- 6 weeks ago
Bon Appétit spends a day on the line with Pat LaFrieda, head butcher at Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors. Supplying meat to the most notable restaurants and hotels for over a century, Pat LaFrieda processes hundreds of thousands of pounds of meat a day and is home to the world’s largest dry-aging room. Take a look inside their operation and see what it takes to become America’s most celebrated butcher facility.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00We process a few hundred thousand pounds of product every night. We have the
00:05world's largest dry-aged room supplying some of the most noteworthy restaurants
00:10in the country. Being Pat LaFrieda in our company comes with a huge
00:15responsibility in that every decision I make I have to take into account the
00:20future of our 276 staff to continue this plight that my grandfather took us on
00:27back in 1922. My dad took me to work with him to expose me to the cold, to the
00:33hours, to the harshness. I am here every night, overnight, to make sure the meat is
00:39right and it gets out on time.
00:43Hey, I'm Pat LaFrieda. This is Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors. We have a few hundred
00:48thousand pounds of meat to process and get delivered by tomorrow morning to a few
00:52thousand restaurants. So let's get to work. Come on set. We have a few security
00:59doors to get through. We do feed about well over a million people a week, so food
01:05security is very important here. Yet another one.
01:12We're gonna head now into production. It is 620 right now. Our first trucks leave at
01:172 a.m. and those are for Boston and DC. This is where most of our beef will come
01:21in. It's put on these racks. This is a robot type system in which 2,000 pound
01:27pallets get picked up and brought to the other side and vice versa as product is
01:32finished. Each of these has about 2,000 pounds of product that's already been
01:37tested. We have a USDA inspector in each facility. So they have an office in our
01:42buildings and they're here with us throughout production throughout the
01:47night. Every day each of these machines in the morning, like when we're done with
01:51production, they get broken down to their primal parts. Each part is inspected,
01:56sanitized, cleaned and then put back together in anticipation of us doing a
02:02preoperative inspection before we begin. We're gonna go visit Elvira Cunha. She's
02:07the head of QC. She'll be swabbing some items to make sure that our cleaning
02:12crew did what they're supposed to do. We'll choose different parts of the
02:15machine. Ones that we think that that are hardest to sanitize and then swab
02:20those and then put it into this machine. This machine will give us a reading. Our
02:25entire value as a company that's existed for 100 years can be lost in a second
02:30by just not following the safety protocols. So it's something we take very
02:36seriously. In a USDA facility, even the floors get power washed. The walls, the
02:40ceiling. Pathogens can live anywhere. This is the final test to see if on a
02:45microscopic level are we getting down to all of those proteins and all of those
02:49fatty acids so that we're not working on top of anything from the day before. So
02:54results on this? That looks great. Which is this gave us a zero pathogen
03:00reading for fatty acids and for proteins so that they don't exist. But why don't we
03:05close the hatch and let them run some products through this is where we
03:13program what size we want those steaks to be. Can we do a favor? Can you set this to
03:1844 Porterhouse and give me 18 T-bone. All of this is customizable. The meat
03:24business is a very repetitive business but restaurants each have their own spec. So
03:30when we dry aged beef like this is about 28 days and we can feel how dry the
03:35outside is and it gets a little darker. That's withdrawing water from it. By
03:40doing that we're leaving behind a denser beef flavor and also the water that you
03:45would normally have to cook out during the cooking process it's already out. So
03:50you're not steaming a steak and you won't have that gray cafeteria look in using
03:55the dry aged process. But what we have to do is we have to shave that first face off.
04:00So just the paper thin slice off of that and then we're going to go into our
04:05Porterhouse steaks which really run out to here. T-bones are about this section and
04:10this is New York strip steak. That laser is gonna check the circumference of it so
04:16that we could enter in exactly how many ounces we want each Porterhouse to be.
