This Restaurant is Bringing Ancient Italian Cooking to LA

Antico Nuovo is an Italian restaurant

here in the strip mall in Los Angeles.

We focus a lot on fire cookery,

down to our regus, braises, our roast.

Some of the dishes that we cook are almost forgotten

even in Italy.

We love to honor these hyper regional dishes

and the countryside cooking.

As a chef de cuisine, there's a lot of jobs that go into it.

I'm usually responsible for about 15 people in total

from prep to dish to the line,

making sure that everybody's able to execute

at their highest potential.

And then most importantly,

making sure everything is tasting up to par.

I get the last taste on everything.

I'm the last line of defence in this kitchen.

[lively music]

Good morning.

My name is Arturo Rojas.

I'm the chef de cuisine here at Antico Nuovo

here in Los Angeles, California.

We have a lot to do today, so please follow along.

[uplifting music]

Welcome to Antico.

Around the walls, all these stuff that you see,

we use on a daily basis

for our pasta production or production in general.

10:00 in the morning right now.

The guys should be coming in around 11:00 AM, the prep team.

I'm about to go check the prep list in the back.

So over here, we got the master prep list,

which is this guy right here, the whiteboard.

Each station has an individual prep list that we build,

which each individual dish, as you can see,

all the stations have a lot of [speaking in non-English],

and we have all the dishes broken down to the sauces,

the components that go in each thing.

Usually this type of prep in other kitchens

for the chef de cuisine will be maybe a little too much.

The reason I do it is because of consistency.

Here at Antico we're a smaller restaurant,

so I love to take that task on.

Today I got this right section of the prep list.

So we're gonna do a lot of fire cookery today.

I gotta start the fire.

[upbeat music]

Cooking with fire, it's something that

before I came to Antico I wasn't too familiar with,

but every year we share chat, we go to the countryside

and all the farms that we visit, all the agriculture,

when they take us to eat at their homes,

they all have wonderful cast iron wood fire stoves.

So we always try to mimic as much cooking as we can

as what we experience in the countryside.

Alright, so the front of the house team has left me

some leftover wine boxes, old menus I'll use as well,

just to get the fire started.

So our braseiro here,

I'm just gonna pull it out just a little bit.

The main use for it is to gather the embers

as the wood finishes burning.

So we'll keep loading it up.

We'll gather the embers,

and with those embers we keep feeding the fire.

During servers, you see it fully lit.

Almond wood is a lot better to use

than other types of wood like hickory.

It's a little more gentle in the smoke.

It doesn't penetrate the meat as much.

Nothing too intense.

The ones with the most bark, those will light up fastest.

When I start the fire,

I like to start it with a little coals

just because air remains hotter for a little longer.

Also keeps you from burning that much wood.

These were as speed racks.

We just soldered off the wheels, wrapped a couple long bars

and just put it in place to hold.

This is a perfect place for resting, for roasting.

We have a couple sheet pans here.

These have two uses.

If we ever walk away from it, that way it hits this

before it starts getting into everything else.

And the other reason is heat rises

so it traps it in and the meat gets seared

and gets so much more of that smoke a lot quicker.

Lighting the starters,

making sure the air is filtrating nice and good.

I'll stay here for like five minutes

until I know it's properly lit,

and then I'll go to the back and grab the goat.

[upbeat music]

It is about 11:00 AM.

The prep guys are in the house.

It's nice and busy now.

Everybody's hustling and bustling.

[Arturo speaking in non-English]

So the goat that we got now is 25 pounds.

We get it from Anderson Ranch over in Oregon.

The taste is fantastic, not super gamey.

This coat is gonna be for one of our pasta dishes,

the fileja from Calabria is definitely one of the pastas

that have become forgotten.

I haven't seen many restaurants do it,

but that's something that we're about,

going to these places, being told the stories

from the [speaking in non-English] themselves,

telling us about the pasta, the production,

and how to better honor them and their cooking.

It's a lot more mountainous down there.

Goats are usually grown a lot better in mountainous regions

compared to like a cow that you see more in northern Italy.

We always try to narrow it down to the area,

the traditions that they have.

So right here

what I'm gonna do is just investigate the goat,

check everything out, like to see that it's nice and dry.

That means it's gonna crisp up real good.

I'm gonna grab my knife, work my way down

and just give it a little chiropractor move right there.

Right here is the ribcage, and I'm gonna grab the saw

and go right through the center here.

With the saw, I like to start nice and slow,

and then like a violin, long strokes.

The purpose of opening it nice and wide is for

when we put it up in [speaking in non-English] .

A [speaking in non-English] translates to a cross,

so it needs to be extended up.

That way, all the meat from the back

to the front gets a nice color to it.

