Chef's Table (2015) s01e04 Episode Script

Cooking is the one thing that I feel I can completely trust what I'm doing.
When I'm plating a dish, my mind is completely shut off.
It's all based on feeling.
"This has to be here.
This has to be here.
This feels right here.
This looks right here.
" I think it's similar to that meditative state that people can get to where they're not listening to their minds anymore, but it's just that moment.
In moments like that, there's a song that's going on in my head.
I don't know how to get rid of it.
What's happening right now in LA is tremendous.
You have young chefs who have incredible skill levels, and permission to express themselves.
Niki is imbued in this Japanese tradition, but she is herself.
It's rare now to make a food discovery.
There's a sameness that is invading the food landscape.
So when you come upon someone who is doing something really different there's a real genuine exhilaration in feeling like you have discovered something that's happening in food that really isn't happening anywhere else.
You drive by N/Naka four times before you realize you've arrived where you're going.
And then you walk inside, and it's simple very simple.
Everything there is subservient to focus on the food.
As soon as that first plate hits the table, the hairs go up on the back of your neck.
You're like, "I'm about to experience something very special and very real.
" It could be a tiny bit of food, something very small, and you look at it and you think, "Oh, that's a really nice scallop.
" And then you eat that and it's an explosion of flavor in your mouth.
When you experience food that is created by a master, it's like taking you to another planet.
And then forever in your mind, it's just imbedded as a high point.
Truffle guy, Niki-san.
Hey, how are you? This one's good for us.
This one.
My food is very expressive of who I am.
When I'm cooking, I'd put as much heart into it as I can.
It translates to people who eat the food and they can sense who I am when they eat the food.
At N/Naka, we do a modern kaiseki.
It's a course meal, a variation of the traditional kaiseki, but we do our own interpretation of it.
Kaiseki is using the best ingredients available, presenting them without ruining their texture and flavors, and using different cooking methods to enhance that ingredient.
Everything has to be connected to one another and there has to be a flow.
Traditional kaiseki is so subtle.
The flavors are incredibly light.
The style is very formal.
It's not meant to be an artistic expression.
But what we do here is, we're using richer styles of cooking.
That's what makes it more interesting.
When I first saw her I didn't think such a small girl would be able to cook at our restaurant.
I even made fun of her for it in the beginning.
I told her it was like she was playing chef.
She was very upset.
"This is not play," she said.
"I'm very serious.
" Niki is very petite and very pretty.
When she first started working at my restaurant, she became a mascot.
It is rare for a female chef to work in a Japanese restaurant.
In Japanese, there is this word called "kuyashii," which is when somebody puts you down or says you can't do something, and you have this burning desire to prove them wrong.
Earlier in this career, I felt a lot of motivation from that.
Having been in a kitchen where it was all men, I had to prove myself in order to be considered equal to their work.
There was this feeling of determination to just not be less than.
- Look at the ducks.
- Oh, they always go there, right? In my family, women are not expected to reach high levels of achievement in their careers.
We can go back from here.
They placed so much emphasis on men amounting to things where women are just supporting characters of their lives.
My mom always pointed out that we have to respect my brother because he's the oldest and also the son.
And I remember thinking, "I'm better than him in other ways, and how come you can't see that?" It was frustrating growing up.
There was a desire to prove that I could do something different from what they do.
This is a family business my father started.
I graduated college and then they took me in, and that was it.
I couldn't get out.
I've been here for, like, about 30 years.
Just learned the trade, and my mom is, like, semi-retired, so I'm just taking over.
How's the tuna coming in today? Did you get a good amount? It's all fresh, and a good amount.
We had, like, about 10,000 today.
I think it looks really, really good.
Yeah.
After my dad passed away in 2004, my brother and my mother took over the family business.
My brother, especially so.
You should take one of these and cut it for yourself.
- Nah.
- All right.
I'll see you later.
Okay, thanks, Robert.
My brother is 11 years older than I am.
I always saw him more of an authority figure versus my sibling.
When I first announced that I was thinking of opening a restaurant, my brother, who had tried to open a restaurant with a couple of his friends, was not supportive.
He made sure to tell me they can only help me so much, and should I not be able to be successful from that point on, that I would have to let it go.
And then came that feeling of kuyashii, that, "Oh, I'm gonna prove it to you that I can get this done," and the whole motivating factor was, "I cannot fail.
" She's more artistic, but she has her own thing going, and we got our own things going around here.
And just How do you say it? It's just different interests.
I always believed, growing up, that I'm supposed to pay my dues.
