How Two Master Chefs Run the Only Michelin-Starred Korean Steakhouse — Mise En Place

All right, let's get started. This marinated short rib is the last portion of our butcher's feast at Nomakase. And we call it the meat dessert, kind of. It's sweet, crispy. We go through a ---- ton of meat. I believe we go through about 3,000 pounds of beef per week. People might think that we work at a steakhouse so that we could be like sick and tired of the meat, but we're not. Cutting this, marinating this, eating this is so much fun. But a lot of time, too. A lot of time and effort. What you're gonna do is just push both of them together and you're just gonna work your way down. Short rib is considered like a, not like a super high-end cut, but the reason why the short rib is so expensive is because it needs a lot of knife work. Now, unlike conventional steakhouses, we need to create a lot of fermentation process, which takes meticulous. You need to clean it really well. You need time to age it. It means ---- ton of work. There's a nice feeling about taking this clean off like this. I mean, I guess if you do this long enough, you just kind of get into the groove and something just feels like, oh, that's a nice cut, that's a clean cut. So, this is cleaned. From here, we're just gonna take this down. Once you cut this in half, you'll really see the marbling. People think that, hey, like, you cook every meat on the table. Little do they know, you know, it's definitely a very labor-intensive operation. Final butchering stage of the short rib. It's gonna be scoring on the diagonal, like so, making sure that we're not cutting all the way through. And then we're gonna flip it around to the similar thing. Don't cut all the way through. And if you do it correctly, once you pull it out, it should kind of go a little stretch. Short ribs usually are prepared as a braised item, longer cooking techniques, but if you do this with the correct marinade, you can cook this under like four or five minutes and it'll still be very juicy, tender, a lot of flavors, and it kind of stretches like an accordion. So, like, for me, like, this volume from the get-go was just a normal day. Mountain of short ribs, for sure. As a chef, like, having a really great product is something that's not granted. It just makes me really proud. When you look at a swan, you know, gliding through the pond, you know, they look so graceful. Underneath, they're paddling like hell, you know? And I think that's what our operation is. So, after this, we're gonna put it into our carbi marinade that's made in-house with all of our lovely fruit juices, and it sits in the marinade about minimum of six to eight hours before it's served. All the food that we do over here, there's nothing that we can make it on the fly. If we don't pay attention from the beginning, then the result is wrong, then we can't really, like, fast-forward anything. So, after the short rib, we probably have another, like, six, eight more cuts to cut. It's a morning of butchery today. A lot of times, when you look at the coat, it's get lit and have a lot of fun, but, you know, you can't achieve that without genuinely putting in the time, the muscle, the sweat, and the tear. Yeah, so, right now, these guys are preparing for dinner service. The sink on the right is our scallion salad mix, which goes to every table. They julienne or cut the scallion with our scallion machine, and to cut scallion like this by knife will take us days, a week, where it broke, and we had to, like, there were six of us with knives just trying to julienne this for, like, hours. That happened to me when I first joined the team. Like, it was a Friday night, Saturday night. I don't want to go back. And you guys, you just got to see how dense this thing is. It's just, like, oh, I can't even pick this up. These guys are probably going through, like, four, six cases of scallion, five, six cases of lettuce, and this is on a daily prep so we can feed our guests a lot of vegetables. Coat is a steakhouse, but we are also a Korean steakhouse. I'm from Korea, so is both of our chefs, so it was a very important mission for us to bring forward authentic flavors of Korea. So this is the first process of making the kimchi. So we take the outer leaves that are a little bit wilted, and what we didn't want to be is this kind of a westernized, Americanized version of Korean flavors. And usually the stem is the part that gets salted the least, so we just crack it open so there's more area for the salt to penetrate. Salting is the most important part. If you mess up on the salting, the cabbage won't eat the marinade so well, and instead of being crunchy, it's gonna get a little bit mushy, and that's when you kind of fail. So this process, there's no cheating, like there's no fast forward for this one, like literally every single leaf has to be salted. If you cheat, you waste 10 to 14 days worth