In Italy, they have very similar methods

where they open up the goat

and roast there in the countryside over the fire.

Very old school way of doing it.

And you know that's what we're all about, Antico.

Kind of making a incision here.

We're gonna be holding it up

right by the tenon and the bone.

So we'll have the goat standing up.

I'll go ahead and get the fire started on the braseiro,

and then I'll lean it a little more closer.

That way it gets a little more color.

So right here

what I'm trying to achieve is to get a couple color

on the sides, not to cook it all the way through,

but to get it at least like 80% of the way.

So that color, that morrow reaction is gonna help us

with flavor development into the braising process.

It's probably gonna be there

for anywhere to two to three hours.

And then from there we braise it, we cook it,

take all the meat apart,

and then we will have it mixed into the ragu for our pasta.

Okay, so we're getting the braseiro going.

I gotta roast the rabbits.

Gotta roast the beef cheeks.

So let's get going.

The first ragu that we're gonna put up is gonna be

for the [speaking in non-English].

Rabbits here, seasoned with salt by the day before,

and this helps penetrate the flavor into the meat.

Helps get all the excess moisture out.

So all this meats that you see here,

the rabbits and these beef cheeks,

they're gonna go also in a braise.

They're gonna be cooked down until they're nice and tender,

and then they're gonna be made into a far.

So they're gonna be put into the grinder,

mixed up all together.

And that's the one we finished

with a little bit of parmesan.

Also some [speaking in non-English] inside as well.

The next thing that I'm gonna do is start putting up

our veal tongue for our pappardelle ragu.

Northern Italian pasta.

Veal tongue is a subtle flavor, not super gamey.

You know, it's very tender.

At the restaurant, we try to use a lot of very unusual,

we cut some meats.

We focus a lot on [speaking in non-English],

that which means like pour man's cuisine,

the excess meats, the meats that nobody else wants.

We try to utilize that and build it into our menu.

So in Italy, you'll find different markets

where they offer these types of cuts,

especially in the southern region.

You'll find a lot of cuts that are not as known.

The main reason that we do it in the open fire

compared to like an oven or searing it in a pan,

the flavor the wood has that penetrates into the lamb,

even if it's not even cooking all the way through,

it makes a big difference at the finished product.

Definitely helps aid with flavor and flavor development,

and that's what we're about.

[lively music]

Throughout the day,

I'll check the pasta production as it comes out.

They'll show it to me, make sure everything's aligned.

So I'm just looking at feel, the consistency.

As a chef de cuisine, I have to do this every day.

It's not an optional thing for me.

We have four different types of pasta bowls here.

The first one is gonna be our pappardelle dough.

This is a much egg yolk heavy dough.

So it's gonna be a lot firmer to the touch.

Right before he wraps them up,

I'm looking at the feel, at the consistency,

making sure the dough is nice and firm,

'cause this is gonna be a noodle dish,

so it's gonna be a lot firmer to the touch.

So we're going from northern Italy all the way to the south.

So this is the ravioli dough

that we use for all our types of raviolis

from our tortellini to our raviolinona.

This has a lot more whole leg,

so it's a lot more flexible.

The why is we help it with elasticity,

and I want feel like a nice amount of comeback

on this one compared to this one,

which is much more firm.

Moving out to Calabria, we got a little filet dough,

very classic on Southern Italy, semolina and water base.

This has no eggs at all.

Definitely looking for the consistency,

making sure the gluten has developed good.

A lot of chefs,

a lot of people like to put their thumb in it,

but I can tell better the hydration

and the way it moves when I fold it in.

I really tell a lot by touching the dough itself,

instead of just kind of poking my finger.

You could tell a lot about the humidity level,

if it's too dry, if it's too wet.

As the season changes, if it gets hot,

it might need a little more than this.

If it gets cold, it might need a little less time to work.

But as the season changes,

the pasta changes with it as well.

Going down to the [speaking in non-English],

this is a pasta that refers to the leaf of an olive tree.

This pasta gets done in the board as well.

We use some parsley with semolina and water

and then make it into the dough.

The fully dough for me right now feels good,

but by the time it gets into production,

it might be a little too dry.

[Arturo speaking in non-English]

He's just gonna take it back,

fold in a little more liquid to it.

It's about 12:00 PM now.

That means we gotta start our focaccia.

[upbeat music]

I got Amalo here helping me out doing the mixing process.

This is about a three hour process.

I have to keep coming back and keep folding it.

So we build that nice structure.

We're gonna start mixing our yeast

with a little bit of water and olive oil,

the flour is on top and on the bottom we have salt.

The reason we don't want the yeast to touch the salt

right away is because it's gonna kill the yeast

and then it won't rise properly.

We're about doing eight kilos of focaccia every day.

So it's always a two-person job from beginning to end,

from starting it to finishing it.

