- 3 months ago
Bon Appétit spends a day on the line with Chef Neel Kajale, the Chef de Cuisine at Adda, NYC’s most exciting new Indian restaurant. As the latest addition to the renowned Unapologetic Foods restaurant group–including Michelin-starred Semma–Adda is using bold flavors and techniques to reinvent classic Indian dishes such as butter chicken and Malvani fish curry.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Odda is the newest restaurant by Unapologetic Foods.
00:04We have a bunch of restaurants in the city.
00:07Sema, which was named the number one restaurant in New York City by the New York Times.
00:11I used to be a chef at the world-renowned 11 Madison Park, which is a three-michelin-starred restaurant.
00:16I really wanted to cook food that was more my style, that speaks out to me.
00:21As a chef to cuisine, I am responsible for everything,
00:23from what ingredients come into the restaurant to how the food that is prepared and plated goes out of the kitchen.
00:31It's been one hell of a journey.
00:38Good morning, guys. My name is Neil. I am the chef to cuisine at Odda.
00:42It is 10.30 in the morning. I have to pick up some fish for the restaurant, so I'm heading to Aquabest.
00:47Follow me. Let's get going.
00:48So, we're here. I'm here for the pomfret.
00:54I know.
00:55We have a dish on the menu, the Malwani Machi Kari.
00:58This dish should only be made with this fish.
01:00And why is it so important that you have this fish on the menu?
01:03It's the integrity of the dish.
01:04The region where the dish comes from is Malwan, which is in Maharashtra, which is where I am from.
01:09I can get it frozen from a ton of places, but the only one who can get it for me fresh is this man standing right here.
01:14I used to travel all around the world and making, like, you know, fishermen friends around the world.
01:19So, when Neil came in and said, hey, I need pomfret for this dish, I know exactly where to get it.
01:24Steven and his men are going to fabricate it in front of us.
01:26None of my boys back in the kitchen have to do it, so I save a lot of labor.
01:30It's a win-win for everyone.
01:31We're going to put it on ice and we're going to take it back to the restaurant.
01:34At the restaurant, these will get marinated in some turmeric, some salt, some lemon juice.
01:38We have a beautiful Malwani fish paste masala.
01:41There's a lot of nostalgic value to this fish, which is why when people see it on the menu, they're absolutely mind-blown.
01:47My deliverables, and there you go.
01:49There they are. Amazing.
01:51They're all set. Thank you.
01:57Welcome to Adda.
01:58If you look at the interiors, right, you're going to see a lot of touches of retro designs and a lot of vintage matchboxes.
02:05But the one thing I really like to always talk about is this beautiful wallpaper that we have.
02:11I have dhamaka, which is the restaurant I used to work at before this.
02:13I have a little Indian slang like kya seen hai, which means what's up.
02:17I need to get this fish in the walk-in.
02:20It's the fish. It's the pommes frites.
02:22Hi, chef. How are you?
02:23I am going to go get changed now, and then I'm going to have a little meeting with my morning sous-chefs.
02:30These are my sous-chefs.
02:31Without them, the team would not be what it is.
02:33When I'm out there getting fish, they're the ones who are making sure that the kitchen's tight, the deliveries are coming in,
02:37they're being put away the way they have to be put in.
02:39How are we looking on deliveries? Everything's coming.
02:41Everything's coming.
02:42Everything's coming. Everything's been put away.
02:44What are we doing for chaat?
02:45What do we have in-house?
02:46We can do the lotus root chaat.
02:47Yeah, let's do the lotus root as the hot one for today, and let's do the papadi one as the cold one for today.
02:52Chaat is the quintessential Indian-style street food.
02:55The word literally translates to lick, and that's because it's so delicious that everyone ends up licking their fingers.
03:01So, we're looking good, guys?
03:02Yes, sir.
03:02Awesome. Let's get started.
03:04A big part of my role as chef de cuisine here at this restaurant is making sure that the restaurant's looking super tight.
03:09I'm going to go into the walk-in.
03:10I'm going to go into the dry storage and make sure that everything is in its place.
03:13Everything's looking neat, organized, and just the way up to my standards.
