This Restaurant is NYC’s Hardest Reservation

[Kamat] The food here at Tatiana is a combination

of Afro-Caribbean influence,

as well as food that you'll find throughout New York City.

It takes people months, sometimes up to a year

to secure their reservation here at Tatiana.

Lots of publications have named us number one in the city,

as well as the country,

which puts a lot of pressure on myself,

as well as the team.

My goal as chef de cuisine is to uphold the quality,

the consistency, and the morale for the team.

It has been such a roller coaster from day one.

The accolades, the notoriety, the visibility,

and I can't wait to see where else we go.

[gentle upbeat music]

Hi, I'm Kamat Newman, the Chef de Cuisine here at Tatiana.

We've got quite a bit of work to do, so let's go on in.

[gentle upbeat music]

As you can see, we're at the heart of Lincoln Center.

We've got the Met Opera as well as the ballet.

We have guests that come in at five o'clock on the dot.

So, all the more critical for us to be on time

and punctual with our production in the morning.

It is 10:00 am.

I've got a couple stocks that need to be tended to.

We're heading down to the production kitchen

where all of the heavy prep happens in the morning.

[gentle bright music]

We are going to check on our stocks this morning.

They've been going for about 15 hours or so.

We've got our oxtail stock, as well as our chicken stocks.

We do let them go overnight.

It just works better for efficiency of the kitchen.

And to ensure that these machines do not get turned off

because this has happened in the past,

we have to put little notes.

Like, This is the oxtail stock. Don't touch it.

Losing 66 quarts of stock is not a fun experience.

So right now, for the oxtail stock,

I have to pull the meat out of it.

We let it go at a bit of a lower temperature

so that the meat doesn't completely fall off of the bones.

We use it for our oxtail rangoon dish on the menu.

This oxtail was marinated with our jerk paste

and we gave it a hard sear in the oven.

The stock itself, we use it to braise our oxtail with.

We combine it with our chicken stock

to make a really flavorful,

really deeply colored oxtail braised.

So, this is our 30-gallon tilt skillet.

Because of the restaurant's,

I guess you could say, levels of business,

we make everything in large batches here.

When I'm ready to strain this out,

I can just tilt it down and easy and efficient.

[metal clanging]

Chicken stock, we have a couple

of our team members right now cutting the vegetables,

getting the aromatics prepared to throw in there.

Then, it's gonna go for another two or three hours.

So these, I'm gonna take 'em

to the blast chiller to cool 'em down.

[gentle upbeat music]

Corner.

[indistinct]. Thank you.

[gentle bright music]

We have put the oxtail in the blast chiller

so that it cools down in an appropriate amount of time

to the proper temperatures.

We don't want anything to go bad.

All right, now that's done.

Now it's time for me to check in with my team

to check on the trajectory of the day

and see what else needs to be handled.

[gentle bright music]

So far, we're looking at about 142 covers for this evening,

and the books are closed.

That means that anything extra

will be walk-ins for the restaurant.

We typically do between 230 up to 280 covers a night.

All contingent upon the weather outside,

but once we hit that cap for reservations,

we know that it's game time.

And now that I have this number

and I know that the books are closed,

I'm gonna communicate that to the rest of my chef team

so that they know what the night ahead looks like.

[upbeat music]

This is Pablo, our junior sous chef.

At this time, we're gonna be checking our prep list.

We do a new prep list every single day.

This prep list was written by Chef Sam,

one of our sous chefs after service.

So, she filled out our daily inventory

and created this prep list based off of our needs for today.

So Pablo, his responsibilities entail

opening the kitchen along with our sous.

The sous chefs and junior sous typically do

a lot of the more labor intensive work

when it comes to breaking down proteins and seafood.

In terms of my role,

it's really important that I check in with the team.

Being that Chef Kwame does a lot of traveling,

opening up other restaurants, many other projects happening,

I am responsible for ensuring that his vision,

his creativity and his level of quality is always met.

And then we take a look at the staffing list,

which is also printed on our prep list

in terms of who's gonna be here,

who we know has the skill to do what,

who we want to give a new opportunity

for training and development purposes.

I just wanna make sure we're not over producing.

Okay.

We're not running the lamb of the special today.

We'll focus on that for tomorrow.

For sure. All right.

At this time I'm also gonna be checking

everything in the walk-in.

I'm checking that nothing is out place,

but I'm seeing like we have a batch of escovitch

that we made that needs to be quartered.

Our bread needs to start for the day as well.

I'm ensuring that things are labeled properly

with the dates.

Making sure there's no condensation

inside of any of our containers,

which means that something wasn't cooled down properly.