of your time. Right. So this is called the cheonilyeom, which is a thousand day salt, which is typically, like, super coarse. In Korean there's a terminology that says sonmat, which is your taste of your hand. It's a key aspect of Korean cuisine because a lot of the recipe says taste of the hand. And usually when we do kimchi in Korea, usually like three moms are like together, and they get like piles of cabbage. Aunties, your whole family, yeah. And then it's like a huge, huge, huge kimchi production going on over there. My parents and my family know that I work at a Korean steakhouse, Korean restaurant. But when I tell them like I'm making like six cases of kimchi a week, they'll be like, what are you doing making kimchi? Oh, you went to culinary school to make kimchi? I could have taught you that. So after this video goes out, we might get a lot of calls from family. My background, like, after school is from John George. Basically, like, both of us were coming from a French-based restaurant. I never thought that I was gonna cook Korean food, but here he is. Here I am, and then I really like it because when I came here, I was like, oh, this feels like home, you know, because I know kimchi, I know galbi. After a certain point, you kind of look at yourself or think back, it's like, what now? The more and more you think about it and what holds dear to your past, I think it really starts to bloom. I think that's why we're here. But now it's like on the wrestling scale, so it's a little bit stressful, but it's fun because we always try to perfect everything. So these guys are gonna sit for about 12 hours and it'll be ready to be stuffed with our marinade. All right, so you wanna make sure that there's a crunch. Otherwise, when you ferment, it's not gonna have the texture that you're looking for. Salty, crunchy. Everybody can scoop to their potel pans and we're gonna stuff it just like the salt, making sure that we get in between each leaves. So once you stuff it nicely, we're gonna put it into this bucket, have this closed off, fermented in the walk-in for about 10 to 14 days. Two, four, six, eight, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 30 buckets of kimchi at a time that's being stored in the walk-in. It's our secret sauce, right? Sourcing to us is probably one of the most important things. So right now, we have two kinds of caviar on our menu. We're actually looking to expand our caviar program. Owning a restaurant, we get to taste a lot of different things, but tasting caviar never gets old. This is definitely one of the greater perks. So I brought in six different kinds. We want to bring really, really difficult-to-find caviar. Having a great relationship with your vendors really helps. Ideally, I'm looking for something that's actually gray, with almost like a white hue to it, grayish white. Oh, I see. But our restaurant is a little darker and moodier. That kind of lighter pop kind of brings that kind of excitement to the table. This is the hybrid that we already currently serve. Oh man, that's so delicious. There's a reason why we use this, huh? And I have brought in today white sturgeon from California, and I also brought in another species that's a Siberian from Uruguay. If you want to taste it, taste a lot, right? So you can actually taste the whole thing, right? All the big chefs do that. The next one, you should try the Supreme. Supreme, yeah, it's white sturgeon, and it's very aged. But it's very pleasant salt. It's not the kind of bitter, salty. The next shipment, I'm going to send you something. I have to really pick, when I open 10 tins, maybe one. I want big pearl, different flavor profile, kind of gray with the whiter hue. Okay. If you can create that. I can create that. I'm going to start raising new fish. Xiaoxing, thank you very much for coming. So all the trays that you see, they're building. This is a big part of the morning production, and our opening runners and the prep team, they really get into this banchan program hard. This is for every table that's going to be dining with us tonight. Kimchi to pickles to sesame leaf. We're going to work on the raw bar. I think SK prepared some awesome seafood. Super excited, what you got? Live king crab, live spotted prawns, and live razor clams. I'm excited, bro. Cool, let's do this. Last year, we introduced our seafood platter. You know, we call it the Grand Plateau. And we got this amazing king crab. All live. Damn. Look at that. It's missing that junusekwa, so we're actually trying to see what we can add to add that final shine on that diamond ring. So we're going to do a ceviche form of razor clams. Spot prawns, all live. So sweet, so we're just going to serve it raw. So Chef SK and Chef David, they're the culinary powerhouse behind this operation. Normally, a steakhouse is not necessarily a concept that requires very powerful chefs, whereas Cote, that's where it all comes