A Day With the Grill Master at NYC’s Best New Steakhouse

[upbeat music]

Graciela is an Argentinian Tavern.

Graciela, right now, I'm in English,

maybe you call it grill master.

Argentina we call the parrillero.

That's the person that is in charge of cooking the meat.

Yeah, it's one of the biggest grill I've seen,

at least here in New York, eight feet long.

Charcoal is the main source of extra flavor

that we give to the beef.

The rest of it's just a pure beef flavor with salt.

We have really good steak,

but this is much more than a steakhouse.

Many people consider that Don Julio

is the best steak restaurant in the world.

Yeah, Don Julio, I was grilling, when Mr. Paulo Rivero,

the owner of Don Julio, said,

We're going to open a restaurant in New York.

I said straight, Yes.

And we are really looking forward

to build up this team, here in New York.

Good morning. It's 10:00 AM. Welcome to Graciela.

My name is Nicolas. I'm the chef.

Let me introduce you to the team.

[upbeat music]

So welcome to the restaurant.

Let me take you to the main stage.

This is the grill. It was made by Grillworks.

If we include the Josper,

we got around 12 feet of firepower.

Mechanism is really simple.

We lit the fire inside of the firebox.

This wheel right here lets you put up and down the grill.

I think it's one of the most important aspects

in the parisha to learn how to control heat,

how to spread the embers,

and how to cook in an open fire kitchen.

Right now we got our meat delivered,

so we're going to take the steaks

that we're going to butcher today.

[mellow music]

This is the produce that arrived today.

What we do with the beef, mostly Argentinian one,

is we keep them vacuum sealed.

It's really important for them

to continue their aging process.

They wet age. We let them age for around 28 days, 30 days.

That delivers a unique flavor

and tenderness to the meat

that you cannot find with dry age.

I just take the meat upstairs.

Now we're going to start opening the bags

for the steaks, inspecting them.

If they need trimming, we do the trimming.

These steaks that we have here going to be served tonight.

For the rib-eyes, we aim for 16 ounces.

And for the strips, we aim for 14 ounces.

Going to cut strip right now.

Strip is from Argentina, from the Proveros Rioplatense.

We actually build this program in Buenos Aires with them.

It's grass fed and it comes from La Pampa.

Got the grow excites portion. Yeah.

14.55.

New York's rib is not such a fatty cut

in Argentinian cattle,

but we can see a nice infiltration here.

The white fat is a good indicator

of grass fed, no grain involved.

That's the drill there in Argentina.

We grow nearly all the cattle this way.

Getting this beef to the country was a little bit tricky,

but when we got this product,

I think all the team was amazed with the great quality

and the actually availability that we're going to have,

because this, it's really exclusive to us here at Graciela.

Grass-fed meat tends to have a pure beefy flavor.

I think most of the grain-fed meat,

I think they are a little bit chewier

and they develop like a gelatinous taste.

I will move on to rib-eye right now.

So this is Argentinian rib-eye.

When you cut steaks, you usually want long strokes.

You don't want to saw the meat.

You saw the meat, you get like a weird pattern.

This actually looks like really amazing.

There's a very special technique the landlord taught me

for cutting steaks, mostly for bigger pieces,

you just tuck in your elbow through your ribs

and you just draw a straight line.

That rib cage helps you to guide the hand straight.

For this, you need like really steady hands.

So you go and you,

and you get an even piece.

We go around 300 portions of rib-eye a week.

It's a huge amount of mise en place to do.

Nailed it.

First try.

I was trained with Leandro, the grill master at Don Julio.

First thing we did in the morning

was go through a lot of rib-eye, a lot of strip.

So that was my main training.

I don't know an amount of steaks

that I have been processing my whole career at Don Julio

and Al Graciela, but it's really a lot, quite a lot.

At Don Julio, we do 500 kilograms

of meat per day, around that.

So just imagine. [chuckles]

I worked for five years there.

I just layer them like so.

[upbeat music]

Right now we are done for meat slicing.

We're going to pop this in the fridge

and let's continue with the day.

[mellow music]

Right now we're going to lead the Josper on the grill

so we can start our morning mise en place, mostly vegetables

that need to get charred or ember roasted.

Josper is charcoal oven and the brand is from Spain.

Here's where I store the charcoal.

We have bigger storage downstairs,

but for service we have this reservoir here

and that's how I cut myself.

This charcoal, it's a really special one

because of the wood it's made of.

It's quebracho blanco.

This delivers a really nice flavor

and the temperature

or the heat that it transfers to the grill

and to the meat, it's even all the way through.

The nicer thing about this it's national Argentinian tree.

We import this charcoal also from there,

as we do with our meat and some of our spices.

This consumes at least three bags per service, maybe four,

and in grand total we do 10 to 12 bags per night.

For cooking meats in a grill, you need the firebox

just because you need the embers to be really lit.

And when the embers are undercooked, they are black

or they have flame on it, it transports to the meat,

tastes like gas.

When you get all the embers cooked,

you can bring them down to the grill.

We actually have a tool for that. It's right here.

In Spanish, they are called adisables.

What we do with this is just take charcoal

from the front area to underneath the grill,

and we also use them to move the embers around

so you get the ashes out of the ember

and you keep that constant heat all the way through.

We're going to use these fire starters.

It's like wood chips with a little bit of wax on it,

so they burn really easy.

For this restaurant to run coals,

don't get the customer's water with the smoke.

There's a filter in this hood.