So right now I'm incorporating the top layer very slowly

working my way down,

making sure I'm getting all the crevices in there,

making sure there's no dried flour, no crumbs.

So right now the focaccia is nice and folded in together.

This is the first initial step.

We've gotta let rest for 15 minutes,

and we'll come back to it.

Okay, so it's about to be 12:15,

and now we're gonna meet Rocky and Lerner from Truffle Boys.

As a CDC, this is very important to me.

So in our relationship with your purveyors,

talking about the product.

Where are these truffles coming from?

[Purveyor] These are from Abruzzo, Italy.

Some of the things that I look at

when I'm looking at truffle is how it feels,

the structure, the aroma, you know,

I'm looking for the size.

Of course, he always bring me the some of the first batches.

So I always try to pick my favorites.

Those are the great ones.

The size of a golf ball.

There's no blemishes.

There's no claw marks

from the dogs that we were hunting it.

Perfect, Rocky.

My man. Thank you, man.

[upbeat music]

Alright, so it's about one o'clock.

Some of my line cooks have started to arrive.

Here's what I'm starting to wrap up, all the PM prep,

doing the last finishing touches.

By now, the meats are already done,

so I'm gonna start taking that down.

The meat is nice, it's smoky, nice and red tint.

We put it right here,

and it's get it ready for the braise now.

That's our veal tongue and our beef cheeks.

So the goat has been in there for a couple hours now.

Before I flip it, I'll get some of this render fat

that I have down here from the goat itself,

and I'm gonna give it a nice little baste.

The main thing

that we're looking for is the crisp on the skin.

I'm gonna try to flip this goat right here.

So now we have the goat facing the other way.

You know, I usually try to give it a taste here.

Hmm, definitely tell the smoke it's in there.

The meat's rendering nice and good.

So we'll leave it here for another hour or so

till the other side is almost done,

but it's looking beautiful already.

Okay, so now it's about 2:20.

We gotta do the last flip for the focaccia.

[light music]

Here's where I'll be checking the structure,

the gluten development

and making sure it's ready to go for 3:00.

Focaccia process, we gotta do it every day.

I do it as a CDC just because it's a lot of technique

that goes behind it.

Not on mixing the products, but on folding the bread itself.

It's something that I always say,

I could give you the recipe to the dot,

but if you don't know how to fold it properly

and build that structure properly,

it's gonna collapse on you.

So the main thing that I'm gonna do now is do that fold.

So one last time, that way it has that structure.

What I'm looking for now is kind of tucking it in

so it becomes tighter.

There's also a thing of over folding.

If you over fold it too much,

you're gonna break that structure.

I like to feel it, feels nice, tight, dense,

compared to something like this,

has different type of elasticity.

So this last one should be able to do it.

Tightening it up.

Whoever starts the fold is who has to finish it.

Keeping the same rhythm.

I know I sound crazy,

but it tells whenever, whoever is folding it,

and it'll react very differently.

Once I hand it off to my sous chef Nate,

He's gonna do is gonna do the final step,

which is portioning it, and that's it.

At that point, the structure needs to be done.

So at that point there's no more folding involved.

You just gotta take it out, put it in the marble top here

that we're gonna be using here in a second.

He's gonna be just cutting it up,

weighing it, and that's it.

Alright, service is getting real close.

One of the last things I gotta do, get a couple spoons,

get a pin and go down the checklist.

[upbeat music]

This checklist right here is pretty much divided

between each station, which the main products

and different type of garnishes that we got.

Just making sure I get eyes on everything

and I get a taste on everything.

You know, as a chef, even when I'm not doing this,

it's my sous chef,

but that's the most important part of the step.

One of our sauces.

Put in a little thermos.

Stays hot all throughout service.

For chili sauce, tastes wonderful.

The most important part of the tasting,

especially for pasta station is to taste the water.

Every 30 minutes, I step off the pass and check the water,

just making sure it's seasoned all the way through,

'cause nobody wants to cook pasta in unseasoned water.

Delicious.

Wonderful, man. Great job.

[Cook] Thank you, chef.

Alright guys, final checkup is done.

We tasted every component.

It's time for me to get my station ready

and get ready for service.

[upbeat music]

All right, guys, let's have a good service.

[Crew] Yes, chef.

During service, my job is to steer the ship,

make sure everybody's working on the correct things,

everything's coming out at the right times,

and most importantly,

making sure everything is tasting up to par.

You know the guests can see us, we can see them,

they see every single one of our moves.

So we got all eyes on that.

Last line of defense, my job is just to keep our standard

and make sure everything's up to par.

Alright guys, the guests have arrived.

The tickets are working.

The place need to be hot, and I need to get started.

Get outta here, please.

[upbeat music]