from, you know? Butchering all day, and then into like getting this gastronomical techniques, how to poach, how to cook, how to saute, or how to blanch. But this is when our chef mentality really comes together. We're like, boom, how do I make this the most awesomest king crab that we can make? Cote, we want to position ourselves somewhere in between a steakhouse where everything's just a funnel through, and there is a super chef-driven, creative restaurant. I think somewhere in between lies a perfect spot. All right, and we're going to let this sit. All right, first here is the oysters. I feel like Simon Kim is a medium. I try to kind of stay in between what customer wants and what chefs want to do. So initially, the tension between the chef and my vision has been kind of difficult in the beginning, but at this point, we've been open for four years. We really work just like one being. Dealing with Simon's little, I'm just going to say it, pain in the butt, he wants to be the best version of it. But he's always a great supporter, you know? Like, yes, he pushes, but like we all know where he's coming from. Like, we only want to get better. Working in the kitchen, you kind of lose the mentality of what the guests want, because you're always focused about what do I want to do? What do we want to do? We really want to respect the guest's perspective, and Simon brings definitely a big portion of that. So I think this iteration, we're going to try to meet all of his requirements to bring the best of what they have in the market currently. Yeah, we love caviar here. I think we've definitely made a different iteration of the ones that we've had in the past. Decided to put the caviar on top to give that super luxe feeling. I mean, we'll probably sit down with Simon, and he'll give a ---- a little bit, and then we'll figure it out. Basically, he's going to be like, okay, that looks good, but now we're going to talk about the food cost. It doesn't make sense. And we're going to need to charge about $250 for one. And then he'll be like, no, I think that's a little too crazy. And then we'll be like, okay, these are the ones that you liked, and then we did it, and then what can we do, you know? What's going on, chefs? What's going on, Simon? All right, so we've looked at a little bit of a different version of our tower, and the middle tier is where it really went luxe. It's really beautiful. I think the razor clam's going to be very difficult to eat. Unless you're very crafty with your chopstick, I think it's going to be a little difficult. Maybe we get individualized thing per person so that everyone gets one, and then they can do that. Because if I'm with four of my friends, if I make a mess, I'm going to be embarrassed. What is this? Spotted prawn? Yeah. Well, it was live, huh? Yeah. Only the best. It's sweet, yeah. The spotted prawn looks really good. I don't know, caviar on top. It definitely looks like a crown jewel, for sure, right? But in terms of elevation-wise, right? Being in such a top position, it's going to be a little difficult, right? Because imagine, I'm assuming that elevation-wise, it's going to be not that easy to put together. Otherwise, customer has to do this, and that's not that fun either, right? So I think we need to figure out something that's a little easier to take from the top. But otherwise, I love the king crab. I think it's going to taste super delicious. Live, huh? Yeah, all live. That's awesome. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, king crab is definitely, I mean, in terms of costing, do you think, what do you think this is going to be? I think it's going to be pretty pricey. King crab only has six legs. And there's two of them? Yeah. I think we're definitely on to something, but I think we need to figure out, A, we don't want to make it too expensive. I think the entire Grand Plateau should be less than $225 for sure, right? I think caviar can be just an add-on, right? So if somebody wants it, caviar should be, right? Because this thing is going to be $120 right here, right? Right, it is, yeah. Yeah. Looks good. All right. Let's keep moving. Thank you, Chef. We got beef coming in. At Steakhouse, everything starts and ends with beef. Beef is king. We got American Wagyu flat iron. And of course, trimming is a huge part of it because we receive everything and we need to now take out the silver skin and then make it just really presentable. Oh, look, more short ribs. Spread comes in almost every day, maybe twice a day if we have effort of running behind. It all depends. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I don't know what they're doing with it all, but what they do is not only the rib meat, but with the short ribs, with the chuck flap, with the flat iron, stuff that's really not typically considered like a prime cut or a premium cut is unbelievable. So what we have here is Imperial Wagyu flat iron, which goes on our Butcher's Feast. So Butcher's Feast is the foolproof way of enjoying Korean steakhouse. I just gotta say, this flat iron probably one of the most underrated cuts of the cow. So the reason a lot of people are turned off by this cut is because of this. So inside, there's this thick membrane, or we call it the sinew. So this part, it's hardly noticeable. It kind of blends in with the beef. We're just gonna go straight down the middle and take off the hard sinew, the chewy part of this beef, and you'll be able to grill this and slice, and it'll be a very tender steak. And that's it. Next, ribeye. So we have our own dry-aging room. Number one, because it's a swag. So this is our dry-aging room. I'm gonna be taking out a couple of the ones that are ready. We age them about 45 days minimum, and we'll cut it, portion it, and we'll be ready for service tonight. It's so important that we receive the best beef, and that beef never leaves our sight. The meat is dry-aged, so when you cut, it's a little, just gotta be more mindful if you follow the lines. We're in full control of our aging room. It's important that we are in control of every aspect of our steak. Show you the way. See, simple. We're just gonna go straight to the saw, and then we're gonna cut it into about inch-and-a-half thick cuts. Not a lot of restaurants have bandsaw because of its dangerous space, whatnot, but we figured this is gonna be a key component into our operation. And all of these are good to go. And what Victor's gonna do is he's gonna scrape off this fat, and he'll clean it up nice. The next step after this is, we use this part of the fat on the grill. So when we butcher, normally we would take this part. Next, we'll take this off the bone. So this will be used for the butcher's feast, and the cap, or the spinalis, will be used for the omakase. All right, we have the last part of, oh, we have the last part of our butcher's feast, which is the hanger steak. You know, back in the day, when you go to a Korean barbecue restaurant, you needed to go with a Korean friend. If I have to pick one cut that I hate to cut the most, it's probably the hanger steak, because it never comes in the same size, same shape. So this sits close to the organ, so it's definitely a bit more iron-rich. I feel like this represents the best translation to what beef is supposed to taste like, in my opinion. So it always has two sides, larger muscle on one, thinner muscle on the other. So we wanted to demystify, right? You can walk in and order a butcher's feast, and you'll get everything that authentic Korean guy ordered at a Korean barbecue restaurant. And one side is clean. You know, many houses, if you were to cook this in-house, I think it's okay to leave a little bit of the gray on, but since we're gonna present it raw to the table, just wanna go down the middle, follow this line that's never a straight line, but more a slanted, horizontal line. Skin, the silver skin. We like to wrap the beef. I think it definitely absorbs the blood, which prevents it from oxidizing. But at the same time, I think it dries the beef a little bit more, which gives a nicer crust. So this is gonna be our butcher's feast pork for four. So what we wanna do is make sure that it is thick enough so that they can grill. This is the hanger steak. Next, the ribeye. So Code is kind of perceived as a fancy restaurant, because it is. You know, we have the best beef that money can buy. Flat iron. But if you came here and only ate butcher's feast, it can be in and out at $58 per person. And then the marinated short rib. So that'll be the feast set. This smokeless grill that's in the center of every single table is center of Code. It's the most important piece. Steak is like a brand new Mercedes Benz. The moment it leaves the lot, which is a charbroiler, it depreciates in value, you know? So what we did is we brought the power plant, which is a charbroiler, out to the table. If you wanna ball out. Our steak omakase. It's about seven different cuts. And we're gonna go from a very lean cut, the filet. Next cut will be the skirt steak. Here's the ribeye cap. You know, you get to eat all different beef, but it's very small portion, you know? It's about delighting your palate as opposed to consuming large amount of beef. And then the coat steak, American chuck flap tail. So that's the omakase for four. This would also be finished with our marinated short rib. We got through most of our butchering. I think Victor's got a few more things to do. Most of our runner teams are starting to show up, getting ready for service. We have a lot of regular customers that we're very grateful to continuously. They patronize us. So we wanna bring something new. Next thing we have is Kobe A5 beef. We want to bring a really, really difficult to find beef. Never got a chance to ever cut this. Probably one of the most expensive cut in the earth. $300 per