03:18I come from fine dining, where everything was meant to be at 90-degree angles with each other.
03:23For example, these boxes, right?
03:25This place has labels.
03:27It's designed to go here so that everyone knows where it is.
03:30Dry storage looks tight.
03:32I am in the walk-in.
03:33I'm coming at night to do my orders, right?
03:35And when I reach the sheet which has my dairy list on it, I should be able to look at one rack and finish it all in one go.
03:42This is all about having everything in its place, as the word mise en place literally translates to, and making your life easier.
03:49Two of my big tasks, which are super important to me, are done.
03:55So it's 12.30 noon right now, and one of my major tasks for the day is to come and make sure that everything that's being produced is up to par.
04:03This is Saad, one of our senior line cooks.
04:06He has started cooking some lamb offals, tidbits, and some trimmings.
04:10We source so much lamb on the menu that it's impossible for us to put every little cut on the menu as an individual standout dish.
04:19So what we thought is that why don't we just incorporate and make a lamb butter out of it.
04:23The livers, the offals, they take a lot of time to cook.
04:26So he has that going on.
04:28I see that it's coming up to the consistency that I want it at, where it is coating my spoon.
04:34So I am going to give this a quick taste.
04:36It's exactly where I want it to be.
04:38It's not too salty.
04:40This is for the lamb parcha.
04:41So the lamb parcha is hands down one of the most popular dishes on the menu.
04:45It's thinly sliced lamb leg.
04:47It gets slowly simmered in a saffron cashew paste sauce, and they get finished off lamb butter.
04:53This has to be the most popular dish that we have.
04:56When we are thinking of a lamb dish, what we are thinking is, how do we give you so much lamb in one flavor,
05:01where you're like, okay, I can actually taste the lamb in this.
05:04This is why Indian food, I feel, sometimes gets a bad rep, because you can't distinctively tell and eat each flavor.
05:10And we're trying to kind of break that wall.
05:12I'm going to go take this to the prep kitchen and finish processing the lamb butter.
05:17This is basically the service kitchen.
05:19Anything related to cooking happens here.
05:21We don't have any of the big bulky equipment like the Vitamix and the Robocoop or the KitchenAids in this kitchen.
05:28This gives you the mindset that this is where the food comes out from.
05:31No big tasks should happen here.
05:33We have a little relay going on here.
05:34I'm going to pass off the cooked lamb, the offals, the trimmings off to Shubham, and he's going to finish off the lamb butter.
05:40I'm going to start rolling out the dough for the papri chaat.
05:43He finished making off the dough.
05:44It's been resting.
05:45The Cluden's kind of relaxed.
05:47My old friend, the KitchenAid.
05:49The reason that we don't have the same charts on the menu every day is we want to do something different.
05:55If you came in on a Monday night and you had two charts, A and B, when you come back on Thursday night, the charts are going to be C and D.
06:03It gives you that little element of surprise that, oh, I wonder what charts they're doing today.
06:07This is for the papri chaat.
06:08Thin, super crispy wafers made with flour and clarified butter.
06:13Layers of potato inside of it.
06:15Three chutneys, tamarind and mint chutney, sweet yogurt, pomegranate, all layered up.
06:21So every time this goes to the table, the one thing we always tell them to do is mix it up and then have your first bite because it's supposed to feel like an explosion of flavors in your mouth.
06:29And now I'm just going to separate up the layers.
06:31Now that the papri dough is done, I'm going to hand this over to the cooks who are responsible for the chaat and they'll give it a fry.
06:38They'll stay fresh and crispy for service.
06:43It is 1.15 right now and it is time for me to fix the marinade for the lamb chop.
06:49It's a marinade that's made with ghost chili peppers, ginger garlic, mustard oil.
06:54Chef Gurmehr is working right now on the lotus root.
06:57That's the second chart for the day.
06:58Just look at this.
07:00Isn't that beautiful?
07:01That's nature's creation.
07:03Fun fact, Gurmehr and I went to school together and it's such a privilege having him in the kitchen working as my sous chef.
07:08On to the next task. I have the marinade with me right now.
07:11As you see, super intense, super strong.