04:21Now in my dad's day this was a dream like my grandfather never thought we would
04:28ever be able to to have laser cutters. When I was a child and I worked with my
04:33dad on every day off I had from school we had two drivers and our fleet
04:38consisted of two vans. My mom did the accounting and the bookkeeping and my dad
04:43and one or two others were the butchers. Now we have a staff of 276, 52 trucks plus
04:51two tractor trailers and it's a fleet of its own. The first cut is gonna cut off
04:57the exterior dry aged and then as you see it's gonna cut Porterhouse is the same
05:02weight. It has just got two Porterhouse steaks within one half of an ounce
05:06variance which is as accurate as our industry demands. So a machine like this
05:13several hundred thousand dollars but it gives us two things. Number one safety.
05:18The second thing is it increases our efficiency by six percent. Six percent in
05:25our business is huge. But we have these bandsaws and some of my staff prefer and
05:31feel safer using a bandsaw. If you see the colored gloves that they're wearing this
05:37green, if the eye of that machine sees that green color within one inch of it, it
05:43stops immediately using a pneumatic brake within 0.02 seconds. So the most we've
05:49ever had here is an injury that maybe would have cost someone their hand or at
05:55least a few fingers down to one stitch. These machines are about ten times more
06:01than what a regular bandsaw cost. So they're about a hundred and fifty thousand
06:05each. But one of the best investments we've ever made.
06:11One of the greatest things to happen to my industry are the use of cell phone
06:17pictures. I just got a picture of one of the machines is not filling burgers
06:22correctly. We call that a tongue. So the meat it's getting overworked and over pushed
06:27into its form to the point where some of it's coming out. So if that was a seven
06:33ounce burger, it's going to weigh eight ounces. That's got to be a round burger and we
06:37have to get to the bottom of it.
06:41Isaac! Can you show me that tongue? Too much pressure is pushing through is one of the
06:47possibilities. But it looks like as we went on, it kind of corrected itself. We
06:52have five other QCs, but the QCs are really down to the operators. Like they bring it to
06:58my attention. Otherwise we would find out ten thousand pounds later that we have a
07:03problem that now it's too late to fix. So fixing it at this point is perfect.
07:08You just slow it down. 20 strokes per minute. You're going too fast because it's
07:14Thursday night. The meat can only fill so quickly. It's Thursday night, it's busy.
07:19They know it's busy and it looks like they had set the machine too quickly. So it's
07:25really pushing that meat in. This man is responsible for some of the greatest burgers
07:31in New York City, like Red Hook Tavern. If he doesn't make Red Hook, we're in
07:34trouble. In all, we have about 200,000 pounds of burger meat that we will grind
07:40tonight. At the head of all of this, the person who coordinated wraps what blends
07:45we're working on and when is Willie and he's up top. I always check in with him. He'll
07:50give me a really happy thumbs up if everything's going well or he'll stop me
07:54and we'll have a conversation about what's not going right. Where it all
07:58starts is up here.
08:01Yo! Everything going good? Good. Very good. The man is a genius. He'll get those first initial
08:15labels and he'll get counts of everything that he needs to make and then he'll dictate,
08:20okay, you guys over there on this blend, you guys over here on this blend. He's putting the initial
08:26grinds through. Those grinds are going up this conveyor and they get sprayed with a
08:32pyrocytic acid which is an intervention that USDA prefers and that retards the growth of any
08:39pathogen that may be on the product. He will then mix depending on what's coming out of each combo
08:46bin, what he dictates to each side. So we see nice big pieces of fat, nice big pieces of protein
08:53protein and then it's got to get mixed. That's what the next stage does and then go up to that
09:00conveyor. That cross conveyor will then separate it into one of four machines there or one of four
09:07machines on that side. We make about two to 250 different blends of meat and those blends could
09:14be different cuts of meat and different types of meat. Like for instance Shake Shack uses only ABF,
09:22that's no growth hormones, that's no antibiotics. They are the largest consumer, the largest purchaser
09:28of ABF product in the world. This is one of like 25 check-ins I'll do with Willie tonight. Right now
09:35everything's okay. I need to check in with Eduardo Matillo. He's one of my senior butchers and we've
09:42had some issues in the last few nights so most notably hanger steaks.
09:53You have any hanger steak over here today? Yeah, yeah. So you back to Tomahawk's? Yes, Tomahawk's.
