A Fire Closed This Restaurant—Now It's One Of Brooklyn's Top Steakhouses

[energetic music]

St. Anselm is a neighborhood steakhouse

here in Williamsburg.

Six months ago, we had a fire in our basement

that had us closed for several months after.

Although the fire was a terrible experience,

there's definitely been some silver linings

and blessings coming from it.

So, my role as a sous chef here is to make sure

that all the sides are prepared,

all the sauces are taken care of.

I also help with butchering,

making sure they're ready to go at five o'clock

when the service starts.

I enjoy the position 'cause it keeps me versatile.

It helps me in the process

becoming an all-around better cook.

Good morning, welcome to St. Anselm.

I'm the sous chef, Juan.

It's 8:00 AM.

We got a lot of work to do.

Follow me in.

[upbeat music]

So, I'm the one that comes in

and makes 44 quarts of mashed potatoes every day.

We wanna get all the jackets off fast,

get the process done with.

We probably go through about 20 of these boxes a week.

We're pumping out a lot of potatoes.

It's our top seller, so we gotta make sure

it's, like, made right every day.

We always have our eyes on it.

We're tasting it two, three times a day.

Every ticket is gonna have a mash

and probably a hanger on it.

After we make our mash, we pull it down,

and then we get it in a frying pan with some bacon lard.

We do about two to three pan flips

so it can get a nice crust on the outside.

When you get into these potatoes,

there is a light crisp on the outside,

nice fluffiness and butteries on the inside.

We got some herbs, some scallion in there, some rosemary.

It's super flavorful.

You won't need to add nothing to it.

It's a lot of potatoes to peel,

so it could take, like, 20, 30 minutes sometimes.

I have 'em in a bucket of water so they don't oxidize.

I don't want the potatoes to change color while I'm peeling.

[water splashing]

[potatoes clattering]

So I've added some salt and some bay leaves

so that it could sit in there

while we boil off the potatoes.

And now, I'm gonna take these upstairs and get them cooking.

It's like my little gym here.

We want the potatoes to cook evenly,

so you wanna start them with cold water

so that the water could come up

and everything cooked evenly together.

This is gonna sound terrible.

[exhaust vent hums]

[exhaust vent rattles]

[Juan chuckles]

I just got these potatoes on.

I got them on high.

In about, like, 10, 15 minutes of coming up,

I'm gonna bring them back down to a simmer

once they get to a boil.

I'm an early riser,

so I enjoy coming in and working during the daytime

and I feel like in the position I do have,

I get to have my hands in more things.

'Cause if you come in and work the line,

you're gonna be in a specific zone

as to I get to come in and work on different skills

throughout the day.

It's almost nine o'clock.

Our first delivery is across the street,

so we're gonna have to get ready

to get that packed away soon, too.

All right, the delivery's here.

I'm the only one here throughout the day

and we got deliveries starting at about nine o'clock.

So, it is my job.

I'm here with the executive chef, Adam.

So, they mixed up half our order.

We're waiting for the rest of it to come back.

There's a lot of restaurants in this area.

We use a lot of the same vendors

and they'll take things to the other restaurants.

But now, our delivery drivers are out there

looking to see where they left the order.

I'm not too stressed out.

Every once in a while, it will happen,

and it's a little bit of a scramble,

but it's gonna be all right.

So, our slide is to get everything

that's coming down the ramp quickly,

and there's a lot of heavy things that gotta come down here.

So, that gives us a lot of assistance.

The first thing we wanna do is mark off all the boxes

that came in today with the date.

Now, we're gonna get these all into the walk-in

and get them in order.

So, these are our strip loins.

We just got all of our beef in.

These are our hangers.

All these will probably go this weekend.

We sell hangers the most,

at least 50 to 70 hangers a night.

All right, they found the rest of our order.

Yeah. This one right here.

They dropped the mustard by mistake.

It happens.

I mean, I drop stuff sometimes, too, so.

They're getting credit it for us, saying,

We'll have more mustard by tomorrow.

It's no big deal.

All right, it's 9:15.

The delivery's all put away.

Now we're gonna get into some sticky toffee cake.

The sticky toffee cake is almost similar

to, like, a bread pudding.

We use black crack and rum and some dates

and we make a really nice cake with a caramel topping.

We're gonna take two and a half cups of rum

and get it into this pot.

We're gonna try to cook out all the alcohol

so this cake isn't too boozy.

We just really want the flavor from the rum,

not the alcohol content.

But I've been learning pastry at the job as I go,

so I feel like it challenges me a little bit more

when I come to work.

While I am up here, I also skim my potatoes.

