cold milk and let that soften.

So I'm just lightly whipping the cream.

Getting it ready for the mousse.

And this is about how far I'm gonna take it.

Almost like ribbon staged.

We're gonna make the ganache.

A ganache really is just chocolate emulsified

with usually cream or milk.

So I'm warming the milk just to melt the gelatin

and then I'll incorporate it into the chocolate.

Whenever using the French top, it's just you're playing

with the temperature.

And I don't want it to boil so I'm pulling it.

And then we'll incorporate it into chocolate.

Okay, that's the ganache.

So right now it's a little separated but that's okay

'cause we're going to use an emulsion blender

to bring it back together.

This mousse is definitely very light.

Just perfect to end your meal

because it's not a heavy chocolate dessert.

This mousse is gonna set up fast.

So I gotta run upstairs and put 'em in the mold.

From my experience here at Providence

in terms of our prep, we have to be very fast.

There's a lot of multitasking happening.

I just like getting things done.

I don't wanna let the station down.

I was 23 when I got the pastry chef position here.

It was a big surprise to me.

[Mac laughs]

To me it's very unusual.

The level of trust that they have to give me.

It's a lot of pressure.

But I realized I like working here.

I like doing what I do here.

I like the people here.

Mousse are in the freezer

and now we're gonna shape the bread.

[lighthearted orchestral music]

This bread is our main bread for service.

I'm going to start with the large bread

for the bigger parties, which is 700 grams each.

For the smaller parties, like from one or two

they'll get a 300 gram sourdough.

So we'll do 12 big loaves

and the rest of the dough will be small loaves.

I like shaping the bread.

I mean everybody likes shaping the bread.

So the sourdough that we make

it's made with a Tehachapi Grain Project,

red fife and a bruiser rye.

They're farming style is, they don't water.

They just let nature do the work.

We worked with the farmers, the suppliers

as long as I can remember.

The relationship is definitely there.

That just means we get really good product.

These are gonna rest for about 10 to 15 minutes

before we do the final shaping.

There's like a feel good feeling when you come and eat it

and you have your own loaf of bread for some reason.

[bright orchestral music]

So these are all done.

It's time to get 'em in the fridge for tomorrow service.

Behind you.

[bright orchestral music]

When the clock turns around 2:30

that's chocolate time for me.

So this is where I play around with chocolate.

This is where I'm most creative.

We started with the idea of playing around

with making bean to bar chocolate

around the time when Covid started.

Just made sense 'cause we weren't really doing anything.

I was at home.

Everybody was trying to figure out what to do.

I was buying different origins.

Planning that when we reopened

that this might be something that we will be doing.

I mean I wasn't sure

if I was gonna move on with this kind of project.

So buying an expensive equipment wasn't really

sustainable at that time.

This is a Champion juicer.

It's a juicer for like vegetables or fruits or anything

but now nobody uses it.

'Cause anything that goes

through this tastes like chocolate.

This contraption essentially separates the husk and the nib.

When I drop mixture of the nib and husk,

the heavier nib will fall down here

and the husk will go into the bin.

This is a very manual process

'cause you'll have to be there and drop the cacao slowly.

So obviously the nibs get turned into chocolate

but then we have a bunch of this husk leftover.

What we do here is we steep it with fresh mint

and we serve it as a cocoa mint tea with a petit fours.

So here in the chocolate melters

we have our two main origins.

This first one is from Ecuador.

The estate is from Hacienda Victoria.

We use for the sesame snack bars.

These snack bars are part of our mignorde service.

Petit four, they're sesame praline filling with an Ecuador

single origin chocolate encasing that.

So I'm gonna go ahead and finish these.

Add the last layer of chocolate and then we'll unmold 'em.

I've never made chocolate until we started playing around

here at Providence.

Never. But it's always been in the back of my mind.

That's one of the main reasons why I work here.

Because I am able to do stuff like this.

I can explore different branches of what I do.

It's an environment where you just learn.

There's no fear in coming here

and kind of make mistakes really.

Making chocolate like what we're doing.

Bean to bar or bean to dessert.

I mean bean to bar is already like a very long process.

But bean to dessert is I think extremely long process.

It involves planning ahead every single day.

This is sort of like a magical process.

'Cause all you gotta do is,

[mold cracks]

and they all come out like that.

This is very satisfying.

[mold cracks]

So I'm gonna leave these in the chocolate box

and one of the team members downstairs

will grab them for service.

[upbeat music]

It's 4:45, doors are gonna open less than an hour.

I'm going to explain the rest of the menu to the staff.

But Mac's gonna tell you about table,

[Mac] 10.

10 tonight.

Hi everyone.

[Staff] Hi Mac.

Tonight, the peaches we're serving are yellow peaches

from Masumoto Family Farms up in Fresno.

The garnish, we're using shiso blossoms.

And then for table 10 we're serving a melon basheran.

The melons are from Wiser Family Farms

with cantaloupe sorbet and just fresh cream on top of that.

Thank you.

[Staff] Thanks Mac.

[bright orchestral music]

♪ Happy Birthday to you. ♪

Thank you guys.

[staff cheers]

[Mac] This is what I was working on earlier.

Hey.

[Michael] Everybody has a birthday.

[Paul laughs]

Mac has to make like 70 cakes a year

because we have about 70 employees

and everybody has a birthday.

So Paul's nickname is the Panda.

[bright orchestral music]

[Mac] So we're getting ready to plate the free desserts

for everyone tonight.

Jin right now she's filling the Pâte Sucrée tarts

with a salted caramel custard.

She's gonna bake 'em in the oven

and then when they're ready and cold

we'll finish them with a bourbon vanilla cream.

So when the desserts are fired, we usually get a ticket

and that's when we know to send out the desserts.

The reservations are staggered

so that not all the desserts are sent out at the same time.

Guests are starting to come.

It's getting really busy out here.

You guys have gotta go.

Bye. Out.

[bright orchestral music]