09:58Hanger steaks which is the butcher's cut is a very important cut for our restaurant groups. One restaurant
10:05group in particular is Stephen Starr. He owns about 25 different restaurants. Most of them use hanger
10:12steak. It's one of his favorite cuts but he likes it cut a certain way so I want to make sure Manny's
10:17doing it the right way. So a hanger steak is it's not symmetrical so you'll have two-thirds of the muscle on
10:29one side and then one-third on the other. There are two ways to serve a hanger steak. One is to cut them
10:35really long like this. That's really not what Stephen wants. He wants shorter wider pieces that all look
10:42very homogeneous. As you can see here, it's got a piece of sinew that separates these two muscles
10:49and that's the first thing that needs to be removed. What I like to do first is to clear the outside
10:55so I can see what I'm looking at. I'm going to take this silver skin off. This goes back three
11:00generations. This is something that my grandfather taught me how to cut. So when I was 10 I stood on
11:06a milk crate with my dad to my left and my grandfather to my right and I was only trusted in
11:12splitting and tying inside rounds and then slowly progressed towards things that took a little bit
11:17more skill. Like this piece of fat here, we want to get this off without taking off too much protein
11:24because the more protein you take off, the less the yield is, the more expensive it costs.
11:29This particular client, Stephen, at his point in his life, he doesn't need to to call me to ask me
11:36about specific cuts and what would be best but that's the type of operator he is and I really have
11:43respect for restaurant owners that are still in the trenches asking the important questions to
11:49determine what's best for their restaurants. So what I'm doing now is take this and because
11:54there's a silver skin goes through the center of these two muscles you can see the septum right
11:59here. I need to cut right on top of that so almost shaving you can see that silver skin. It takes years
12:09to be able to to develop a feel for where does that end and where does that begin. So as I cut down
12:17I want to cut right up against that because that part has to come out. That part is just too tough.
12:24Find it again and then I'm going to use that as a handle and then I'm going to remove it. Now I'll have
12:31my two pieces of edible hanger steak. Where this would be not a bad steak but you see how it's very long
12:37he doesn't think that's very appetizing so in the way that it's shaped. If this is 11 ounces I know I
12:45can only get one eight ounce portion out of that so from one side I'll take about three ounces off
12:52and that's going to be my one eight ounce portion and then with this side I'm able to cut two more.
12:58So I'm able to get three portions out of this with very little trim so that will increase my yield. Now I need
13:05to take my gross weight and figure out what did it cost me and then what is it I'm able to sell
13:11which is one and a half pounds out of something that started at about three. You know the yield
13:15is about 50 percent so if it costs me five dollars I have to charge ten and that kind of math is
13:21something that um we we do all night long. I'm constantly asking my team for gross and nets because
13:28that's how we know it's one thing to like cut it to spec but you have to cut it efficiently so that
13:34is affordable for the customer. So right now beef prices are higher than they've ever been so the
13:40amount of cattle right now are as low as they were in 1971. Anytime that happens customers ask for a
13:48second look at an economy cut. This is not a very tender piece of meat it was called a butcher steak
13:54because it wasn't easy to sell so the butchers wound up taking it home so growing up this is something
14:00that like my dad would have brought home. By the end of the night we'll have a few thousand pounds
14:04of trim and we have a rendering company that will come pick it up from us and some of those companies
14:11will turn it into dog food or something else that's even humanly edible but it's nothing that we have
14:18used for here. As Manny finishes up on hangers I would love to go around and see the other two combos
14:24that came in for our our newest beef line which is the PLF prime. It's hand selected it's supposed
14:34to be the top 10 percent of marbling this would be the first time ever looking at it so let's see what
14:40it looks like. We'll take photos now of the eye and see how much marbling this has compared to prime
14:48that we that we have in any of these other tables. In beef we purchase about five million pounds a week
14:54it's a lot of product and we pay for it within seven days so everything behind these walls over 10
15:01million dollars worth of beef in here all of that is paid for all of the risk is on me. I mean I see
15:07some really good pieces here like this this is what we're looking for this is where the USDA determines
15:13whether it's select choice or prime prime being the highest grade choice being underneath that
15:20and select being underneath that it's not only intramuscular fat it also has to do with cartilage
15:27if cartilage has turned into bone it's an older animal it would not qualify so the meat has to be around