07:14Gloves because this is ghost chili and I do not want to touch my face even by mistake or rub my eyes.
07:19So I'm going to give it a quick mix.
07:21This marinade is for the dish half pound lamb chop.
07:25These beautiful lamb chops that we cut Hasselback.
07:27We stuff it with onion and the marinade goes deep inside those different slits.
07:32Because usually what happens is when you make a lamb chop, right?
07:35All the marination just sits on the top and the flavor doesn't actually permeate through the lamb.
07:39When we did this, it created slits in the lamb.
07:42So the marinade was able to permeate all the way through.
07:48It's good.
07:49But it does need that yogurt to like really, really round off the flavors.
07:52So just Greek yogurt, whisk it in and then let's see how it tastes.
07:56I am going to add a little bit of salt.
07:59So now that this is done, I'm going to court this sauce back up.
08:02And I am going to pass it on to Shubham who is going to then later marinate these lamb chops.
08:08I could use a spatula or I could use my hands.
08:10And as much as it is about the cost point of view and as much as I could say that this is probably 70 cents of yogurt and 70 cents in a 52 is that much.
08:19It's just that it's so delicious that I don't want to waste any of it.
08:21The marination is done.
08:22The next thing we're going to be doing is we're going to be making the sauce for the peppercorn bone marrow.
08:26It's a roasted 7-inch bone marrow.
08:28It's finished with this beautiful sauce of curry leaves and green peppercorn.
08:31And it gets served with a side of bread slathered with coconut butter on top.
08:35I love curry leaves.
08:36I feel they're one of the most indigenous ingredients to India.
08:40I am looking for these curry leaves to really soften.
08:42Curry leaves have a fibrous center that runs through the leaf.
08:46The sauce would come out really grainy and we had to strain the sauce a lot.
08:49And when we cut the curry leaves really fine and thin, they soften much faster and the sauce comes out really nice, green, smooth.
08:56I have this beautiful sotuar just going on with some oil, some onions, some ginger, some green chilies and some curry leaves.
09:05I'm going to add a little bit more oil here.
09:07We are an Indian restaurant but we have a lot of beef on the menu.
09:09Yes, it's the animal that's worshipped in India and it's not consumed in probably 70% of the country.
09:16But there is still a population of the country that consumes the protein.
09:19We just wanted to pay homage to all the flavors of the country.
09:22Not from a particular region but through the length and breadth of the country.
09:25I'm going to add a little bit of turmeric powder, coconut milk.
09:33Yeah, it's perfect.
09:34Cooling the sauce down maintains the color of the curry leaves.
09:38The longer this stays hot, the more the curry leaves will discolor and that's not going to make the sauce look very nice and bright.
09:43Look how smooth that is.
09:52This gets taken to the kitchen upstairs, gets finished.
09:54I have a meeting now to attend.
09:59I have a meeting with the business development team but guess who's here?
10:03The big boss!
10:04The big boss!
10:06It's the chef owner and the big boss at Adda and all of Unapologetic Foods actually.
10:11He's been an incredible mentor.
10:13I'm just at his service.
10:15I just come here and you know, I learn from all these guys as a young team over here.
10:19Super talented and I just come for my own selfish reasons to run from them and just help him in whatever ways I can.
10:26For someone like him to hand me this restaurant and be like,
10:29you run it the way you want to and like this is your restaurant, it's incredible.
10:33I'm going to head for my meeting chef.
10:34So I'll see you.
10:35Thank you chef.
10:37It is 3.30.
10:38I am heading for my meeting with Sadia and Mike.
10:42Sadia is the business development and Mike is the beverage director for the whole group.
10:47Since we've opened up, we've changed a bunch of the dishes on the menu, including the cocktails.
10:52So when we opened the restaurant, we had a pre-opening photo shoot, but some of the dishes are not on the menu anymore.
10:58Some of the dishes have been changed.
10:59We need something of the Bihari Ghoshkawa.
11:01We have nothing.
11:01We have no picture of this at all.
11:03You've changed the menu so many times.
