- 2 minutes ago
Bon Appétit spends a day on the line with Executive Chef Aaron Brooks at Sunny's Steakhouse, one of Miami’s hardest-to-get reservations. From dry-aging prime ribeyes and butchering Wagyu beef to making hundreds of Parker House rolls, sweet corn agnolotti, and kouign-amann ice cream sandwiches, Brooks reveals what it takes to run one of Miami's busiest restaurants.
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00:04Sonny's is a steakhouse that opened in Miami 2024 after its celebrated pop-up.
00:08Now we're full steam ahead, booked out almost every night of the week.
00:14On a busy night, we're hitting five, six hundred plus covers.
00:18Hangar Steak's one of our best sellers.
00:20Sometimes we sell up to a hundred of those a night.
00:22Two thousand oysters we're selling.
00:24Parker House rolls 350 orders of two.
00:27Anilotti, I think the record sits at 115 orders.
00:32When the individual prep day, the team is coming in at around 5am.
00:35They've got to be knocking out 20 to 30 tasks, big and small, every single day.
00:41To be a restaurant of this size and do the volume that we do at the quality we do,
00:45you've got to make it fun.
00:47That will flow into our guest experience and really show people that hospitality that Sonny's is known for.
01:01Morning guys, how are you?
01:03I'm Aaron Brooks, executive chef here at Sonny's Steakhouse in Miami.
01:05It's 8am, our prep team's already been in there for a few hours.
01:08Let's get inside and get the day started.
01:11So Sonny's originally started as a pop-up in the location we are now during the pandemic.
01:16The team then, dining room tables around, a makeshift grill in the corner over there,
01:21charring Wagyu steaks and dry-edged prime steaks for the guests.
01:24When it came about, this was going to be a fully-fledged restaurant after the pop-up.
01:28Definitely sparked my interest and this is why we're here now.
01:31So as you can see, the window here, looking into the kitchen.
01:34Everyone's come in, they're getting ready.
01:36It's time to get inside and let's start our prep day for service.
01:42So right now we're in our butcher's room.
01:44It's a refrigerated butcher chamber.
01:46We have two full-time butchers working here every day.
01:48We also have a dry-age cooler behind you there where the meat dry-age and we store all of
01:52our subprimals.
01:53We make sausages in here, terrine, deboned chickens and deboned duck legs.
01:57We're at a point in our day now where it's time to get into a lot of butchery.
02:00But the first thing we're going to do is get into our dry-age exports.
02:03We dry-age in-house 35 to 45 days on an export.
02:07So our next export is a bone-in ribeye, all right?
02:09That's what we've got here.
02:10This one's been sitting around for about 40 days.
02:13Starting to get a nice little bit of mould on it there, a little bit of bark on it,
02:16a little bit crunchy on the outside.
02:18That's going to give it this beautiful, beautiful nutty flavour.
02:21So this is our bandsaw, named so for the band blade that's on it, all right?
02:25It spins super, super fast and it's going to cut through all these bones.
02:36So we've taken that first outside piece off.
02:38That's that crunchy, barky stuff there that we want to get rid of, the mould.
02:42We'll take that off and then next we'll get in there and we'll cut our first steak off here.
03:01This is USDA Prime Black Angus Beef from the Midwest.
03:04We cut them in about 30 ounces.
03:06Our serving portion is 26, but we're going to trim it down.
03:08What we have here is what we call a bone scraper.
03:10This is going to take any merely bone pieces that got shredded by the bandsaw.
03:15It's going to take that off because it's not really fit for consumption there.
03:18So we're going to scrape that all off till we see the nice colour of the meat there.
03:21And then jumping in here, it's time to trim it up.
03:24So first I'll take a portion of this fat off here and then just going around the outside,
03:29trimming ever so lightly without taking too much of the meat off,
03:33but removing that harder bark that's on the outside.
03:36All done.
03:38All right, this has got to be my happiest place in the restaurant.
03:41I'm inside the dry-aged room.
03:42Here at Sunny's, we're really blessed to have a facility that enables to dry-age our own beef.
