For those of you who have experienced a real Chinatown dim sum restaurant, you probably already know what I'm talking about. Dim sum houses are typically mammoth enterprises, staffed by a veritable army of Chinese people making dumplings, pushing carts, yelling out orders and serving tea to feed a dining room pushing upwards of 120-150 tables. And big tables at that, often seating 10-12 people per.
Compare that to your typical sit-down Italian bistro and you are pretty much looking at two different creatures altogether.
Compare that to your typical sit-down Italian bistro and you are pretty much looking at two different creatures altogether.
But that doesn't mean they don't warrant comparison. They are, at their core, still restaurants. There are cooks, there are servers, there is food to be eaten and paid for. Fundamentally they are the same. But the operations and logistics require two separate states of mind, and in many cases two separate sets of skills.
If it isn't already apparent from my borderline-pathological need to control everything, I could never run a huge restaurant. There are more reasons than that I am a basket case of neuroses and compulsions but what it boils down to is that the actual management of a mega-restaurant, even just its kitchen, would probably have me in a corner, dissolving Xanax in a double of Jameson while chain-smoking 100s within 3 weeks. It is a nightmare of logistics, and I would only wish that sort of pain on my most dire of enemies.
That is, unless you don't really care.
Supplying, menu design, hiring, kitchen layout, those are all details that differ greatly between restaurants of various sizes. But the key factor that separates a small restaurant from a huge restaurant is details. There is simply no way to control details in a huge restaurant serving thousands of people a day. You hit a limit and you send food out or perform service that is less than perfect, not just because you accepted mediocrity, but because you are at the limits of human capacity.
If you're the kind of person who can accept that you are never striving for perfection, just okay. If you're the kind of person who likes to control details but only up to a certain degree, then fine. You can probably be at the helm of a mega-restaurant and not be on a steady diet of antidepressants and mood-stablizers within a year. But if you're anything like me, it's just never going to happen.
It is perhaps unfair to lambast a dim sum house. They are making no aspirations to be perfect just hoping for good. And if you can serve 2000 people a day "good" food, then that's more than an impressive accomplishment on its own. And me, of all people should empathize for the human element to restaurants in that there are mistakes and there are things out of one's control. And a dim sum house is on the far end of the extreme, a hyperbolic example. But I'm going to do it anyway just because I be sippin' on that haterade and it will be a useful mechanic for me to detail how I personally would envision running a restaurant.
I will detail the last trip I had to a dim sum house that was run by a chef who used to work at Pearl. He is a talented guy for sure, his carving and artistry are very impressive, anything from a block of ice to a butternut squash can be made in to beautiful sculptures. He even seems well-organized and motivated, something we rarely find in the cooks that come through Pearl, much to our dismay. But even still, having him influence the food in a positive way at such a large restaurant is like trying to shove a glacier off its route. It seems to have a mind of its own, and if its direction is not clearly set from the get-go it will continue on an implacable course towards mediocrity, or even doom.
We ride an escalator to the top floor of a Flushing mall. The whole top level is dedicated to this restaurant. I am not one to estimate square-footage, but I would put it somewhere between a metric fuck-ton and a number comparable to the population of Beijing. It is a big fucking restaurant and is designed, ever in Chinese fashion, in a clumsy merger of trite Western notions of classy decor and efficient methods of interior design. Think laced tablecloths and seat covers on a linoleum floor, mahogany pillars with gold trim and flashing neon lights, and a grand piano acting as throne on a marble and pink granite stage. Too many ideas, overstimulation, an architectural bout of epilepsy waiting to happen.
Two young, passably attractive girls dressed in qipaos lead us to a table. There are floor managers acting more like pit bosses dressed in cheap suits. They wander the floor with scowls on their faces and the kind of prepubescent five o'clock shadow that most Asian men suffer from. A huge cadre of Hispanic busboys and older Chinese women expedite the flow of service, and customers line up by the hundreds, huddled masses of hungry personified. It is a scene of utter chaos seemingly just held together by a constant rush of adrenaline and decisive action.
