4:30pm = family meal
In the restaurant industry, 4:30pm (give or take a half hour), normally means it's time for family meal. That time of day when everyone queues up, grabs a plate, and shuffles through a buffet-style line of hotel-pans filled with amazing or scary dishes the back of house (BOH) // cooks put together for the sustenance for the upcoming shift. See, bussers, dishwashers, cooks, servers, chefs, barbacks, hostesses, managers all need to eat just before taking care of those guests booked at 5:30, 6, 6:30, 7, etc in groups of 2-tops, 4-tops, and the occasional large party (pre-fixe only, please). How do we do this? What do we eat?
Well, it's not what you might think.
Sometimes, when I was serving a table, a guest would look me up and down and be like "oh how do you stay so thin? If I were you I would eat this food all the time and be fat!"
One: I go to a gym. Two: It's just my genetics that I'm slender. Three: There's no way in hell I'm eating that friend chicken and french toast and foie gras you just ordered day in and day out, unless that is, I'm a manager in some restaurants. Those dishes are for you. I get real deal.
For the most part, the staff of a restaurant eats what is called a family meal: something that a sous or cook puts together. Some days they are feeling INSPIRED and lay out a spread that I would literally slap my mom over. Some days, it was that beef that was just a DAY over serving to a customer (but, keep in mind that the Department of Health in New York City is SO STRICT on "expiration dates" that the "day over" date is legit like a week from actual expiration in your own home). NYC DOH is trying to keep is mad classy).
So, I reached out to two of my fave chefs to talk to me about their favorite or, more importantly, most memorable family meals.
sunny lee (Stone Barns, eleven madison park, insa)
Rigo redefined family meal for me.
He wrapped masa into fresh corn husks, and blended salsa verde as he would for his own beloved family in Puebla, Mexico. I remember the day he showed me his mother’s recipe for carnitas. He took a pork shoulder and seasoned it with a secretive blend of spices, which definitely included cumin. He fried it in pork fat, then deglazed with what must have been half a gallon of milk, Coca Cola, and four oranges, quartered and juiced. He threw the orange skins in with split garlic and onions. Rigo braised this concoction for three hours, during which I watched him lovingly stir the pot every 15-20 minutes. This 5’5” jolly Mexican man is reminiscent of every grandmother who has ever lived and cooked for her family. He cooks with the utmost love and care for the food and for the people he is cooking for.
And he makes the best damn carnitas.
morgan Schofield (il buco,Isa, olmsted)
Restaurant family meals can run the gamut between semi-inedible fuel, and fantastic outlets for resourcefulness and creativity. The meal is typically made from odds- and- ends and dubious foods just about to go in the garbage, so it can yield some strange mashups e.g. jalapeno, mashed potato, ground beef, pasta. Under the right circumstance, it can be an ode to the great cuisines that have grown out of poverty and hardship: where a little meat had to go a long way, where flavor had to be coaxed from every scrap and wilting cabbage leaf, and where the meal was meant for a long day of hard work.
One of the joys of working in NYC restaurants is rubbing shoulders with people from all over the world. At one point I was the only American in a kitchen with co-workers from Haiti, Columbia, Peru, and West Africa. The rotating burden of family meal would bring out some techniques from the old country, family specialties, and creative adaptations of national dishes.
One family meal that I think back on fondly came to be known as “Tiki chicken”;. It was the highlight of our Sunday afternoon. “Tiki Chicken”, not because it was Tiki in any way Polynesian, but because it was made by Habib “Tiki” Thiam. A native of Cote D’Ivoire, Habib would blend hot peppers, fresh tomato, onions, garlic, ginger and add it to a pot with coconut milk and chicken then boil it hard for an hour. With a side of Uncle Ben’s rice and chopped chilies macerated in salt and lemon juice, it was everything a somewhat hungover line cook needed to get through a Sunday service. It was also the only time that all the cooks and porters would gather around a 2 liter of Cola and enjoy a real family meal together.