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- When I think about Scandinavian food
I think about the purity of it.
To keeping everything true to its nature.
It's more about highlighting
what the land is giving us.
And then using simple
techniques to preserve it.
Everything from curing, brining, smoking.
All of those flavor profiles
are coming more than spices.
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Today is a very crazy day.
We are fully booked everywhere.
It's all hands on deck.
This is prime time.
Okay, really hot.
You guys are good?
- Oh yeah.
- Are you good, Leslie?
Yeah?
I'm gonna make the tuile
for the Arctic bird's nest.
Pastry has always been
very close to my heart.
It's what I've been doing for
the last 20 years of my life.
I always believe that the
finishing touch of a meal
could either help it, or
completely destroy it, so...
We have people that travel
here for this dessert
and it's helped my career in
so many ways, creating this.
I would think it got me my green card.
Doing some cocoa powder.
Just to get a little bit
more of a natural feel.
All right, now we're gonna bake it.
Hot, sorry.
I moved to New York in 2010.
I came on board as a pastry chef.
It was supposed to be for a year.
2014, I got the opportunity
to take over as head chef.
Not a position that I was
really comfortable in or taking.
It was only supposed to be temporary.
So this is the egg.
This is the base of it.
We mold the goat cheese parfait,
scoop out the center.
So in the middle of it
we're filling it with
a sea buckthorn curd.
Every portion is three eggs.
Every week we can sell up
to 100 portions of this.
My pastry department
love me for this dish.
They were all asking, when
are we gonna do just one egg?
One big egg instead of three small.
I said, maybe, and that
maybe never happened.
That year, later on in October we received
our two Michelin stars.
I'm still pastry chef and I'm still
the head chef of the kitchen but it was
an amazing opportunity
to be able to do both.
So this is dark chocolate.
We just need very, very little
and then we cover them just to make
them look a little bit more real.
So we have our little eggs.
That's about it.
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Everyone always wonders
why I put snow on it.
I always say in the Arctic
countries or in Sweden,
it's still snowing when the
baby birds are being born.
All right, time is running away.
It's 11:00 and service is about to start
and I need to check in on everyone
to make sure that they're ready.
So let's go up.
How many are they?
- [Cook] 62.
- 62, all you do is run.
We have a big lunch today.
80 people, so the salad has to go out
and then it has to flip
and then it's time for main courses.
It has to go fast.
Banquet has to go fast.
People wanna get in and out.
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- Nine.
(kitchen chattering)
Nine, 10.
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Five.
- Finish off the last two, three.
The main course is out.
Now we gotta get dessert out.
It's a bit of a beast.
Talking 60, 80, 100 people.
They wanna eat in an hour, less sometimes
and you gotta make it happen.
This is our chocolate cake
that we do for lunch.
My grandmother's recipe.
It's one of those things
that like even however good
it is, I can't really put a dish like this
on in the main dining room.
It has to be a little more intricate.
It's nice to have the opportunity over
in the big rooms.
What we don't use we dehydrate.
And we use it as the bottom of
the bird's nest, as the soil.
So we're sending this out now
and then by three
o'clock we have to switch
rooms because we have another
60 people coming in at 3:00.
It's a crazy day today.
Stay calm is the biggest tip.
As long as I don't hear
anything break, I stay calm.
Lunch and dining room, over.
Starting fresh, starting prepping.
And we're back up for dinner again
in a couple of hours.
All right so, our live
diver scallops from Maine
arrived this morning and
I will bring them out.
Our trout came in this morning.
They all come very beautifully wrapped.
So we'll get a batch of these every day
that gets shucked for service.
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That is really sandy.
It is bringing the whole sea in.
Including a lot of little fishes.
We always get those.
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I remember the first time I hold one.
It pulsates and still beats.
Quite a cool feeling.
We just lightly cure this
with some sugar and salt.
And take the skin off and
that's all you have to do.
I think the best part with having
a restaurant that has so
many different elements
in it is that you really do get experience
the whole range of cooking.
Everything from 100 people
sit-down dinners, receptions.
To the dining room where it's
more tweezer-friendly food.
I want everyone to look at a plate and go,
"It's almost too pretty to eat.
But I'm gonna eat it anyway.
Because it's gonna be amazing."
And you'll see on a lot of dishes
that you have a lot of
nice colors, gelées.
A lot of components that
are coming out of pastry
are bleeding into the
kitchen more and more.
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All right, it's 4:20 and
everything needs to get ready.
At 5:00 it's the call time
for everyone to be up here, on point,
on their stations.
We still have another 80
people in the banquet.
Full bar again.
There's no rest.
It's just go, go, go.
So we're doing our little potato chips
that we use for our caviar dish.
I think we use roughly like 50.
No, not 50 but maybe 20,
30 flowers per portion.
You'll see in the bottom of the dish
it's an egg and crème fraîche emulsion
on top of a small toasted brioche,
some Osetra Imperial Caviar.
I think it's one of the best dishes, ever.
I mean it's not a secret
ingredient, you know.
Potato, fat, egg, caviar.
The idea is just to think
outside of the box a little bit
and make it fancy.
It's 5:47 and everyone is on track.
So I can take a breath until
the first ticket comes in.
Order in, two caviar followed by two beef.
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When you're in an environment like this
you never know what's gonna happen.
You can be doing your little thing
in the dining room kitchen
and then banquet gets
slammed and you just have to
run out there and give them
10 minute of your time.
Let's go to banquet because
I wanna check in on them.
They're the focus.
I've always prided myself to be able
to do everything, but I've
scaled back a little bit.
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- The cod is searing.
Just keep an eye on that,
there's a hotel pan next to it.
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- [Manager] I just need a
wipe if you guys are standing.
- When I took over as
the head chef I tried
to be the best at everything
and it almost killed me on the way.
A wise person told me that, you know,
you're supposed to be the
conductor of the orchestra.
You don't have to be able to play every
single instrument perfectly.
You just have to know
how to make the music.
- [Host] Five.
- I'll switch up.
All right, so we got
through the worst push
in the banquet area, so now it's back into
the small kitchen again.
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Staying calm, even if you are in pain.
Like, try to look happy.
And I mean, you lead by example.
So nothing really good
comes out of craziness
and screaming and things like that.
So I always try and
focus on my inner self.
Of course, I have my moments as well.
But not as often.
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