As soon as we sit down I notice the breakdown in details. The tablecloth isn't set so we sit there as a busboy lays a fresh one over the table cover, which is stained and seems to have gone without change for at least a few days. The teapot is covered in stray tea leaves and is too full, spilling out hot water at the merest tilt of an angle. And as we await the first few carts a stain left for us by the previous diners begins to seep through the new linens. Not a great start.
The gamble with dim sum is, did you get a fresh cart? Or has this one been milling around the dining room peddling the end of its wares before a refuel? It's basically a mobile steam table so as you reach the last few dishes in the cart, it begins to lose heat rapidly. (Much like the way a full cup of coffee will stay hot for quite a long time, but when you leave the last third of it for a few minutes it suddenly becomes uncomfortably cold. Such is my understanding of thermodynamics). There's no way to get hot and ready dim sum with every single cart, unless you come first thing in the morning. Most of it is just right, set on the table with steam wafting out in aromatic tendrils, but there are definitely a few items served under temp, and while they were in theory at one point very tasty, they now just sit there in tepid disappointment.
This is a problem for any cuisine. Timing hot food out of the window is a very difficult thing, but it is especially important in Chinese food. Why? Because we use so much goddamned corn starch to thicken sauces and corn starch does not do well once it goes under its optimal temperature.
A hot emulsified sauce like Hollandaise will become a bit gloopy before breaking. A butter-mounted sauce, like most pan-sauces, will begin to break and become grainy. And a roux-thickened sauce like bechamel will begin to seize up in to a cold, lumpy... thing. But corn starch-thickened sauces, like the ones Chinese people seem to be so fond of, will seem to combine all the worst attributes of under-temp sauces. They often require a last minute addition of hot fat in the pan to achieve a smooth mouth feel, or they can become tacky. They start to break almost immediately, the fat escaping from its brief and tenuous bonds with water, thus leading to greasiness. And then they go from tastefully sticky to regaining its original glue-like properties. It is not unlike what I imagine to have a horse jizz in your face. Unpleasant all around.
So while dumplings, steamed buns and vegetable cakes may not suffer terribly from getting to close to room temp, anything that has a sauce on it in a dim sum house (which is a lot of shit) will suffer tremendously. Thus I am left, this particular afternoon, prodding at a few dead clams sitting in a goo of ejaculate-like black bean sauce. It makes me sound horrifically pretentious (and not to mention raises a few question, what with all this talk of cumming on peoples' faces), but it was just ... inedible.
We order too much, as what always happens when going out to eat with my mom. It's not that we're severe gluttons it's just that we like to try everything and see what a restaurant has to offer. But even I am unable to channel my inner fat-boy long enough to eat everything before us. The mini bamboo steamers are piling up, the table becomes a cluttered mess and it's time to pack this shit up and go.
There isn't much to speak of in terms of service at a dim sum house. You flag down carts and maybe ask for some tea or chili oil, and that's the extent of your interactions with the floor staff. But still there are moments where they can rise to the occasion and here they stumble, as most Chinese people do when it comes to hospitality (more on that ... at some point, there is a thesis waiting to be written on Western concepts of hospitality and why Asian people can not embrace it).
We beckon over three different floor managers who all vanish trying to delegate packing our food up to some busboy. An older Chinese man, who must be some sort of backwaiter finally brings some boxes to start packing our things, but he is suddenly pulled away by a manager and we are left to pack our own food. No big deal. We leave a card out on the bill for someone to take it to be charged. No dice, no one shows. We don't want to leave cash out on a table in such a busy restaurant so we go wandering about until someone finally directs us to the cashier, which is located in a forgotten corner by the live fish tanks.
Now just from an experience stand point, the dim sum was decent and all the little details I ragged on aren't serial crimes, just things I notice because I'm a detail-oriented person and I have a deep understanding of how restaurants go about service. It certainly wasn't the best dim sum experience I've had, it ranks in the bottom 50% for sure, but for the price, which was about $20 a person and the cost-efficiency .. it is what it is. Dim sum is often more about the experience than the food, and it is one of the rare kinds of eating out scenarios where you can compile a whole big group of people and get in on a fast-paced lunch with incredible variety. It's generally fun, not a huge investment on the diners' part with regards to time or money, and hopefully good and plentiful eats.
So the details from a diner's perspective are obviously a bit lacking, but since we had a friend in a high place, we got a good look at the kitchen as well.
