NYC’s Hottest New Steakhouse is Indian

[light music]

Elder is a modern British Indian chophouse.

Chophouse is very different

than the regular steakhouse.

If a guest wants a filet,

but if they want it a little bigger or smaller,

we can always cater that.

We try to use our steaks,

but with the techniques of Indian cuisine.

We do a 32-aged ribeye with a nihari,

which is very traditionally Indian.

Stew/broth.

I'm the head chef at Elder.

I've got to learn how to open a restaurant,

how to bring in people and the creative ones

and the most skilled ones,

and create a team which I can work with

and move forward.

[upbeat music]

Good morning.

It's 9:00 a.m. in the morning.

I'm Iqbal Siddique, head chef at Elder.

Please come on in.

[smooth music]

We are doing hundred covers tonight,

so we need to get prepared.

Welcome to our kitchen.

This is a huge kitchen

we work with around 15 cooks.

We are going to do the meats

or the proteins for the day.

Right now we have a Berkshire pork chop over here.

Our chophouse is better

than most of the steakhouse.

What we do is custom every order.

If the guest wants it, maybe 60 ounces,

we weigh them out,

and we cook it accordingly.

That's what we expertise in,

pretty much giving what guest wants.

We take a little bit of fat off.

It's more about how we make

a simple ingredient shine better or look better.

And on a plate, it looks just fantastic,

like the white bone coming off the grill.

After the pork chops dry-aged,

we brine them in brown sugar and little soy

and then cook it on the grill.

We let it rest on top of vindaloo,

which is like a very Portuguese gravy

from India.

So it adds a little wine,

a little vinegar, a little chili.

It's definitely a little spicy dish

than the rest,

but it's one of my favorites.

If you see, like, the bones coming off

clean and nice,

that what makes a difference.

You have to sharpen your knives every day

because it makes your work way easier.

Most of the big knives cannot go through

just because they're big and long.

I use a paring knife because again,

it can go through right seamlessly

in between the bones,

and it makes the cut much more cleaner

and sharper, too.

And it's easy to maintain.

So we are done with the pork,

and now we are just going to wrap it.

I'm very tedious about, like,

how we wrap our pork.

I want no wrinkles when it comes to wrapping.

It gives you a little edge over, like,

how your work ethics flows in the kitchen,

and it just makes your working look better.

Once the pork is fired, what we do,

we take over it to the grill.

Then a nice, really good sear,

two minutes on each side.

If you look at the grill,

it has both the charcoal and the fire.

It generates more of a heat,

which is more even.

If you see the racks inside,

there are different levels to it.

We can definitely rest some of the meats

over here or let them dry,

or get them a little more color

than the usual,

and it gives a lot of flavor to the meat.

Now we are going to work on our paneer,

which is made up with buffalo milk.

[smooth music]

The milk comes in a big bag like this.

If I can lift it up, it's too heavy.

Yeah.

That's like a five-gallon of milk,

which is maybe run through half of the week.

We don't use the regular milk

because of buffalo milk having a lot

of high density and fat and cream.

What we are going to do is layer the paneer

like a lasagna with a little bit of filling

in pistachio and other nuts like cashew,

a little spices from India,

serve it over, like, a saag,

which is another very traditional Indian gravy.

This is Siddhartha; he's my morning sous.

So he's basically worked with me

almost for three or four years.

Pretty much he knows me better than I do.

We have a huge tilting pan

which can hold up a liter of 30 gallons.

That's a lot of liquid cooking or simmering.

We can cook in it and tilt it down, too.

And that makes it much more easier

to get the milk or any liquid

out of the tilting, like, cooking pan.

It's quite mechanical.

It's fun.

We'll let the milk simmer

to separate the whey from the water.

What we do, we add a little vinegar,

and it curdles up right away.

You can see the difference,

the water and the whey separating.

We need to press it as fast as possible

and cool it down to get the even sheet.

If you're too slow,

you won't get the paneer at the right time

for the service.

So we see we even out all the paneer,

make sure there's no air bubbles.

So we try to use the same pans

with regular sizes.

We put on a little weight,

we press it down so that the water

gets dripped on and caught at the bottom.

Let's cool it down.

We have a blast chiller.

We'll throw it in for, like,

say about 10 minutes, 15 minutes,

and then put it back into the cooler.