pound, right? Uh-oh, moment of truth. So we have the Miyazaki that we serve currently a coat, and this is the Kobe ribeye. So, so that it doesn't flare up, I'm gonna trim this fat a little bit. Shall we? Excuse me. All right, so we got our charcoal grills ready. Only thing we're gonna do is a little bit of salt. So all of these things that people have heard of it, we want to be the one that actually taste it and vet it. You know what, I'm gonna pull this as is. And make sure that we bring value and quality to our customers. I'm kinda nervous to cut it, but you know what, let's try it out. And you know, 99.9% of Kobe in America are not really Kobe. This is actually, you know, born and raised and slaughtered in Kobe. This is my third time eating Kobe beef. Third time? Well, lucky you, huh? First time for us. All right, let's do it. I'm gonna do actually Kobe first, yeah. Okay. Exploded and disappeared. The fat is really light, right? It's not as heavy. Super, very different, yeah. I mean, if you even see the cutting board, the amount of fat that came from the Miyazaki compared to the Kobe is completely different. This just eats so much smoother. It does. It doesn't really build that much strong on the fat, right? How much more expensive is this? Double. It's double, okay. The question is, is it worth the double the price? I'm not 100% sure yet. I think what we should do is we should just feature it, let's special it, and see how our customer react to it, and then see how that goes. Very excited about this. So it is 4.30. Chef started putting final touches on his mise en place in 30 minutes. Guests are gonna be lining out the door, so we're gonna get busy. Thank you. Yes, we actually have a really exciting thing that's not on the menu right now. We actually got some Kobe beef. I believe it's going to be $64 an ounce to send you off. A lot of new staff here, right? It's a good amount, right? So there's a lot of information to learn, right? But at the end of the day, hospitality is about making our guests happy. The hospitality of pleasing people doesn't start at five o'clock, but it starts now, right? We please each other. We create a culture where we are constantly in habit of making each other happy. And when the five o'clock comes, customer comes in, it's natural for us to make them happy, right? So much love. Thank you. It's about five o'clock. So a quick line check. We have our egg souffle, soybean stew, kimchi stew. We want to make sure everything that is our mise en place, which is the things that we need for service, is correct. We might have to season the kimchi stew a little bit. And we got a big first push ahead of us, so let's get ready. First push. Okay, we're gonna take three shrimp, five oysters, table 62, fire steak tartare. Bacon and steak tartare, table 65. Can I have that two oysters for omakase, please? Service. Can we take oysters, table 32. Two steak and eggs, table 22. For me, dining experience is about having fun, you know? Of course, there's a nourishment and the ingredient has to be great and the technique has to be great, but I want to bring real joy. When our customers come in and, you know, that little dryage fat, you know, we kind of purposely leave it on the thing for a little longer so it kind of renders. And we go like, boom, and the flame just goes up. People go, wow. And as a restaurateur, those kind of small moments of where we wow our customer is so important. Follow by, can I have one, two, three, four scallions, please? 15 should be left. Go, go, go. Now the hotline's gonna get busy with all the stews coming in. Fire two stews. 23 out. 33 out. Next table, 64. Oh, damn. SK, four ounces of Kobe on the board. Okay, guys, next we're gonna go table 31 with the four ounces of Kobe. Table 22 and table 34. Next, 61, Pedro, if we can go, 61. So I'm from Korea, you know, I became an American and I have a love for both of those cultures. It's who I am. It makes me, Simon Kim is Korean and American. So it's ultimately a steak dinner, but there's a lot of elements that's hidden in there. Customer doesn't feel like they're going to a Korean restaurant when they come to Coke, but ultimately they're enjoying Korean flavors and way of eating. That approach is something that I really appreciate about Coke. We're done with the first push. As soon as we send out the last two stews, we're done. What's going on? What's going down here? Pretty rocking upstairs. Yeah, I mean, first turn was pretty hard. You ready for the next round? Yeah, of course. Thank you. Always a pleasure. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Always a pleasure. Thank you. When our customers leave Coke, I want them to feel like they had the best time of their lives, and they ate the best freaking steak that they have ever ate, and I think that's it. Simple. They had the best freaking time, and they ate the best steak in their lifetime, and let's do it again.