We greet the chef and he leads us back to the kitchen. We pass the obligatory live fish tanks because Chinese people love their live fish. I agree that freshness is integral to good fish, but when the fish has spent the last few days of its life essentially imprisoned, crammed in stressful quarters with a hundred bunk-mates... let's just say I prefer the fish that's dead and on ice for a day or two out of the ocean. Push-carts blast out of the gates, there is little sign that front and back staff recognize one another, and then we push through the doors to find the biggest kitchen I have ever seen.
The ceilings are vaulted, skyscraping really. On the right is a kitchen solely dedicated to the production of dim sum; a 4'x12' stainless steel table floured and prepped for maximum efficiency with looming combine steamers lining the walls. To the left is a long line of burners with 8-9 cooks manning just as many woks and there are a few empty spots (for reference we have 3 when running at max speed). One of them is clearly making an employee meal as he uses long-handled spoons to stir-fry a 40" pan's worth of vegetables. Opposite the hot line is a steel table with portable butane burners, the kind you make hot pot with, each worked by one cook preparing one specific dish be it braised snow pea leaves, or a ba-wan pancake or steamed cockles. And behind that is a massive convection oven and two menial prep boys making dan-ta, or egg custards in pastry by the hundreds. They serve each table a complimentary plate of these and they're quite tasty, but you have to be sort of in awe that this kitchen requires two people full-time to just make freebies for all its customers. Finally the kitchen snakes towards the back past the production side to reveal a colossal dry-goods and refrigeration area to store all their produce.
Besides the physical impressiveness of the kitchen what also strikes me is the amount of people, the hustle and bustle. There are so many cooks and staff one of them could not show up one day and I don't know how you'd notice. It's getting near 3 PM, that midday lull, and the kitchen is taking its time to receive shipments from their purveyors. The service elevator door is opening and closing at every available opportunity, and huge shipments of vegetables, frozen meat, and canned goods are stacked on dollies and wheeled about. There's no time and no persons available to check the quality of the deliveries, the chef trusts in his suppliers and signs off on invoices after a brief once-over as he continues a conversation with my mom.
My understanding of dim sum is is that it isn't a great moneymaker. The ingredients are cheap but you need a whole lot of staff, and this particular dim sum house makes things fresh every morning before they're sent out in carts. It's possible that this is a quality measure by the head chef, always fresh never frozen, like In-N-Out. But what is also possible is that it is impractical to freeze and store that much dim sum because space isn't free and they still have a whole dining room and banquet menu to wrestle with. It may just be easier and more cost-efficient to meet dim sum demands as they occur in real-time every morning. There's a decent amount of waste but it probably isn't outweighed by the manpower and physical space cost of storing and freezing dim sum all the time.
Hence they rely on dinner service and banquets to make money. Talking about banquets and the sheer amount of private rooms they have would take up several more paragraphs and I think there already is a sense of just how ambitious an endeavor this restaurant is. Surely it isn't run by just one owner or by just one chef, but even as a collaborative effort this restaurant is reaching an incredible scale. Though things fall through the cracks often and that is at least well-acknowledged, they are content on being B- students, just slightly better than average and raking in the cash.
This is what happens when you get some smart and motivated people together with the strict intention of making money. You get a group of investors, you pay a talented chef whole wheelbarrows of money to let him exercise his passion, and you market and advertise and market and advertise. The amount of cash that flows through that place is enough to launder the income of a whole drug cartel. And while there is respect to be had in such an endeavor, and they are certainly successful serving decent dim sum, it's just not something I could ever do.
If I've learned anything over my career it's that a restaurant experience can only hope to achieve greatness through an amalgamation of seemingly inane details. That's why chefs go nuclear when one little thing is botched or forgotten on a dish. Each diner represents a chain of service, actions, food and drink that is hundreds of links long. One weak or broken link can make all that work on everyone elses' part for naught because the diner is only ever going to remember that one mistake. No matter how gracious, understanding or appreciative that diner is they're always going to remember it as "It was great but..."