Jared over here, my sous,

he's trying to help me out with the paneer.

As soon you put the weight,

you see the water gushing out.

That's what we want,

but in the pan, not out the pan.

The paneer is all set.

Meanwhile, I have all my sous-chefs coming in.

Let's have a little chit-chat with them

and then move on with our whole day.

[upbeat music]

Here is my evening sous,

where Siddhartha is my morning sous.

We'll get a little brief

on how the day looks like.

We are definitely waiting on the ribeye.

Yes, sir.

So as soon the ribeye comes in,

we'll jump onto that, too.

Yesterday we had a little problem

with the boiling water next to the pasta,

so make sure that the water is already salted,

ready to go.

My sous-chefs are involved

in daily-to-daily cooking.

It's a really, really tough job

because we work almost like 12 or 15 hours

every day, and we have to be on our point.

You can get on with the other stuff.

My beef delivery is here.

[upbeat music]

We got our steak.

I think this is the time to break it down.

So 32 ounces and 30 ounces

are standardized weighing.

We definitely want people to choose

what they want.

If they want the whole rack,

we give them the whole rack.

I am trying to get the sinew out,

and we want that beautiful white bone

shining over the ribeye.

I sharpen only my tip of my knife.

Sharpens on the edge

so I can go back and forth with my finger.

And that gives me, if I want to go too deep,

I can go either hold my knife back forth

and then go too deep,

or when I want to go a little sharp

so I'm not puncturing the meat

all the way through.

Perfect chop.

Take the oxidized meat, and we'll use it,

some of them, which is a little cleaner,

for our sauces.

Now, as we see,

these are really heavier steak

than the rest of them.

We will keep it to dry it a little longer,

maybe do a 42-day-aged ribeye.

If somebody wants it, we custom clean it,

and then we give it to them on the table.

We definitely do our taste check,

just the salt to check the quality.

We salt it really hard.

Remember, it's 32 ounces ribeye.

Last week we sold a ribeye 72 ounces.

There was a table for eight people,

and they took the whole ribeye.

When we call out a chophouse,

what we exactly mean,

like if our guest wants it, we deliver.

Really, really market really well.

And you see the smoke, that builds up,

like, the whole flavor.

The grill marks, I like it like a crisscross.

It just makes the whole presentation

much more better.

So our steak is well grilled.

You need a little charness, a little nuttiness.

That brings out the whole flavor

of an aged ribeye.

We'll do a little baste of tallow.

Tallow is a great lubricant for any steak,

and it adds up more of a nutty flavor.

It enhances the aged ribeye,

and it has a high melting point

or a heat level.

Put it in the oven, cook it to temp,

and then we see how it's done.

Put on the side.

Nihari is like a thick broth

made out of lamb stock

and a lot of spices and yogurt.

And that looks like a wonderful steak.

[upbeat music]

We are doing a very classic roulade

out of chicken with Indian spices and flavors.

This is like the integral part

of British chophouse.

The filling is more Indian,

and the terrine or the roulade,

what we make, is more British.

By itself, it's like a very cohesive dish

on a makhani.

So it's pretty much the whole Elder

together in one dish.

This is Ivory chicken from upstate New York.

It has the right amount of fat

to a meat ratio,

just because if you see

most of the birds won't have under,

like, the skin fat,

so that keeps the chicken much more moist and tender.

So I try to break it down from the back.

The history goes back either

from the colonial region or even from France,

but it's more of a technical term,

like where you make a roulade

is like rolling up anything or any meat.

But we made it our own

just because this dish was taught

by Chef Sujan,

and then even I brought in a little idea

that why don't we do the whole chicken

rather than doing just half a chicken

or, like, a full chicken.

Every roulade is like a full chicken

folded into one whole roll.

It requires a lot of strength and skill.

I did martial arts for a little while.

That gets me a little more strength

to butcher this chicken.

I stepped away from fighting.

I still love it.

I'm still passionate.

I train every day.

There are so many commonalities

with fighting and cooking,

so you have to be disciplined.

You have to put in your hours.

You have to train every day

to get your skill right.

You're mostly, like, 15 or 18 hours

away from your family doing it every day,

every day out.