03:46Not a lot of steakhouses have that blessing,
03:48but having it in-house for us and being in control of ourselves
03:51and maybe bringing different cuts or something special to try something new,
03:54we really have a great privilege to be able to do that.
03:57This is the shelf where we age the exports.
04:00This one's been on the shelf about 10 days now.
04:02So here's where we segue all the cuts for tonight, all right?
04:05These have been portioned and ready to go for this evening.
04:08You see here we've got our dry-aged ribeyes with the bone in, nicely trimmed on the outside.
04:13Here we've got some beautiful Aussie lamb racks ready to go.
04:16The American Wagyu.
04:17Look at the marbling.
04:18Fine-grain marbling from the purebred Wagyu.
04:21So here we have our dry-aged duck breast.
04:23These ducks are from Hudson Valley.
04:25They're absolute beauties.
04:26We get them in whole, remove the legs.
04:29We use the legs for ragu.
04:30We also use it for terrine.
04:31And then we dry-age the breast on the cage.
04:34These age for about 10 days.
04:37So here I'm going to be making some sausage.
04:38Here at Sunny's we make all the charcuterie in-house.
04:41We have bacon.
04:41We have a cheesy sausage stuffed with aged comte.
04:46Whenever we came up with a dish, we broke it down and said, you know,
04:50whatever we put on the plate in that dish, it's going to be made here.
04:53So if we talked about putting a sausage on the menu,
04:56the meat was going to be ground in-house, stuffed in-house, smoked in-house,
05:00grilled over charcoal and served to, I guess.
05:02So here what we've done is we've ground some Berkshire pork
05:04with a little bit of our dry-aged fat as well from our dry-aged prime exports.
05:08Seasoned with a bunch of spices, some chilli.
05:11There's some piquillo pepper in there as well.
05:12A touch of white wine.
05:13And now we're stuffing it into a pork casing.
05:15We'll tie these into about four-inch links
05:17and then we'll run it as a special on the menu this evening.
05:21And growing up, my father used to take me down to the butcher shop
05:23and we'd have a bit of a yarn with the butcher, a bit of a chat,
05:25you know, and talk about what's in the case
05:27and what's been fresh made that day, what's really special.
05:29So when I get to come in here and work with the team,
05:31it does take me back to the conversations I used to have.
05:34Had a work experience at a butcher.
05:36And I think maybe that's where I got some of this passion
05:39for making some of these crafted meats, so to speak.
05:42If you just tie the end to stop the stuffing from coming out,
05:46sometimes you'll get some air bowls in there.
05:48So you're going to prick these holes in here.
05:50And then we're going to flip her over.
05:52Again, just getting some of those air pockets out
05:55so when we twist, our casings don't burst,
05:57or at least we hope they don't.
05:59Okay, so pinching and twisting.
06:09We're going to leave these to dry a little bit.
06:11It'll enable us when we grill them to get the skin nice and crispy.
06:14We're going to go outside and check out how the guys are doing on the bread.
06:20So what's a good meal without some really great bread?
06:23Here at Sonny's, we'll make our Parker House Rolls.
06:25Now these are one of our signatures. Everyone loves them.
06:28Here we have the team rolling out the Parkers.
06:30These have been mixed.
06:31A little bit of a table rest here for about 20 minutes to proof lightly.
06:34Now we're going to weigh them, boil them up, proof them again, and then they'll go in the oven.
06:41It's a yeast dough that's been enriched with a bunch of eggs and a ton of butter.
06:45It's super light and super fluffy.
06:47We baste it with an egg wash before we bake it as well and top it with Maldon's salt and
06:51poppy seeds.
06:52That crunch of that saltiness on the Maldon's salt is you chomp into this like a beautiful luscious bun.
06:58It's pretty awesome.
06:59We serve it with Vermont butter, doused in honey as well.
07:02Warm on some soft butter with the honey.
07:04Heaven.
07:05Each day we make about 700, 750 of these, and we're almost sold out every day.
07:12Okay, so this mixer here, we're making the dough about three times.
07:15So we'll make a batch, take it out.
07:17As we're resting that first batch, we're making another one.
07:24So these are our rolls from earlier that you saw on the table, the big ball of dough,
07:28and now the egg wash, Maldon's salt, and finish with the poppy seeds before baking.