In order to get anywhere in life, I have to work hard at it.
And I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna have to work really hard to make something happen, to learn something.
But someday, when all is said and done and I feel ready enough, I'm gonna do my own thing and just be free.
" After I graduated from culinary school, somehow I was lucky enough to get that job at Takao restaurant.
When I saw his menu, it was just so exciting to see all these new ingredients that you don't see in standard Japanese restaurants.
He had caviar, he had truffles, he had foie gras, he had all these wonderful things that just wasn't very common.
I remember making it a point, when he would show me something, to do everything I could to memorize what he said and ask him just once.
We say, "Ask if you don't understand, watch and learn the rest.
" This is the best way to become a chef.
The biggest thing I took from Takao was a very strong sense of responsibility to the guests that come.
When a customer returns to my restaurant, I already know what they are going to order.
So I serve something as they sit down, they are always surprised.
They ask me, "How did you know?" To which I answer, "You are my customer of course I remember what you like.
" I knew when I opened N/Naka, I wanted to provide that type of experience for our guests.
Thank you for calling N/Naka.
- Yes, name, please? - Here at N/Naka, we keep notes on what everybody has had.
Okay, Ravi, gluten-free soy sauce, okay.
What they've drank, what they liked, what they gravitated towards.
We have binders of every guest that has ever been here.
Today, uh, let's talk about the 6:00 people.
John James was a repeat from February 13th.
But we're gonna go ahead and still do the tuna, 'cause I believe on the February 13th, we did seared toro.
It's one of the best challenges I've set up for myself and also one of the hardest.
Not to repeat dishes it's so hard and so stressful.
It forces me to create dishes when I otherwise might feel slacking.
What would you wanna eat after shabu-shabu salad? Are you doing ponzu with the shabu-shabu salad? Ponzu style or more sweet? Uh, sesame tare and ponzu.
Why don't you just do houba, then sukiyaki, and then steak and beef rice at the end? But it'll be sweet-sweet.
- He's a child.
I don't think he'll - He'll care? - He's eight.
- That's true.
As a diner, you feel cared about there.
There's an intimacy that she imparts, um, that feels really unique to me.
She doesn't just look at her diners as customers.
She's not turning tables.
She's grateful for everyone who comes into her restaurant and she really wants to please them.
The pressure is so high.
There's this nervousness, this lack of confidence, this consistent need to make sure that I'm pleasing the guests when they come.
Niki, how many ravioli today am I doing? Sixteen pieces, four orders.
One for Monica Fitzgerald, two for the Grossmans, and one for the boy.
Oh, he's getting ravioli, too.
I have this incredible sense of responsibility toward the guests who have made plans, saved and done their best to put together this experience for themselves, and I owe that to them to provide the experience I have envisioned for them.
When I think about constantly wanting to earn that grade A from the customers, the anxiety level rises.
And I think there is that part in me that wants to calm that anxiety by working even harder.
One of the first questions that I ever had to really think about was my dad asking me, "Well, what do you plan to do when you grow up?" And I was like, "I don't know.
I guess I'll be whatever you think that I should be.
" He wanted to be very supportive.
Having his Asian background, he was very stern and didn't know how to be sensitive or soft.
He was the type of person that, if we didn't bring A's, it was an F.
I still feel that kind of pressure to try to please somebody that can never be pleased.
Oh, Carole, we don't have enough little oranges today? I brought some.
- Oh, you did? - Yeah.
Of course you did! Carole came into the kitchen two years ago.
For me, it was a great opportunity and great learning experience.
And the way I felt when I first ate here, before working in her kitchen was moved.
It's rare to go to a restaurant and really feel moved by food.
I really felt her heart in every dish.
Carole's amazing with, uh, details and technical things, and she likes things very organized and very standard.
And I am the opposite, I throw things around and can be kind of a mess.
Where did I put it? I had it in a bowl yesterday.
You didn't see it in a white bowl, did you? A white bowl of aoyagi.
Oh, yeah, perfect.
The things that we're able to do at N/Naka are more elevated, more cared for because she's here doing it.
Can we get some baby potatoes? Baby potatoes.
Carole and I are partners in the kitchen we're best friends and she's also my partner in life.
Niki has a depth to her that I think comes through in the food and the work she does but there's also this extremely childish, silly side.
I get to see both sides of that all the time.
Carole says this is more fun.
Yeah, I did.
It's more interactive and And we don't have to be responsible for anybody else's - Less work for us.
- Yeah.
Well, I haven't shown her that.