11:05We've worked so hard on this menu that having it photographed and having the food look sexy in the pictures is very important in luring the guests and new diners to come into the restaurant and try something.
11:17And then how many times have you seen a picture somewhere on the web or Instagram and you're like, I want to go try this item and then you come in.
11:25Yeah, we've changed the chutney trio.
11:26So we actually have the onion now on.
11:28So we should probably get a new picture of that as well.
11:30Yeah, so just let me know on a date and just let me and Mike know on a date.
11:33Probably we can loop Erin in.
11:38It is four o'clock and we are one hour away from service.
11:42This is when you'll see that the kitchen is most chaotic.
11:45I read this beautiful quote, which says, the more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.
11:50And this is peaceful for us, right?
11:52No guests walking through the door.
11:54It's so peaceful right now.
11:55The more we push right now, the more peaceful we will be later.
11:59Being on Expo means being the last point of contact between the food that gets prepared in the kitchen and before it goes out to the table.
12:06I'm a little particular about the way I like my Expo station setup because everything has to be at an arm's length or literally two steps away walking from me.
12:15I don't want to be struggling in the middle of service, scrambling for this, scrambling for that, looking for something.
12:20This is my Expo.
12:21This is my hot holding station.
12:23And this is also my pass.
12:24This is my ticket trail.
12:25I really love a traditional Expo ticket system.
12:29I'm a little old fashioned.
12:30It's thrilling and it's very joyful when a dish that goes out of the kitchen, you get to mark it off.
12:35I feel like the electric way just doesn't give you that same set of satisfaction.
12:39This is where all the magic happens.
12:40What I have right now is the team every day puts up a little sampling of all the sauces, all the bases that we have in house.
12:52I'm going to taste them.
12:53I'm going to give my feedback to the team while they continue doing their work.
12:56This is the time where we can fix it if something's going wrong.
12:59The tomato chutney needs salt, huh?
13:01Yes, sir.
13:06This is too thick.
13:07So when you do heat it, we're going to thin it down with a little bit of cream, huh?
13:10Just fix those two.
13:12The rest is good.
13:18It is five o'clock.
13:18It's showtime now.
13:20They're coming in now.
13:21This is when the push starts.
13:22So now you'll see a bunch of tickets coming in.
13:25Can I have the sauce please for the bone marrow?
13:27Yes, sir.
13:28Four spoons, please.
13:30You have the cauliflower inside?
13:31Yes.
13:31Can I have a cauliflower set up, please?
13:33I need the cheese for the cauliflower.
13:34I have queso for cauliflower.
13:36These are amazing.
13:37So we use everything in houses from Le Creuset, but they also have these coasters which are magnetic.
13:42So what happens is that they get placed on and then the hot pot directly comes onto these.
13:47So it just catches on and it's perfect.
13:49You don't need to lay out another coaster.
13:51There's no worry about the coaster slipping on with the hot tray.
13:53Everything's magnetic.
13:54Everything's designed for Le Creuset.
13:56So it's kind of genius.
13:57Other restaurants, food is usually cooked and sauteed and then it's plated into the bowls.
14:03At Adda, what we do is that everything is fired fresh to order in the same pots that it's served in.
14:09We wanted to mimic the feeling that you get when you eat at someone's home.
14:13Because back home in India, when we cook, the food just came off the stove to your table.
14:17So that wasn't up to temp, so I had to send him back to the kitchen.
14:24If the temperature is not correct, the time is not correct, it just gets sent back.
14:27They either refire it, they reheat it.
14:29Nothing leaves the kitchen if it's not up to the standard that I want it to be at.
14:32I learned this at 11 Madison Park actually.
14:35They would say, make it nice or do it twice.
14:37And that's the philosophy that we kind of follow here.
14:39These are my two best friends in the kitchen.
14:42This helps me make sure that everything's up to the correct temperature.
14:45Nothing's going cold and this allows me to reheat things right before it hits the tray.
14:49It's just a simple picnic butane burner, but so helpful and such an incredible tool.
14:57It's 6, 10 PM.
14:59I have a long day, a lot more tables coming in.
15:02I need you to get the hell out of here.
15:04You've been great, but I need to focus on work now.
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