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Bon Appétit spends a day on the line with Griffin Valentine, head chef at 20 Blocks in NYC’s East Village. 20 Blocks is NYC’s hottest new sandwich shop, bringing forgotten recipes back to life, from charred corn grilled cheese to a BLP (Bacon, Lettuce, and Peach). Discover the years of research behind their recipes and join Griffin and his team for a busy day of kitchen prep, recipe development, and lunch service.
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00:0120 Blocks is a sandwich shop in New York City.
00:03We have spent close to two years
00:06going through cookbooks, vintage magazines,
00:10and the depths of the internet
00:11to uncover historical and lost-of-time sandwich recipes.
00:15There is no AI, there is no robots.
00:18What we do here is create a moment
00:21where people experience something new.
00:23Everything from our mayo to our house-made juice
00:26to our house-fried chips are made here.
00:29In two weeks, we will be throwing out
00:31our beloved late-summer menu
00:33and moving to a completely new menu.
00:35We are so incredibly inspired
00:38by a thousand, maybe more, dishes
00:40that we have already uncovered,
00:42and we're so excited to be able
00:44to get the chance to cook them for you.
00:47Morning, guys.
00:48It's Griffin Valentine here at 20 Blocks
00:49in the heart of the East Village.
00:51It's 8 a.m. It's gonna be a busy day.
00:55Our order just came in.
00:56I'm gonna get everybody involved,
00:57all hands on deck to put it away.
01:00The ethos here is definitely
01:01cooking with the seasons
01:02and having this ever-changing mentality.
01:05Right now, we have three sandwiches on the menu.
01:07Turkey sandwich, corn grilled cheese,
01:09and a bacon, lettuce, and peach sandwich.
01:12Is that scallions?
01:13No. Yeah, it goes straight into that thing.
01:15One of the philosophies that we very often
01:17like to talk about is how sandwiches are foods
01:20that might take a really long time to make,
01:22but are eaten in seconds.
01:24And our goal is to make sure that they are remembered
01:26for as long as possible.
01:27So, all of our deliveries are put away.
01:29We're gonna get into a little bit of the corn production.
01:32All the corn's been chucked, it's been charred,
01:36and I'm going to just kind of work on getting some of it
01:39cut off the cob.
01:41I'm gonna tell you guys right now, best corn is from Jersey.
01:44You know, maybe a little biased because I'm from Jersey myself,
01:46but best corn and best blueberries are from New Jersey.
01:49This is part of our corn star sandwich.
01:52Really what it is is charred sweet corn,
01:54scallions, chives, avarti cheese, cheddar cheese,
01:58a few dry spices, and then the kicker of it all
02:00is the cowboy candy.
02:03Cowboy candy is basically a candied and slightly pickled jalapeno.
02:07The story of cowboy candy kind of goes that this seven-year-old girl,
02:12Mindy Hieronymus, I think is her last name,
02:15she had perfected her family's bread and butter pickle recipe
02:19and decided, well, why not try that on jalapenos?
02:23Here's this nugget of gold from this random place in America.
02:27This is what came out of it, and people love it.
02:29There's a few things that I'm pretty particular about on melts.
02:32One is that there's cheese on both sides,
02:34so that the whole sandwich is put together.
02:37The other is making sure that we don't have a soggy melt,
02:41and I think that that can be a really tall task,
02:43but this is really all in the way of creating that.
02:47All the corn is set.
02:48We're just going to throw it in the fridge for a little bit
02:50while the rest of this kind of starts to go,
02:52and we're going to mix it later.
02:53We're going to work on the turkey brine now.
02:55This is our recipe almanac.
02:57This book has probably been in use for maybe three months.
03:00I'm just going to flip to our turkey brine.
03:02The brine that I'm working on is for our turkey that we roast in-house.
03:06It's relatively a two- to three-day process.
03:08We get our turkeys in, we actually poach them in the brine,
03:11and then we cool them down, slice them, and serve them.
03:14It's important to brine a turkey specifically because no one likes a dry turkey.
03:18The final version of this sandwich,
03:20we have our house-roasted and sliced turkey on our honey whole-wheat bread
03:24with a Cajun mayo that we also make here in-house.
03:27Then we have fried green tomatoes,
03:29which was just like a little southern comfort classic that we decided
03:32we wanted some texture on the sandwich and something different,
03:34and that's just kind of how we came up with it.
03:36And it's definitely been one of our most popular sandwiches to date.
03:40We give this a quick little mix,
03:42and then I'm just going to move into the next thing on my list today,
03:48which is do a little R&D on our new dessert.
03:52R&D means research and development.
03:53I think it's a loose term that I like to use of making new stuff.
03:58We're prepping out a little bit of what's called gooey butter cake.
04:01It is a St. Louis, Missouri staple.
04:05The history behind it is that a German immigrant baker
04:09was trying to make a butter kuchen, or like a butter cake,
04:13and had messed up the proportions and created this thing.
04:16And this was like during the time of the Great Depression,
04:20and rather than spill it out, what they decided to do was serve it and see what happened.
04:24We're not trying to reinvent what this is.