We actually have also a system

of self-cleaning for the hood.

We have mainly two sets of grills.

This grill is round grill and this is a V-shaped grill.

They serve different purposes.

In this one you can get an even browning

on, for example, proleta or mosheja

or the chorizos that we make here in house.

And with this one, you need to V-shape toward this canal

for fat dripping towards this side,

not getting fat to render and start burning in the coals.

And now that the grill is lit,

we are going to move on with the next task.

[mellow music]

Okay, right now we're going to make chorizo.

We have the pork fat, the pork shoulder

and meat for chorizo.

It is a spice mix that we develop in Argentina

in Osculio butchery shop.

We actually bring the paprika

and what we call a jimolido from Argentina.

It's like chili flakes.

They're from the north of Argentina, from Cachi Valley.

First, we need to grind our meat,

so we're going to alternate

in between pork fat, pork meat, and steer meat.

[grinder whirring]

Temperature here is very important.

That's why we have all the pan with ice underneath,

so we keep the temperature low.

If the meat was too warm,

it's not going to be nice and coarse as this.

The difference between chorizo in Argentina,

other than tradition,

it's mostly the spice mix that we use.

For example, in Spanish chorizo,

maybe you have more of the smoky flavor of their paprika

and Mexico focuses more on herbs,

maybe oregano or something like that.

We prefer just pure meat flavor.

For the next step you want it also really cooled down.

That's why we keep the ice here.

This is wine that has been sitting overnight

with garlic just to infuse it.

And for the chorizo right now,

we are trying to make a seasonal concept

and we're using some dried tomatoes for the mix.

So we're going to add the spice mix, wine and the tomatoes.

Gently knead it to distribute everything uniformly,

but you don't want to overwork this mix.

Chorizo is part of the asado.

Asado can means a lot of things.

It's a cut, short ribs,

but also means the event in which you gather people

around wood fire oven to eat dinner, mostly meat.

When I'm going to introduce you to this stuffing machine,

the pressure comes from down to the top

and you want the least amount of air possible here.

So you're going to slap the meat

inside of the machine.

If we get air inside of the machine,

it will translate to air inside of the chorizo

and that will yield a pretty bad result.

You even out the surface and you're ready to go with this.

For the casings, we use just natural casings.

This is pork or hogs casing.

For the salchicha, we use sheep casing.

When I found like a little bit of air pockets,

I just puncture a little bit of casing

so we can get that air out of the chorizo.

We're just going low and slow.

Now we have to portion them

and they should weigh around 160 grams.

So we twist.

Yeah.

And we go with the following one.

It should be around the same size.

But now when you twist, you have to twist

through the opposite direction

for them to keep the separation here.

I'm going to keep portioning this

and twisting them for the next couple of minutes.

And after that we're going to keep moving through the day.

[mellow music]

For now we're going to open our briefing.

We're going to discuss a little bit of the things

that are going on with service, how many covers,

and we're going to say thanks for Yamil for his work.

No major menu changes today, but one heads up.

If you weren't here yesterday, we switched the pricing

of the empanada from 12 to 14 per piece.

And remember, Friday and Saturday

crowds are a little bit quicker.

They do have shows to go to, so keep me informed at the door

so I can turn those tables accordingly or going through.

Let's have a great Friday service. Let's kick some ass.

Let's make some money, okay?

[group applauds and cheers]

[light jazzy music]

Okay. Just a few minutes before service.

This is how I set my station.

When I'm refilling salt, we use salt from Argentina.

We bring this to the restaurant.

I have the sport towels to clean, sanity wipes to sanitize.

I got my needles here, very handy.

We measure temperature with my tiny needles.

I like them because they retain heat better.

The most thermo-sensitive part of the body is the lip skin,

so you go underneath here

and you can feel the temperature here.

Okay during service I will be mainly cooking grill.

It gets really hot.

First order got in, it's our Angosto strip.

Bar portions usually are the regular portion

that we cut in half for the bar.

I'm cutting for the bar portion.

I salt it in this wire rack

because normally in service I will use this for cooked meats

and this for salting and maintaining.

When they're ready to start working,

when the first course already walked,

I'm going to place them over here

or here in the grill so they start to cook.

And as they get the crust

and the grill marks,

I will start putting them here on the top

so they finish cooking, but more slowly.

Here up top, you got less heat, medium heat, high heat,

so you get to play with that.

For keeping track of the steaks,

what we usually do is the fired steaks go from here to here.

It's like two thirds of the grill.

The steaks that are on hold, they go here

and I just listen the service,

see if their first courses are running out

and I just start firing steaks.

Rib-eye. Medium. Yes, chef.

So instead of turning, you try to turn

as little as you can the steak.

Right now because of the layout I'm using for working

and the fact that I have to leave this space

as clear of fire as possible so I can rest steaks here,

I have to maybe flip some of the steaks

a little bit more often than I would like.

Like for example, this rib-eye

that's going to go for medium.

I usually try to not flip that much a steak, just sear,

sear, temper if it's needed or you tempt it

and it should register the temperature that you desire.

[Chef] Short rib, rib-eye, strip, all medium.

Fire at 350 50.

[Nicolas] I got another rib-eye, it's medium. [beep]

[Chef] Another short med, rib-eye, strip,

all medium, going with two [indistinct].

Yes, chef.

[chef speaks indistinctly]

But now we reach that point in the night

when the service is really busy,

now I have to ask you to leave

so we can continue for the service.

Thank you very much.