So, if I'm coming in here with that critical eye,

we're more likely to have a wonderful inspection.

People are always amazed by how big this walk-in is.

It's a flex.

For me I'm like, Yeah, it is.

And we are set to move on.

[gentle upbeat music]

Right here I have the pastrami

or the short rib that will be our pastrami.

And we gotta get this broken down for brining.

This is gonna brine for about five days

and then it'll be ready.

I use a 10-inch chef's knife freshly sharpened

to make sure the project doesn't take a long time.

The sharper the knife the better.

In a professional kitchen, you wanna make sure

you use the proper color coding for your cutting board.

Red cutting boards are for proteins.

That's just so cross-contamination doesn't happen.

So, the pastrami suya is essentially a riff

on traditional New York pastrami.

Obviously, we take it and we turn it into something

that is purely Tatiana,

and that we apply a suya and pastrami spice blend

that Chef Kwame has made especially for this recipe.

Suya spice is a West African spice blend.

Suya traditionally means barbecue.

So, this piece that I've just weighed,

it was about 45.15 ounces.

I know I'll be able to get at least two portions

plus a bit of scrap.

I think we love the scrap the most in the kitchen

because it then goes into family meal.

I'm just removing the excess fat.

Not too much of it 'cause that fat is what's gonna give us

that nice tender texture that we're looking for

after the braising process.

That Wagyu short rib is definitely highlighting

the texture of the meat, as well as the flavor.

We wanna see just like nice marbling.

It adds a bit of unctuousness to the bite of meat

instead of just being super lean,

which is typically what we see

when we go after traditional pastrami sandwiches.

Oof. That is huge.

Jesus Christ.

We got the New York Post to write us up,

just stating that it was the best pastrami in New York City.

It is definitely the highlight of our menu

and that the most pastramis I've ever sold in a night

is about 70 orders.

With all those accolades, it makes not only the reservations

the most sought out in the city,

but also this particular dish.

The brine imparts a lot of flavors.

We've tested three days, we've tested seven days.

Five days is our sweet spot

for this particular brining process.

I've got another 50 pounds in the walk-in

that needs to be broken down as well.

Because it's a five day brining process,

if we miss a count for a day,

that means the dish doesn't make it

to the menu this weekend.

So, we always wanna make sure

we have eyes on how many we're gonna sell,

how many we've sold the previous days.

So, as a CDC, the more you go up in the industry,

the less you do actual knife work and cooking.

For me, it's really important that I keep my hands

in the cooking process, as well as the butchering process

for all products, just to make sure the quality

is still being met to Chef Kwame standards,

and also just to remind myself on a daily basis

what my passion is.

So, this is our last short rib.

I am then gonna pass this over to our junior sous chef

to get it on brine and get the ball rolling

'cause I need to move on to the egusi stew.

[plastic container rattling]

[gentle upbeat music]

Egusi stew is a traditional West African stew

that typically is comprised of red palm oil,

crayfish powder, and ground melon seeds.

It's much easier to mix things with a paddle

as opposed to trying to get a small spoon in there.

The red palm oil gives us a really deep earthy flavor.

It also imparts a really beautiful golden color

into the stew as well.

When Chef Kwame made it for me the first time,

I fell in love with it.

It's actually my favorite menu item

on our Small Shares portion.

I think it's pretty cool that Chef Kwame came up

with the idea of making such a traditional West African dish

into something as familiar as a soup dumpling.

So, luckily for me,

I have experience working in large batch cooking.

Scaling recipes up isn't as black and white

as just increasing the numbers.

Some things have to be altered as they scale up,

as the flavors and levels do change.

Let's say this recipe required a certain amount of peppers

and I know that those peppers are particularly spicy.

I may wanna scale those down so that it is not overwhelming

at such a large batch level.

Being that this tilt skill, it is so large,

the heat elements are in different spots.

So, mixing it around constantly will just ensure

that all of the onions will be cooked evenly.

Once it stops burning your eyes, you know you're ready.

I'm gonna go ahead and add in our egusi seed.

And these are just ground melon seeds

that we're adding right now.

We wanna make sure these are toasted off

so that that raw melon seed flavor doesn't come through,

and get that deep flavor that we're looking for.

On a busy night, we sell up to 180 individual dumplings.

So, I am now gonna add the iru.

I-R-U, are fermented locus bean.

Can you smell that? [laughs softly]

So, typically we like to hand projects off to other cooks

from a management perspective

to ensure that everyone is trained on everything.

You know, people take vacation, have family emergencies,

and sometimes wanna learn new things.