07:32So here we have the Parker House rolls that have gone into the oven.
07:35These will be baked for about 16 minutes.
07:38So a scoop of ice, just like this, goes in with the Parker House as they're placed in the oven
07:42to bake.
07:43It raises the humidity in there, the steam.
07:45This helps with the rise, helps with the crust.
07:48So look at these, absolutely perfect.
07:50They've got the perfect proof, the perfect rise, and it baked at 375 degrees,
07:55enabling them to rise here, level with the top.
07:57These look stunning.
07:58Okay, now that our Parker House rolls are looking great, we'll get those other batches in the oven.
08:01It's time to move on and get some more prep done.
08:07So each day, the team spends about three to four hours on just making pasta.
08:12We have five different shapes on the menu.
08:16So here's our sweet corn agnolotti.
08:18Small little pillows of pasta stuffed with the corn fast.
08:21Nice and sweet, nice and silky.
08:23This will be blanched to order, and then tossed through a butter sauce, Montagabur,
08:26with Urfa pepper oil for its rich nuttiness.
08:29A little bit of spice in there.
08:30Blue crab, and it's finished with a squeeze of lime.
08:32We plate that with a ton of chives on top.
08:35Listen, this is a day one dish.
08:37People come from all around for this.
08:39Every day, you know, anywhere from 1,200 to 1,800 agnolotti.
08:4215 piece to an order, 100 orders a day.
08:44Do the math, it's a lot of pasta.
08:46It takes a lot of focus and a lot of passion for this.
08:49The process of making the filling itself is a feat.
08:51It takes a lot of time.
08:53Sweet corn, slow cook with shallots, white wine, lots of butter.
08:56Pass it through a fine chinois, pushing every piece through so the texture is super, super smooth.
09:00Piped in, folded over, and cut.
09:06All pastas that we have on the menu stand alone as really, really great dishes.
09:10Gnocchi, other extruded pastas, campanelli, different braises, different vegetarian options in the pastas as well.
09:17Listen, we're a sunny steakhouse.
09:18We're a steakhouse at heart.
09:19But in between, a lot of dishes that really tie into the culture, which is Miami, the excitement, the fun,
09:24which really makes Miami special.
09:26I think you really feel that in the room, in the service, and in the food.
09:33So where we are right now is we're at our pass, our expo stations.
09:36We have a number of expos here.
09:38The amount of meals that goes across this line is pretty extraordinary.
09:41We have about 100 plus people on the team here.
09:44Although we're only open for dinner, the team's coming in as early as 5 a.m.
09:47We've got product coming in all day here.
09:49Meats, seafoods, produce, dry goods.
09:52Taking that product in and then putting it on the shelves.
09:545.30, we open the doors.
09:56And that's when dinner service starts.
09:58That's when the masses are coming in to experience what we do.
10:01Service is non-stop all the way until midnight.
10:04We're a tough reservation to get, so to speak.
10:06500 plus, 600 plus covers every single night between terrace and dining room.
10:10And then in the background, this kitchen lit up and firing on all cylinders.
10:14That's the magic of this place.
10:16So a lot of our plates, we call them treasures.
10:18We have some really, really beautiful china that we've got from some great vendors.
10:21But a lot of our stuff, it's antiques.
10:23It's one-offs.
10:24It's special little pieces that we serve some of our dishes in that make it unique for our guests.
10:29Who doesn't want a pelican with french fries coming out of the mouth of it?
10:32The look of that, the feeling that you get when you say,
10:34wow, I've got something that nobody else has in this room.
10:36My queen of man's come on an octopus, for God's sake.
10:39Look at this thing.
10:39You know, four queen of man's there.
10:41Come to the table.
10:42A real sight to see.
10:43This is what makes a lot of the vessels that we use here at Sunny's special
10:46and make our guests feel special because you're getting something unique and not what everyone has.
10:50And we'll be in the middle of service and you'll hear someone shout out,
10:52hey, I need the pelican or hey, I need the lunchbox.
10:55And it's a special vessel that they're a fan of that they want to use to certain dishes.
10:58How they present and how they make it unique for our guests.