These details simply cannot all be attended to in a big restaurant. The chain spanning from just 20 diners can leave a house staff in a tangled mess of weeds so thick you can't see out of them. There are simply limits to human performance and you just have to make a decision. Did you get in to this to make a buttload of money? Or did you get in to this because you care about how your name becomes associated with quality? There is money to be had in both mindsets, but the latter ... well, it comes slower and more difficultly.
It starts at the reception desk. The person taking your reservation is the agent, not the gatekeeper. They don't rudely bar your way, they work with you to find the best way in and they do it with a fucking smile. Don't tell me you can't hear a genuine smile over the phone because you most certainly can.
Then when a diner shows up, the door is opened for them, there are a team of smiling but relaxed faces awaiting them. Diners are smart now, they can tell when professionalism and sycophancy are becoming uncomfortably close, they can sense sincerity. Uniforms are clean and crisp but not to such starched perfection as to become intimidating. Straight edges and hard corners are harsh, unwelcoming ... think rounded corners, warmth, open arms. They are lead to their table, but shouldn't be felt as if a dog being lead on a leash. The hostess walks at their pace even though she walks ahead, and she pulls an old-school maneuver in pulling out your table or your chair and making you feel comfortable with it even though most people aren't accustomed to that act of hospitality anymore.
From there it's touch and go, reliant upon a floor manager's ability to read the customer. Do they want to settle in, order a drink first before rushing to a menu? Are they scanning the dining room wanting some attention? Are they famished and would love nothing more than some bread and butter? Is this a first date? Is this a special occasion? Is this just an opportunity to eat something new, hopefully something exciting?
Tables are cleared nigh silently. Plates are never brought to a diner's eye level. As a server you are a ghost; invisible yet omnipresent when needed. But this is also variable. Some diners want a waiter who will take the time to talk to them, engage in a little bit of small talk, go through the whole menu with you to really figure out what you want to eat. Others want to be left alone and prefer you to be the shadow that you are trying to become. Some of them require a mixture of both, they want you never and yet they want you always. Be attentive, a minute to a busy backwaiter is less than heartbeat, but during an awkward lull at a table it can feel like an eternity. You have to know how to see it.
When you pour wine, you never splash it on itself. Wine is up there on the list of things that perhaps are too sacred, too pretentious, but you still must treat it as such. It is gentle, it is a woman, you pour it slowly and you never let it froth. Red wine is almost sanguinary, it should coat and drip down a glass at a noticeably slower pace than water. White wine varies greatly but it always connotes a sense of crispness to me, it should almost shine and "bounce" in to a glass.
And then comes food...
As I've detailed in my unnecessarily long ramble of thoughts, service cannot be broken down in to a to-do list of actions. It is an attitude that is unique to each restaurant. But when you're rockin' with the best it is at its core stringently professional. That's the only thing that doesn't change from customer to customer, you treat every single one with the execution that is expected of being the best. Otherwise it's highly variable, unique to every situation, always excruciatingly aware of details and choosing when and where to press the advantage. Food, though ... there's quite a bit more science to that and in my opinion that science is best executed in a small restaurant.
The way I see it there are three crucial ways in which a small kitchen outperforms a large one; ingredients, staff and timing.
There are many analogies I could use here, but what I'm going to go with is textiles and clothing. You can have two outfits that look identical but differ radically in composition. The stitching and seam-work can be poorly executed, and that will mean the clothing's durability and fit is compromised. And if you use inferior fabrics it just will never feel the same way as something cut from more luxurious cloth. They look the same, but perform completely differently. To some people it doesn't matter, if it looks good it looks good. But to others who care beyond superficial details, you only use the best.
Much the same can be said about chefs and ingredients. A chef is only as good as the ingredients he uses. This is a great part of the reason you're never going to have a fantastic steak at home. You don't have any equipment hot enough to give it a good fucking sear, and you don't have the beef that was raised on premium feed in humane quarters and slaughtered properly, and you don't have the means to dry-age it properly. You buying that discount T-bone from Kroger and trying to hold that up to the light of a 48-day, dry-aged porterhouse from Snake Farms is like trying to compare an on-sale suit from Men's Wearhouse to a real Armani, tailor fit. It's just not in the same ballpark and once you compare them side-by-side the differences becoming glaring.