04:26We are trying to actively showcase what American food could look like.
04:30And this is one of those things where I like to say we're putting Americans on American food.
04:35The cake kind of has two parts.
04:37It has this slightly denser cake under carry that holds this gooey sugar butter mixture
04:43that as it bakes kind of turns into this goop.
04:46And once it is set, it has this beautiful crinkle top to it.
04:50One sec.
04:52Got a few eggs that are going to go straight into the batter.
04:54We have cream and butter and sugar.
04:56We've added a few eggs, and now we've added a bunch of our wet liquids.
05:00I've made this once before, and it's gone pretty well.
05:03What we had decided was that there needed to be more.
05:05So we're scaling the recipe to kind of have the correct ratio between
05:09the bottom shortbread biscuit and the top gooeyness.
05:13The batter can be a little bit difficult to work with.
05:15I think it's very indicative of the fact that this recipe at one point was a mistake.
05:20So while it might be a little bit difficult to work with,
05:24I think this is just kind of the natural order of how it's going to go.
05:28So this is kind of where we're at with the gooey butter cake bottom base.
05:32It's just going to sit on top of the oven for a few hours,
05:35and then we'll slather on a batter on top of it and throw it all in the oven.
05:38All right, so I got a little bit of time on my hands.
05:41We have a menu coming out in the next few weeks.
05:44You know, everything being research-based, it takes a lot of time to get to that point.
05:47So I'm coming down to really just start thinking about winter and spring.
05:52I think there's a few different ways that we go about R&D here, old and historic.
05:57I like to go through this book right here.
05:59It's A Way to a Man's Heart, The Settlement Cookbook.
06:01It's a book from the 1940s.
06:05This is, you know, probably 200 recipes in one little bag of just random things that we found over time.
06:09I have a few Excel sheets.
06:11What we have here is a overview of random things.
06:15We have basically written down what it is, who found it, on what date, where it came from,
06:19and at what time in the world it was when this thing came to be.
06:23So the first thing we do is desserts.
06:25A perfect example is Ambrosia, Baked Alaska, Bananas Fosters, Black and White Cookies,
06:29which I'm sure eventually we will be doing.
06:32We've definitely talked a lot about, like, can you make a dessert sandwich?
06:36Whoopie Pie is a great example.
06:38That ice cream sandwiches are a great one.
06:40Naturally, our biggest section in this whole research is our sandwich section.
06:44Cucumber tea sandwiches, club sandwiches, egg salad sandwiches, filet-o-fish, fluffernutters,
06:48fried spam sandwiches, lamb and mint jelly, PB&Js, po'boys, St. Paul sandwiches.
06:54I really want to do a St. Paul sandwich.
06:56Tomato sandwiches, tuna melts, all these different things.
06:58It is a joy and a privilege to be able to, like, be some of the people who are focusing
07:03on how to bring some of these things back in, like, a new, fun way.
07:06Coming from a fine dining background, I think that there's so much intention that goes into that food.
07:11And I think the idea is, you know, the intention can be in sandwiches as well.
07:15Like, why not trade the plate for two pieces of bread?
07:18So, I'm going to be working on a little bit of family meal here.
07:22So, one of the things that I'm really excited about on this next menu is our ham and cheese sandwich.
07:26It's kind of, at this point, gone through the whole R&D process.
07:31And the thing that I like to do at this point is make the food for the staff and kind
07:35of get the, like, last tweaks done through everyone's opinions on the food.
07:39My favorite piece of equipment is this right here, which is a little serrated sandwich spreader.
07:43It's a tool that I found in my grandma's kitchen when I was growing up.
07:47I don't know what it is, but it has, like, a very safe place in my heart.
07:50Our riff on the ham and cheese sandwich is using the fall harvest.
07:55Right now, I'm spreading apple butter that we make here on, you know, one side of the bread.
08:00Basically, what I've done is I've taken apples, cored them, peeled them, cooked them down with a little bit of
08:05Dijon, garlic, onions, and a few other things.
08:09And then, obviously, a touch of butter.
08:11And cooked them down all the way to the point where you can puree them.
08:13So, it is basically, like, this really beautiful, delicate apple puree.
08:18So, on the other side, we have this, like, very traditional steakhouse compound garlic butter.
08:24There's some confit garlic in there.
08:26There's a good amount of raw garlic in there.
08:28And that's, like, the sharpness in the entire sandwich that kind of cuts through all of this, like, richness from
08:33the apple butter and the ham and the cheese.
08:35The next step is to cheese both sides and then meet the inside.
08:39Eight slices of cheese, four slices a side.
08:41We had tried smoked gouda.
08:42We had tried cheddar.
08:43We had tried Havarti, which is currently on, like, one of our melts right now.
08:46Lo and behold, the provolone is, like, just has this salinity and sharpness to it that just complements the rest
08:52of the sandwich really well.
08:54Every sandwich has a pre-portioned amount of meat on it.
08:56Yesterday, I shaved all this ham, and then I went back through it and portioned it.
09:00So that a cook can just grab it, unwrap it, and throw it on the sandwich.