11:06So one of the things that we're really, really known for here at Sunny's is our queen of man ice
11:10cream sandwich.
11:14These are our queens here.
11:16Queenie has portioned them.
11:17She's folded them up.
11:18Each one lined with sugar.
11:20The dough itself is a laminated Danish dough.
11:22So it does have yeast in it.
11:23It's been laminated with layers of some of the best butter we can get.
11:27The dough is rolled out into large sheets.
11:29It's cut into squares that are about two inch by two inch.
11:32Folded in, pressed in like these beautiful little almost like tulip shaped pastries in there.
11:36And that keeps the lightness on the outside.
11:38So when it bakes, it does proof up and create those air pockets in there that creates the layers that
11:42really make the lightness and the crispiness.
11:44And then we're going to proof it.
11:45Popped in the oven here to proof for about 20 minutes.
11:48When it's the right size, that's when we take them out.
11:50We'll turn that oven up and we'll bake them really, really hard and fast to get that sugar caramelizing on
11:55the outside.
11:57That bubbling is the butter and also the sugar.
12:00And as that butter cooks down and the sugar caramelizes, that's when you get that glassy caramel around the outside
12:06of the Queen Amman.
12:08It's one of the signature moves on a queen.
12:10You've got to have that caramelized sugar on the outside.
12:12Sort of a glassy almost.
12:13These queens, we make roughly 200 a day.
12:16And it's a laborious process.
12:18You really have to know what you're doing.
12:19If your butter gets too warm, it's going to split inside the layers of pastry.
12:23It's not going to bake up.
12:24You're not going to get that beautiful lightness that you're looking for.
12:26There is really a lot of love that's put into these things.
12:31So here we have our ice cream machine.
12:33This is where Queenie's churned our ice cream.
12:35Churning the process of pouring the custardy and all the anglaise.
12:38Milk, cream, sugar, egg yolks and lots of vanilla beans.
12:43Cooked until perfectly set.
12:45Poured into our ice cream machine so we get this beautiful, beautiful scoop of ice cream.
12:48It's not too hard and not too soft.
12:50When you crunch into that Queenie, it doesn't ooze out the side, but it has that texture as well that
12:54just gels so perfectly with that crunchy pastry.
12:57Now here's our Queens.
12:58They are all done.
12:59Look at these things.
13:01Absolutely amazing.
13:02That's what I'm talking about.
13:02See that glassy caramel on the outside?
13:04And if you can hear that, that crunch, and look how flaky it is.
13:10Here, mate.
13:10You've got to try that.
13:11Okay.
13:13What do you reckon?
13:15Wow.
13:16How bad, huh?
13:16Crunchy.
13:17How light is it?
13:18Very light.
13:19Yeah.
13:19The only thing it's missing is some ice cream.
13:21It's amazing.
13:22So here we're all set now.
13:23We've got our Queenie Man's Baits.
13:24It's time to get these cooled down, wrapped up, nice and tight so that humidity doesn't kill that caramelly, glassy,
13:30crunchy outside texture.
13:36All right, it's two in the afternoon and we've just got our seafood delivery.
13:39Ian's going to process some fish here.
13:40We've got some beautiful Hiramasa from New Zealand.
13:42What he's going to do is some Suki Biki.
13:44And this is for our Hiramasa Krudo.
13:46He's just using his knife on a particular angle to almost scoop underneath the scales without cutting into the flesh.
13:52It's super important.
13:53It's not only the skill of the cutter, but also the quality of the knife.
13:57You've got to have an extremely sharp blade.
13:59When it's that sharp as well, pivot on the wrong angle and then you're into the flesh.
14:03And then that can shorten the shelf life of the fish.
14:05We've got to hold because it'll always be fresher because you can see the fish hold.
14:09You can examine it.
14:10You can look for the signs, how firm the flesh is, if the eyes are cloudy, the smell of it.
14:15Check the gills, how red they are.
14:16You know, when you buy portions, you don't know how long it's been sitting in ice or sitting in a
14:20styrofoam container.
14:21This, we can check it and make sure that it's up to standard for what we want to serve.
14:24So, the next step, Ian will remove the head here.