Why a small restaurant excels in this manner is simply a matter of supply. Vegetables and fruit that are grown well simply cannot be grown in massive quantity. It goes against the whole point of raising them well. Relatively small plots of produce, tenderly cared for is what elevates a humble beet to something superlative. Even if it is organically grown and labeled (which is dubious I might add), if it originated on a massive plantation-like lot ... it just isn't going to be the same. I am reluctant to use the word "artisanal" but the word makes sense. It is especially noticeable in livestock. You could, and many have, written volumes on the subject but what it comes down to is happy, well-fed animals in an environment as close to their natural one as possible, living stress-free lives and slaughtered humanely taste better. I care less about the animal's happiness and more about the fact that it tastes good, and when you work with a product that incredible, it's just exciting.
When you roll back and think of the dollies of frozen industrialized meats being carted in by the caseload at the dim sum restaurant, you realize how impossible it is for them to source and cook quality ingredients. The budget can't handle it and neither can the purveyors.
The other issue is staffing. If a chef is only as good as his ingredients, a kitchen is only as good as its staff. When I was standing in that massive kitchen, clean and organized as it seemed, there was no sense of chemistry or teamwork. Maybe I'm amped up on too many feel-good, inspirational sports movies but I believe there is a definite quality of teamwork to having a good night of service day in and day out. When you have a kitchen requiring upwards of 30-40 hands on deck, how are you going to find that many quality cooks? Yeah sure, if you're Daniel Boulud there are an endless number of hopefuls waiting to be conscripted in to your army, but if you start out big as a no-name I think the best you can hope for is fresh culinary school graduates or washed-up veterans. Maybe one day you can play big, and maybe even if you're an exceptional leader of men you can make good out of a staff of mediocrity... but I don't put that much faith in myself. When the time comes, much as with my personal relationships, I plan to count on a handful of some really trustworthy motherfuckers who I can rely on in the shit.
The final factor that it really comes down to is service. You can have the best ingredients, the best cooks but if you can't make it happen on a Saturday night dinner rush then why the fuck are you here? Danny Meyer, in somewhat troll-like fashion, used to patrol the Union Square area restaurants on Saturday nights. Any place that wasn't busy he noted it as a property that was likely going up for sale soon enough. Saturday night is where you must thrive, it is the division playoffs every fucking weekend (the holiday season is the Super Bowl). Surviving that crush not only depends on a well-oiled front-of-house staff to put butts in seats at a reasonable pace, but rides on the backbone of the kitchen that must fight through the weeds.
Prepping lamb shanks for braise and pick-up is difficult enough. Doing that in a quantity for a hundred table restaurant, even with three minions on constant knife duty, is going to mean some inconsistent dishes. I believe in doing prep the way the best restaurants do it. One station, one cook. This gives the cook a sense of ownership and not an insignificant amount of pressure. You're prepping salad greens, mache and rocket for a salad ... if a customer sends back a wilted leaf ... the chef knows it's you. You got to take pride in your work and ensure that everything coming off your station is four-star quality.
And then there's timing. It's amazing how many steps go in to getting a roast chicken from cold and dead, to on your plate within 30 minutes of you ordering it. Big restaurants that do this kind of food, the clock-face plating (meat at 6 o'clock, veg at 2 o'clock, starch at 10 o'clock) at high volume are often called "turn and burn" joints. You don't think, there's very little finesse you just rock out at maximum speed and hope for the best. Sure, you don't want dishes sent back because that seriously fucks your rhythm, but for the most part... you just get it out there. If it's 93%, an A- dish ... that's good enough.
To me, unacceptable. They say at The French Laundry if a diner gets up to go to the bathroom while a plate is being finished, the dish is thrown out and the whole process starts over again (by thrown out they probably mean fed to some thankful staff member). It has to be sent out at optimal temperature, at the perfect time with perfect seasoning and flavor, a 100% every time, summa cum laude. If you're the chef, that's your name on every dish. Are you willing to stake your name on it? Are you willing to bet your reputation on that sauce that is beginning to break, or that green bean that is beginning to discolor? That's a question you'll have to ask yourself and many if not most cooks are going to be too stressed during service to care about the difference between a 97 and a 100.
But if you're ever going to be great, not just good, you go for nothin' but net every time.
EP6
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