All open flames, we handle upstairs.

We actually had a fire about six months ago

that took out the whole basement.

My knives were down there.

All the equipment had to be replaced.

I had to refurnish and redo everything downstairs.

We played safe.

No fires downstairs.

We were closed for about six months.

We missed all the holidays.

We have a lot better lighting downstairs in the basement,

way more outlets.

We were able to add seats to our bar counter

and we redid our floors.

We just made it a little bit nicer

and comfortable for us to work in.

It was almost like a little blessing in disguise.

So, the sticky toffee cake is our one dessert

that we serve warm actually.

And we make caramel icing to soak the cake in.

After we bake off, we would pull our cakes out

and get our caramel over so it could soak into the cake

and then we'll usually serve it ala mode.

It's actually very warming.

Like if you stand here, it's very comfortable. [chuckles]

And this will cook off for a few minutes.

It makes it real busy for our line cooks at night.

We got four burners

and they're working off of 'em throughout the whole night,

and they're always on and busy.

That's why I try to do the majority of my prep early

so I get out their way so they can get in

and do what they gotta do when they get here.

This is the base of cake.

We're gonna get this into the cake batter.

Coming down hot.

Rum is cooling.

Split about 24 ounces of dates, took the pits out.

I'm gonna allow the rum

and dates to soak for about an hour now.

Definitely have two timers going on in my head,

which is also why I'm gonna start getting my meats together

for my mashed potatoes,

'cause those are gonna be coming down soon.

I just grabbed my butter.

I don't want the potatoes to be done and them waiting on me.

I wanna be waiting on the potatoes.

We also do add olive oils.

We don't want to make 'em too oily.

If there's too much fat during the frying process,

it'll be really hard to build a crisp without burning them.

If they're not enough,

the potato will be way too starchy, almost like a knish.

We're gonna add some rosemary for some flavor.

Gonna throw some garlic in the Robot Coupe.

We're gonna try with the garlic pretty fine,

not too chunky, 'cause it's not getting cooked or anything.

It's just gonna rotate when it's smashed, gets mixed in.

[mixer whirring]

During the rebuild,

we wanted to make sure we had a sufficient amount

of outlets around the kitchen.

We only had one, two outlets set up.

Now, we have one, two, three.

We have one more back here,

one in the ceiling right here,

one in the wall right here.

and another guy in the ceiling right here.

Being able to open up the kitchen and do projects

on that side that require electricity is huge,

'cause now you're not waiting for somebody

to finish doing something to start the next project.

You could move on.

So, for this recipe, I'm gonna grab out about a cup.

Save the rest of that for my mash,

and then I'm gonna chop up some scallions,

and that'll be the rest of our mashing mix.

All right, it's 10 o'clock.

I have a little bit of time before my potatoes' finished.

I'm gonna grab some pork belly from out the walk-in

so I can get some bacon going in between time.

So, we have a very thick cut steakhouse-style bacon

that we render off slightly

and then finish off on the grill.

I feel like a lot of places sell breakfast bacon.

We're selling dinner bacon.

You'll see where the majority of the fat is

and how it lines up and starts to get more meaty.

You also see from the bottom,

you kinda feel where the fat caps really start.

So, it's important to get this done early,

'cause we need this large for our potatoes,

as well as one of our salads

comes with a piece of bacon on top.

I have a liner so that all the fat can fall to the bottom

and then I could pour my lard out after.

Bacon's in at 325.

We're gonna render it off for about 15 minutes,

get some of that fat out,

and then flash it for probably another 10 minutes.

In that downtime, we're gonna go finish off the mash over.

All right, we are filled to the top.

Corner hot.

Coming down hot.

I need some plastic wrap first,

'cause if I put these to mix without plastic wrap,

there'll be potatoes all over the place.

And the last thing you want

is hot potatoes going all over you.

Hey, it's one of those lessons you only have to learn once.

I wanna get most of the lumps out.

We're just adding on my olive oil.

A little bit more flavor.

I'll start hitting the edges

so that I can get the potatoes that are coming off

to the side in the bowl and incorporate it.

We're gonna add some pepper and then about a cup of salt.

After this, we have to cool it ground.

All right, these bad boys are really hot,

so I have on about, like, three to four gloves on one hand.

And you see all the steam coming out, that's water.

So we just want it to steam out

so that when we fry it, it gets a better crisp.

As you get more to the bottom, the hotter it gets,

the more steam that's gonna be in there.

We usually let 'em cool for about two hours

and then we will break 'em down into portions

so that they're ready for the line

and they can just flip 'em into the pan and cook 'em.