14:27What he's doing now is he's cleaning out the bloodline that runs along the inside of the belly, inside of
14:31the spine there.
14:32Cleaning all that out as well because that can send the fish bad pretty quickly.
14:37A lot of the things that we do here for some cooks might be something that they learn in a
14:43module at culinary school for an hour or two or a day.
14:46But will they use those skills when they go into the industry?
14:49You know, there's a lot of places that don't have the means or the availability to do it.
14:53So, here we try to always push ourselves to make sure that we're doing that so people have that opportunity
14:57to not only just do it once, but over and over again to build their skill set through repetition.
15:02The simplicity in it, you know, some people might look at it as just it's a few slices of fish
15:06with some salsa on top.
15:07But at the end of the day, the care and love that has gone into it, not only through sourcing,
15:11but also processing, in my mind, is pretty impressive from start to finish.
15:14So, now Ian's placed the hook on it and that will hang just like that in our dry ager.
15:18Hold it still.
15:21I know, I move stuff so quickly too.
15:37So, today we received a whole bluefin tuna.
15:39This is coming from Mexico.
15:40Ian's about to break it down into separate cuts.
15:42He's going to take top line off it, bottom line.
15:45We're also going to have some belly pieces and he's going to take the collar off too.
15:47All these different areas of the tuna have different quantities of fat within the muscle structure.
15:52So, we'll use them for different applications as well.
15:54Some of them are great for tartare.
15:56We do a beautiful Sicilian sashimi, we call it.
15:58You'll get the otoro, which is the fatty belly.
16:01Chutoro, which has a higher concentration of fat.
16:03And then the akami, which is the lean.
16:06You can see the gradient there, lighter, being fattier, and then going into the very lean
16:11up here around the bloodline there.
16:14Belly and loin.
16:15This is the belly with that beautiful fat in there.
16:17And then heading up to more of the leaner area here.
16:20You could hang it just like this and then take loins off as you need it.
16:23But these pieces, if they're not used tonight, they'll be used tomorrow for service.
16:26All right, we'll let Ian finish up here with the tuna.
16:29That'll go into our dry-ager.
16:30What needs to be portioned tonight for service, we're going to wrap up here and get ready
16:33for service.
16:37It's 3 p.m.
16:38Every day we put up family meal.
16:39It's time for folks to start coming in for their shift or for wrapping up for their day.
16:43They'll grab a bite.
16:44They'll sit down.
16:45They'll talk about what's happening for tomorrow.
16:46We'll talk about what's going to happen for tonight.
16:48But it's a very, very important time for us, for everyone to get together and just to enjoy
16:52a bite before service.
16:53Then we'll roll into the front of house pre-shift, a time for us all to get together to talk
16:57about
16:57specials for the evening, PXs, what we're featuring for our butcher's cuts.
17:01Then it's bang, straight into service.
17:06Leading into specials, your butcher's cuts for this evening, we have one.
17:10We're going to be doing Wagyu KC's bone-in KC strips, 20 ounces.
17:14They are $160.
17:16I have six of those.
17:17Tonight, we have a Sicilian tuna sashimi.
17:20Okay, so we're back to tuna only on the sashimi.
17:22We've got a massive bluefin tuna from Mexico, just broken down today.
17:26It'll have these three cuts of tuna in it.
17:29It is summer.
17:29It's still hot.
17:30The waters are hot, so the tuna isn't as fatty as it has been, but it's still delicious nonetheless.
17:34We'll do that for 24.
17:36Okay?
17:37Thank you, sir.
17:37Thank you so much.
17:45I'm back.
17:46Ribeye, asparagus.
17:47Ribeye, asparagus.
17:49You want to take that up to club soda for me?
17:50Yes.
17:52Fire, four east.
17:54Come on, let's get a yes, chef, for the cameras, guys.
17:56Yes, chef.
17:56Yes, chef.
18:03All right, guys.
18:04Thanks for joining us.
18:05It's time to rock on and get ready for service.
18:06We've got about 500 on the books tonight, so it's going to be a banger.
18:09Real quick, what time is it?
18:10It's five o'clock.
18:12I'll do it again.
18:15Thanks for listening.
18:15Here we go.