Imagine on a holiday

where you want to sit, have a cup of coffee,

chill with your friends and family,

you're working, but I love it.

I love every aspect of it.

You have separated the breasts and the skin.

It's going to be noisy, so just a heads up.

This is where my martial arts skills comes to play.

I'm just kidding.

You want to pound it to the point

where it stays together,

but it's flattened out.

So I don't use all the time the tip of it.

I use the other side of it.

So if you see why we use the cling wrap,

because it clings,

and so it's easy to maneuver everything on, intact.

I have a little slurry

made out of cornstarch and salt.

It's kind of a natural glue.

What we did over here with the leg

is made of, like, I would say

a filling for the chicken.

This just got made yesterday

from the other chicken we butchered,

so it goes through the grinder,

and then we add a lot of spices,

a little bit of cilantro, a little fat,

so it keeps the chicken moist as well

and more flavorful.

We make sure the roulade filling are firm

and filled in a proper size.

I use our slicer, longer,

efficient to roll it up.

Now we encase it in the skin.

We'll roll the cling wrap.

This is the tricky part.

So we want our chicken to be tight.

We take out the air because if you see,

it has, like, air bubbles or air gaps,

when you cook it,

that will cook much more faster

than the other stuff.

So it bulges up, which we don't want.

In service,

and we sear it to golden brown.

We cut it into pieces and lay it out on a makhani,

which is a very Indian traditional tomato sauce.

[smooth music]

We do a briefing every day

just to make sure that everybody is aligned up,

knowing what they're doing.

Today we have 85 plus 20,

105 on the books.

Make sure there's no allergens on the table.

The rush we are getting around 6:00, 6:35.

Then the second rush would be around 7:30 or 7:35.

Okay?

We have Chef Sujan pretty much very busy.

He's my mentor.

He's the chef, too.

Everyone is happy, that's good fun.

Okay.

We are getting busier now,

so we have to pull out our A-game.

That's what it is.

Thank you, guys,

and I'll see you in the evening.

Thank you, chef.

Thank you.

One, two, three. [group claps]

There you go.

Good job, guys.

[smooth music]

Me and Siddhartha are going to jump into

because I think we are really low on it.

Celeriac is a root vegetable,

like piece between a cassava and a potato.

The consistency is much more thicker

than a potato.

We talk about Wellington from England

or Wellington from Europe.

Everybody thinks, like, Wellington

can be done by a meat or a tenderloin,

but we want to showcase, like,

how authentic we are to our cuisine.

We do a very traditional Indian method,

which is, like, doing a kebab out of it.

We do a duxelles, which is very British,

and then we do a confit celeriac

cooked in a very slow heat of oil

for, say, about two hours.

We wrap around with the phyllo,

layering it out.

We'll start the Swiss chard around the bowl.

So we'll take one by one.

We'll try to place the other ones over here.

The idea was to do a Wellington,

really good Wellington,

incorporate the British chophouse

in what's new and what's different,

do a celeriac, which gives you more room

for the vegetarians coming into a steakhouse,

which is quite repulsive,

like for a vegetarian or a vegan,

but we made it sure that we have enough dishes

on the menu that they can come to a steakhouse

and enjoy vegetarian dishes.

We'll hand it over to the pastry department,

and they're going to finish it up for us.

This is our Shagun and our pastry chef.

Me and her have been working

for many other restaurants,

so I know her really well.

She's like my older sister.

This is for you, Wellington. Thank you.

Bye. Bye for today,

and then we can continue tomorrow.

Yeah, thank you so much.

[upbeat music]

So I'm going to set up for my station,

which is the expo,

keep all my mise en place,

our little garnishes.

This is like a walnut crunch.

We do it with a little panko walnut.

This is like a crispy garlic,

and this is, we call it like a walnut dukkah,

basically nut mix with little bit

of cumin fenugreek spices mixed with it.

And this is a birista,

which is very traditional in India.

We just shallow fry them.

I would say like more caramelized onion,

but has the sugar breakdown really well,

and it tastes like a little umami

and sweeter on any meat.

We are going to go in service in, like, 10 minutes.

Basically, I stand here, call out the tickets,

manage everything, taste everything,

plate everything.

I would love to have you over here,

but I think it's time to leave.

Have a good day.

Bye.

[upbeat music]