What is this? That's the book I made Niki for her birthday.
Niki turns 39 years.
Initially, I was afraid of working together because people that work together tend to drive each other crazy and I didn't want that for our relationship.
But we allow each other that space to be, and it's just the best thing that has ever happened to me.
Jack, you don't have kabu yet? I mean, anymore? Apparently, it's all burned up because of excessive heat we had in the past couple of weeks.
We've had an extremely long relationship with Niki.
I didn't think too much of her, initially.
I just thought she was another, you know, Japanese woman.
Then, all of a sudden, she started getting more and more popular.
Here in LA, I think the foodie scene is right up there with the showbiz.
But she's down-to-earth.
You know, she's real.
Niki is a beautiful example of how lack of ego made it take a little longer for people to notice what was going on in that little corner.
There's been this whole conversation about women in the kitchen and about how they get short shrift from the media.
And it's true, they do.
But she blows your mind as much as any super-dude, tatted-up chef.
- All right, see you.
- See you tomorrow.
My friend sent me a discussion that they were having on Chowhound about this Wall Street Journal piece that came out and the negative feedback came out as, "Oh, I get pieces like this just because I'm a woman.
" And I think it's funny because sometimes, like, "Oh, I can't be this work at this level, because I'm a woman.
" Or if good things happen, it's like, "Oh, I get these puff pieces because I'm a woman.
" I really, really don't wanna make being a woman an issue in the work that we do.
But it's just there.
There are men that have walked out on her in the past when they see that it's a female chef.
It is an issue.
Recently, some big-name chef in Hawaii came to N/Naka and started eating her food and was really excited about it.
After one of the servers revealed that she was a woman, he started making these very patronizing remarks.
"Oh, that's so cute.
Oh, that's how girls cook.
Isn't that adorable?" And she was infuriated.
When people see me, they don't generally identify that I'm the chef.
They don't think that I fit that mold of a chef.
The automatic assumption is that I don't know what I'm doing.
Which is why, at this restaurant, the best way for people to enjoy the food is to not see who's making their food.
I like that people aren't distracted by anything else.
I think for her there is empowerment in it because it means that she doesn't have to worry about someone assessing her with the prejudice of knowing her gender.
She can just cook.
There's a liberation in that.
I'm sure there are some female chefs who would think, "No, let 'em see me cooking, and if they don't like it, yeah, they can leave.
" That's not really who she is.
The best advice that I've been given was to never stop learning.
Because the moment you give up and think you know everything, you're already done as a chef.
You should just quit.
After I finished up at Takao, I went to Japan because I knew that that was gonna be the best experience for learning how to cook.
I went to work at my cousin's ryokan, which is a Japanese inn.
It was in the countryside.
You could hear nature all over.
That's where I first experienced kaiseki.
It was a different kind of Japanese food.
There's this philosophy in this progression in the food.
It just broadened my vision.
The philosophy of kaiseki is that we are supposed to represent the area that we're living in.
When I was working in the countryside, we took from what was close to us, making the best use of what the season has to offer.
I was so in love with the idea that I put a farm-like garden in the back of my house.
One of the first things I've learned about kaiseki is the integrity of the ingredients should never get lost.
In Japanese, it's called sozai wo mamoru, which means "to protect the ingredients.
" After having this garden, to see it from seed, to watch it grow little-by-little, to watch the process, to see it struggle, to see it survive, there is this whole level of appreciation that everything takes time, everything takes the right amount of nurturing, everything deserves effort because it's making an effort.
This little tomato took three months to grow and to just toss it or to waste it or to take it so lightly, we're not doing our best to appreciate what nature is truly offering, what the lessons of life that are all around us are trying to teach us.
And I thought, "Maybe one day I'm gonna open a restaurant using the kaiseki philosophy.
" 5:30 people here? 5:30 people and 6:00 people.
Okay.
Kaiseki is a course meal consisting of seven or eight dishes, presented in a very precise order.
Course meals usually start at a low point and rise to the main dish.
The dessert at the end sort of comes back down like this.
It's really very melodic.
Because the nature of the food is this combination of lightness and brightness, it is very musical.
Part of the kaiseki tradition is progression of technique and flavor as well, where you're kind of alternating salty or sweet.
In kaiseki, a grilled dish is always served before a steamed dish.
A steamed dish is always served before a fried dish.
Sashimi is always served before all those.
I love that there are so many different elements of cooking, but they're all part of one experience.
When I came back from Japan and was about to open a restaurant I was confused about what kind of restaurant I should open.