15:3322 to 24 months of age. We're putting them on the table right now because we want to take a look at them
15:38side by side so we could see what exactly it is. I can tell you right now with this marbling this is
15:44all abundant this is what they would call abundant. I don't see any as we would say dogs in here that
15:50barely made it to prime. I want to label this PLF prime on the label so we keep it separate different
15:56shelves we tag the lot number the gross weight and the date that it goes in there. Now all of the PLF
16:04prime is labeled we're going to now bring it into the dry-aged room it is the largest dry-aged beef
16:09room in the world holding 15 000 primals each primal is about 25 pounds there's no hook that's ever
16:15pierced them so that they don't get this bacteria channel that goes through them and the whole idea
16:21here is to control the humidity and the wind circulation and the temperature with the idea of when
16:30we shut the lights off in here UV lights come on and it kills any pathogen and we're able to dry-age
16:36beef up to uh we did as far as one year but the more we dry age it the more water we're extracting and
16:44what happens is it leaves a denser beef flavor and something that's a lot more tender so this goes all the
16:51way and was designed for these to be tracks for the machine to be able to get to the other side make a
16:58u-turn and then come back like here we'll have tomahawks short loins here's a good example of
17:05something that's about 30 to 40 days where we start to see the protein gets retracted but the fat
17:13and the bone will not because there's no water for that to lose and it's losing water at the right speed
17:20so that it gets that real earthy beef flavor each piece is about three quarters of a square foot
17:27and that's one of the ways we measured as to how many we can get in here what we're going to do is
17:34keep these separate dry age them for 45 to 60 days and then try them and see exactly how much better
17:41they taste how much more tender they are i'm in here every day checking the meat that we're receiving
17:48around this room we have about five different sensors they go right to our cell phones so if there's a
17:54deviation in the settings of the room that's the humidity the temperature the wind circulation it
18:01will tell us right away we were rated for one unit to be able to control the humidity we bought two
18:08because you just cannot risk this much product in hopes that that machinery is going to work that's
18:14what we use the drone for so we're going to go take a ride on the drone because the weather's warm out
18:20we need to make sure that all of our units on the rooftops they're all operational
18:29as the temperature gets warmer this is a crucial tool that we use to make sure that our refrigeration
18:36units are all working operationally we use a thermal drone to do so so we'll take a look at it i'll print
18:43the report out and then provide it to our service provider in the daytime so right now in order to
18:49generate cold we need to generate heat so the white signature of the thermal is heat so each of those
18:58units is working if one wasn't working it would be darker and i do see one right here that's that's dark
19:05i see two that are dark what i think is happening is because the doors open right now these freezer
19:11units are filling the refrigeration room with enough cold air that they don't need to turn on like a
19:17thermostat it doesn't need to turn on i'm still going to going to send this report in because this
19:23one here the fans are not moving that means it's off completely because what happens when you have
19:29redundant systems is that when one goes down the other ones pick up for it and then you don't know if
19:38that you're on the redundant system when the redundant system goes that's usually when people find out
19:44and it's too late we're talking about 32 different systems from this facility i can i can check the
19:51units here and then i can fly the few hundred yards over and check the units there as soon as the
19:57temperature in in any of our facility goes above 40 degrees the usda has all the right to withdraw our
20:06inspection which means to close us what's at stake here is the amount of meat that we would lose so
20:11with over one million pounds of product in each facility we're now talking about 30 million dollars
20:20okay so we're done here we've done our last task for the day which is to check our units but as you
20:27can see our trucks are loading up our first trucks to boston and dc have to leave we have 52 trucks it's a
20:35large fleet and it's a lot to manage we had to buy different properties around this area just to
20:41park them we sell meat and we sell a service that service is to deliver our trucks are half of our
20:49business to protect our drivers we have cameras that are in the back of the cab so they can see if
20:55someone opens the door which has happened meat is legal tender and right now meat is trading higher than
21:02it ever has in in history it's about 2 a.m we have to now load all that meat that we just cut and packed
21:10all night long so time for me to get going and time for all of you to get going but appreciate you
21:16taking a good look into what we do thank you all for coming
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