So, it's about 1:30 right now. I need to pivot.

So, this project is gonna be handed over

to my junior sous chef.

So now, I'm gonna check in with the rest of the team,

make sure everybody's on track for the day,

and then we can start setting up

the service kitchen upstairs.

[gentle groovy music]

It's 1:00 pm right now.

We're building the cart to take equipment upstairs

to the service kitchen from down here

in the production kitchen.

At this time, we're four hours out from service,

so typically I'll pick up and get the equipment

up to the kitchen

to free up the sous chefs and the junior sous

so that they can stay focused on the production day.

Corner. Right behind you.

Coming up.

Now we're heading to the elevator

to take us up to the restaurant.

This elevator belongs to Lincoln Center,

but they're kind enough to let us use it

for our daily setup.

Quite a bit of heavy lifting when it comes to the equipment

and the proteins and things like that.

So, I'd say I'm getting a really good workout in

on a daily basis.

Mainly due to spacing,

when Chef Kwame was looking for a space,

he knew that the production for the menu

would have to be done in large format.

So, the space intentionally has a production kitchen

to take care of all the heavy lifting

that we saw for service.

This kitchen comes into play starting at 3:30

when the line cooks arrive,

and we are done with service at about 11:00 pm at night.

We have it down to the exact number.

There is a checklist that we use to build this cart.

I think most of us know it by heart by now.

I love integrating myself into the setup for service

as it just makes me feel

like I'm more in tune with the cooks.

Right here I am setting up garde manger/dessert station.

[utensil clattering]

I have to break down some ice that's in here

that built up over the weekend.

So right now, I'm just putting everything in place

for the hot line,

just making sure that pots are where they need to be.

Then, I'll start compartmentalizing

and setting them up one by one,

starting with roast and working my way down

to entremet and then hot app over here.

So, our kitchen is closed

between Saturday night and Tuesday evening.

So, when these are left in the well, they freeze in.

As we keep these fridges running

so that we don't have to re-temp 'em,

Chef Kwame has set the kitchen up

to be a traditional brigade system

with the stations that we have

with as many bodies as we have.

We have our roast station, garde manger.

We have entremet which is our saute station, and hot app.

All of our desserts come off

of the garde manger station as well.

So, we'll see like a lot of the sweet treats

coming up on our very last cart.

In a night, it has to be upward of about 300

or more plates altogether coming out of this kitchen.

Starting at about 4:00 pm,

we start to see a line develop outside the door,

and that is comprised of people that have been waiting

upwards of a year to eat with us here at Tatiana,

and that makes it all the more critical

for us to be ready at 5:00 on the dot.

That pressure is on as soon as the door is open.

It's about three 3:30 right now.

Line cooks are gonna start filing in,

so I'm gonna go and catch them at the time clock

to ensure that they know what the day is about to look like.

[gentle upbeat music]

The cooks after the clock in

are gonna be handed their checklist

for the station that they've been assigned to today.

Being that we cross train all of the cooks

for pretty much every station here in the kitchen,

so they'll be able to kind of gauge what their needs are

based on the list that we hand them.

Tastings usually happen on the line at about 4:45.

The team will set up with all of their sauces heated,

all of their proteins par cooked.

And then, we start to taste the components

to ensure that they are top tier quality.

Can you bring it over here, please?

I just wanna give our ground lamb for service

a bit of a taste.

[pots and pans clanging]

I would say that this was really well seasoned

and it's definitely got a bit of a kick to it

that I'm feeling now.

If anything on the line is wrong

or I see that it's not up to par with our standards,

I will notify the sous chefs so that they can come up

and take a look at what product needs to be fixed

and they will fix it down in the production kitchen.

This is the last push, and then we're gearing ourselves

for pre-shift and service.

[gentle upbeat music]

We're gonna discuss VIPs, party sizes,

as well as the lineup for this evening.

We will not be running the chicken tonight.

I'm hoping that means we see pastrami numbers go up.

There's also an 86 on bodega special just to start.

We will un-86 it as soon as the donuts make it to the line.

[jazz upbeat music]

All right, it's almost 5:00.

We just got done with our pre-shift meeting.

The line's building outside.

We're about to go into service.

During the first seating in the dining room,

I'll be here at the pass expediting for the kitchen

up until about eight o'clock tonight.

Thank you guys so much for following me around.

Hopefully I gave you a little bit of a glimpse

of what it's like to be the chef de cuisine here at Tatiana.

And if you're lucky enough,

you can pin down a reservation, come join us.

Hyping myself up internally right now.

It's me and then the team, and then we're good to go.

[gentle upbeat music]