I loved kaiseki, but my mom advised me that we should open a restaurant that was gonna be familiar.
Go the sushi route because it's more acceptable, it's widely understood by people and perhaps it's the best way.
There was a part of me that didn't truly believe in it, but yet I didn't have a clear vision of what it was that I wanted to do.
That's when I opened Azami.
The most critical thing that I experienced before opening it was this big meeting that I had with my mom and my brother and my sister.
Everybody was there.
And there was this overall consensus, "You can't mess up!" "We're gonna finance it as much as we can, but if we feel that it's getting out of hand, we're closing it.
You only get one chance.
" And then the only thing I could feel was, "I'm gonna show you!" I found the location on Melrose.
It fit my budget.
It was a mess.
I remember opening on a Thursday.
We rolled up the gates.
Had no idea what we were expecting.
There were no customers.
The first two or three years, business was just really hard, and I just thought, "It's okay.
I'm gonna survive this.
" Luckily, people started to talk about it, and people were coming, and we were getting booked all the time.
The restaurant was successful.
My dad was really, really proud of me but I was not happy.
I was completely burnt out.
I didn't feel that my voice in cooking was strong enough to say, "Hey, this is who we are.
This is what I am.
This is the food we serve.
" It was more of trying to go with the flow, like, adjusting and accommodating and figuring out what it is that people wanted.
There wasn't room to be creative because there's not a lot of things that we should do to sushi.
We should always keep it very simple, very pure.
Have the perfect rice, at the perfect temperature, at the perfect texture.
It's so much more technical than it is creative.
It can feel limiting.
I didn't like being another restaurant that was putting out the same food for everybody and not having that passionate feeling for creating dishes that I enjoy.
Everything felt so much more like work.
I didn't have any more to contribute in terms of that type of cuisine.
And then that's when I knew that it was time to let it go.
I sold Azami in 2008 and I just remember feeling lost and not knowing what to do.
I had planned that I was gonna be hiding in my house, wearing a robe, growing my hair really long, possibly a beard, ordering pizza.
That was my plan.
One day, I was driving and I was listening to NPR.
They were talking about this chef who had worked in the city who was doing these chef tables and I was thinking, "That's That's what I'll do!" I'm gonna open a restaurant where I'm gonna serve whatever I wanna cook.
And there's gonna be no questions asked.
I was going to take a traditional kaiseki philosophy and make it my own.
There would be a structure.
But within that structure, so much creativity would be allowed.
I'd spent so many years training in Japan.
I'd been through so many learning experiences, and I felt that at this point I deserved to open up something that I 100% believed was who I am.
That is when I opened N/Naka.
Not more than a year after, my sous-chef quit.
I was by myself.
Suddenly, all the prep that I was used to dividing up was all mine.
I remember going to the back and standing there, feeling like, "This is gonna be the most horrible night of my life.
" And I started crying a little bit.
And I was like, "It's gonna be okay.
" And then I was just like "Universe, if you're up there and if anybody's up there, just let me get through this night without messing up.
" But I think I used the word "fuck up.
" I was like, "Just don't let me fuck up.
" As the night progressed and things were moving, I was more focused than I usually am, and I got through the night and I walked away from it knowing I could do this.
No matter what happens, I could do this.
At some point, you need to trust yourself.
When it comes to cooking there's no more doubt.
Because of my culture I'm uncomfortable with trying to make loud, bold statements.
I could do that in the food.
The food can be an egomaniac.
It could be loud.
It could be aggressive.
It could be all these things that I personally am not comfortable being.
It allows me to have crazy ideas or experiment, to not follow the rules.
At this point, she's not trying to prove anything.
She's carving her own path.
There are certain things that in traditional kaiseki would not be done.
Her signature dish is one of them.
The pasta dish, it's called shiizakana, which is translated, "Not bound by tradition, chef's choice.
" People who have experienced kaiseki in Japan, they might find it questionable that I should put this into our meal.
But I wanted to do something that was very me.
I went to her restaurant twice in one week.
She served a completely different menu both times.
It's not easy to do, and she pulled it off like it was nothing.
She surprised me.
It was truly exceptional.
Earlier in my career, the motivation was that feeling that, "I have to prove myself.
" But at this point the whole feeling for cooking has shifted into something different.
I'm enjoying this work more for myself without thinking about pleasing people.
Everything that is happening to me now is something that I've always dreamt of.
I constantly remind myself that I have to really, really live it, to be in it and appreciate it now so it doesn't pass me by.