I'm gonna get these into the walk-in

and we're gonna keep rolling with the day.

We're about to pull this bacon out so we can finish it off.

Oh, it smells so good.

Heritage Farm bacon rendered down.

It's all bubbly, it's hot.

We're gonna save off all that render.

We usually get about anywhere from a pint to a quart a day,

and we save all that so that we can finish off

our mashed potatoes.

If you do not like pork products,

we also will finish off the mashed potatoes

with our clarified garlic butter.

I'll probably let it cool for about an hour, two hours.

Then I'll get it into a cork container

and get it into the walk-in.

We're all caught up on our projects right now.

I'm gonna get into breaking down a salmon for tonight.

We have a Norwegian-caught Salmon.

I'm going to get off all the fins.

Getting the head off.

Breaking the collar off clean

and getting as many 12-ounce steak portions as I can.

Not everybody eats steak,

and steaks isn't ideally just beef.

A steak is a big cut, you know.

So, this is a salmon steak.

You're not not having a steak when you come here.

We are gonna grill this off,

then finish it with the garlic butter and gray salt.

I'm gonna get this into the walker now.

All right, it's about two o'clock.

Our line cooks have been coming in.

We're about to go over our list.

Every day, the line cooks will make a list

at the end of the night based off what we sold.

I'll come in, check the list, go check on our inventory,

and see what we actually need to get done.

We have our main master list,

which is my prep list that me and whoever's working prep

will come in and get started with.

We have a grill list, a garmo list,

and a expo list that's upstairs as well.

About four lists to get through every day

before five o'clock.

I'm here with Vinny.

We're about to go over our list.

He runs the grill.

We're gonna get all this stuff out and ready.

So, I'm just gonna get into hangers,

start breaking those down,

and then get into flat irons after that.

Hanger's always gonna be on the list first.

We sell the most of hangers, probably like at least,

what, like, 50 to 70 hangers a night.

Yeah. So, he's gonna be here

cleaning up a lot of hangers

for a few minutes and then get onto the next project.

All right, sounds good.

My personal favorite happens to be the New York Strip.

I feel like it has a good balance

between the fat cap and being just nice and lean,

and it comes with our au poivre sauce,

which is just a pepper cream sauce.

It's delicious, always a good go-to.

When I get into a strip,

I wanna get a nice piece of this fat cap on the back.

I love this piece of fat.

I wanna leave as much as possible.

I just wanna get rid of anything

that I know is not gonna cook off on the grill.

Which I feel like I'm at a pretty happy point now already.

They'll be hit with salt and pepper

right before going on to the grill

and then finish with some Maldon

as well as the au poivre sauce.

And we are done breaking down the strip.

We're gonna get into making some au poivre

to finish this off.

Au poivre just means a pepper,

so it's gonna be a peppercorn sauce.

We'll get that going.

I have some shallow scraps

from all the pickling and other things we do with.

I'm gonna get these in the Robot Coupe,

get 'em broken up nice and small.

But I'll pull them just for the New York Strip.

I'm happy where this is at and I'm gonna get it upstairs.

Get my butter in.

I'm gonna get my shallots in there.

Start sweating them out.

You know, it should bring a little bit of heat,

but not really spice.

Definitely should be creamy.

I will start getting my applejack ready.

I'm gonna set aside about a cup.

I'm gonna pull it off of the fire, get it in there,

then let it get back on the fire.

And there we go.

As we use majority pink peppercorns,

but we got some green ones in there for color.

And we also have black pepper

that is mid-stuffed in here as well,

and that's for the peppery flavor.

Our flame is out.

Now I can add my peppercorn

and give it a good mix so that these can get on the bottom

and start getting nice and toasty.

We will keep this hot on the burner during service

and we will pull out the steak, let it rest,

temp it, and then put it on the plate

and add the steak right on top of that.

Once I could pull it off of a spoon

and it leaves the line, I'm pretty happy with the thickness.

So, I can smell that my peppercorns

are beginning to become fragrant

and some of them are starting to open up in there,

so I'm gonna add my cream in and then reduce this down,

and I'm all done with my au poivre.

[upbeat music]

All right, we're getting closer to service.

Our line cooks are gonna get behind the line,

start serving guests in a few minutes.

During service, I'm getting stuff ready for the next day.

That'll be when I get my chance to clear the table

and start peeling more potatoes, peeling garlic,

peeling shallots, getting all my cake needs together,

all the things that come into getting things just rolling.

So, I'm gonna need you guys to get outta here.

Thanks for coming in with me.

I'll see you guys.

[upbeat music ending]