09:04I think one of the most important ingredients in, like, a deli meat sandwich is air.
09:10I think Helen Rosner from The New Yorker had put out a review saying such.
09:14It just creates this ability for us to be able to squish and mold and shape the meat where, as
09:20you eat it, it just coats your palate a little bit better than, like, very flat, sliced meat that would
09:24be sliced thicker.
09:26I'm now going to pass family meal off to the cooks.
09:30They're going to take it from here.
09:31They're going to do a little bit of searing it off, cooking it.
09:38We are about five minutes out from opening.
09:40This is Jack.
09:41He is one of the owners here, and today he's our front man.
09:43Right now we have a line coming out the door.
09:46Service.
09:48Have a good service.
09:49Have a good service.
09:51Have a good service.
09:53We have kind of like an assembly line.
09:56Back there we have Chef Diaz.
09:58He's kind of on the hotline.
10:00That's everything from frying our tomatoes, toasting bread, searing off grilled cheese sandwiches, making sure that they're hot.
10:05Those things will then get pushed to our staging area, which is where Alex lives.
10:10It is everything from looking at the ticket board, grouping the tickets, and kind of staging it for the next
10:15person,
10:15which is where I'm currently working, which is our sandwich wrapping area.
10:18We'll have a bunch of built sandwiches right here for me to wrap and then pass them to our final
10:23section of the line,
10:24which is the front of house expo, hot soup, cold salads area, where we are packaging orders and bringing them
10:29out to guests.
10:30We toast and rest all of our bread, which kind of happens right over here.
10:33This will come out of the salamander and we'll put it on these trays here to rest.
10:36We only toast one side. We think that it creates the correct medium of crunch to softness that bread has.
10:43And just like all good meat, bread has to rest as well.
10:47We're looking at three by one turkeys and four corns and three BLPs.
10:52I prepared some of the turkey earlier. We had the brine gone. This is kind of the final product.
10:56We do mayo on both sides, a nice large slathering from edge to edge, and then we'll kind of build
11:01the rest of the sandwich,
11:02which will be turkey, fried green tomatoes, and a little bit of romaine.
11:05Because of how nice and thin the turkey is shredded.
11:09We like to kind of crunch it and spread it out on the sandwich.
11:13That kind of just creates the amount of air that we were talking about earlier on the whole sandwich.
11:17At this point, really all that's left to do is wrap sandwiches by order.
11:21We have two wraps. Our first wrap is internal. We like cutting our sandwiches.
11:26The idea of being able to cut it in the package makes it so that our sandwiches stay together.
11:30So we like to draw on all the sandwiches.
11:33Throughout the day, it's just a few different fun little things.
11:36I think it's probably one of the most important parts of the whole job.
11:39When we talk about the uniform here, I think that being able to allow everybody to come in and cook
11:45in their own clothes
11:47it just makes you kind of feel like you're at home or that your friends are cooking for you.
11:50But we definitely did want to have some sort of resemblance of unity.
11:55And being that one of our colors here is yellow, Jack, Will, and I spent way too much time finding
12:01vintage yellow hats on eBay,
12:03trading with friends, and so on and so forth.
12:05Actually, one of the things we did at the beginning, the conception of the restaurant was if somebody brought in
12:11a yellow hat,
12:11we would barter with them. For the first few weeks, it was a yellow hat for a free sandwich.
12:15So that's how we kind of amassed a bunch of different yellow hats.
12:18I would say that the bartering system will forever be in play.
12:22We have definitely started to be a little more selective about the yellow hats that come through the door.
12:28The corn sandwich just came in. Here she is in all of her glory.
12:32Edge to edge, golden brown and delicious.
12:34The optimal range for getting sandwiches out, especially while we have a line, I would say is anywhere between five
12:39and eight minutes.
12:41So the BLP, which we have a few orders for, is what I'm working right now.
12:46This one's a perfect example of trying to really figure out structure.
12:49So we try and get all of our peaches cut the same way, all laid out the same way on
12:53the sandwich,
12:54so that when you get a cross-section and when you eat something, there is a really similar bite in
13:00the whole sandwich.
13:02One of the things here that we do is the heavier items on the bottom.
13:06Most of the time that's going to be your protein or your main contents.
13:09But I think when you eat a sandwich, just like if you saw a burger, you know, you'd never see
13:13a burger with the patty on the top.
13:15This is a perfect example of like how intentional we are with some of the sauces.
13:19You'll see that the BLP doesn't have as much sauce on it as the turkey does.
13:23Reason being is there's already so much fat and sugar in the sandwich because of the peaches and the bacon
13:28that we don't want to overload people's senses.
13:32This was a perfect example of like how to make something 20 blocks.
13:35Playing around with the idea of what a BLT is, going into that diner culture.
13:41Why not change out a few things?
13:43Create something that is going to be viewed as our own.
13:46We're winding down from service. It's been a great day having you in.
13:49We are cooling off and I think we're going to kick you out now. Thanks.
13:53Why not change out a few things?
13:55We're going to actually make that mix.
13:57We're going to actually keep some things down here.