The Chef Show (2019) s01e19 Episode Script

[upbeat salsa music playing]
[engine revving]
-[tires screeching]
-[gull squawking]
[Roy] Hey, what's up?
-What up, dude?
-[Roy] Good to see you.
-Thanks for having us.
-[all chattering]
Thanks for having us.
Of course. We're happy you guys are here.
-Nice to be back here.
-[Michael] Yeah, welcome to Wexler's.
-The heart of the action back here.
-Yeah.
This is the part nobody gets to see.
-[Jon] Secret ingredient.
-[Micah] Know about the dill?
-[Jon] That the dill?
-Yeah.
-This the mise for the matzo ball soup?
-It's the mise for the soup.
-You got a lot of smokers there?
-Yeah.
These two are smokers.
We do all of our fish and meat in here.
So right now we're doing pastrami lox.
-[Jon] Do you cold smoke it?
-[Micah] We cold smoke it, yeah.
[Jon] That looks great.
-[Micah] Uh, gonna make some lox, right?
-[Jon] Yeah, great.
[Micah] Gonna put this on cure right now.
-Roy hipped me to you guys. He was like
-[Micah] Yeah.
-"Their lox is on another level."
-[Micah] Yeah.
That's really--
That's your superpower here.
Aw. That's cool.
-That's awesome.
-You really cracked the code on that.
-It's one of those things--
-[Jon] Can't wait to learn about it.
Look, I love pastrami and corned beef
as much as the next guy,
but there's-- I always say with fish--
Meat, there's a lot of places to hide,
right?
You overcook your steak by a couple
of minutes, it's still gonna be good.
You didn't put quite enough salt on it,
like, it's still going to be good.
Fish is so exacting.
It's a challenge as a chef
to get it right all the time.
And it's something that I've become
really obsessed with as a chef,
and that I really enjoy.
-I mean--
-[Jon] I'm excited for this.
[salsa rhythm plays]
[Jon] So this has already
been cold smoked?
-Meaning--
-No, this is raw.
-This is
-Nothing's been done here.
-We're gonna put this on cure now.
-fresh?
-I see.
-Then we'll pull some out that's done,
-and I'll show you how to slice it.
-Okay.
So this is just a side of salmon, split.
It still has the pin bones in it, which
we'll leave in for the curing process.
-I see.
-We used to pull those out,
but we found that it was easier and--
-Holds it together?
-[Micah] Yeah.
That it made less of a tear on the flesh
when we'd take it out after curing,
it'd slip right out.
I see.
So we're gonna remove the collar first.
If you look right here,
there's this spot right here that's soft.
So we'll stick the tip of the knife
right into that soft point, like that,
and then just come right up the side.
And then right down like that.
But that sort of "U" cut
is the perfect cut on the collar.
Next thing that we're gonna do
is notch a couple of spots in the skin.
When we salt this, it gives it a place
for that water to drain.
So this is our cure here.
[Jon] So that's peppercorns, dill--
[Micah] There's peppercorns,
there's juniper, there's dill,
and we're going to zest some lemon
in here.
And it's got a very
aromatic smell to it, too.
Yeah. It's nice.
It really comes out in the fish itself.
So we're going to put the salmon
on top of it,
and then we'll put the cure on here
until we really don't see too much
of the pink coming through.
[Jon] Right.
And are all the fish-smoking traditions
the same?
If you went to the Pacific Northwest,
is it the same as how it was done
-in Russia or--
-No, definitely not.
I'm kind of a geek on a lot of those
-fish-smoking traditions.
-Yes.
You're always going to find
certain similarities, right?
-There's always going to be salt.
-Right.
There's always going to be wood
-at some point, and
-Right.
everything in that,
there's a lot of variety, right?
So Pacific Northwest,
more heat, I would think, right?
-More heat, different wood.
-Like a First Nation-- Yeah.
Pacific Northwest, hot smoke
is really their thing over there.
-Yeah, yeah.
-Um
Russian, kind of Eastern European style,
-mostly cold smoked.
-Yes.
And they're, uh, non-caring
about bones, cartilage, whatever.
They'll just, like, "Hey,
hack a piece off." It's very peasant-y.
-We call it rustic.
-Yeah, rustic, exactly.
That's what it's called now, right?
-Want to try it?
-[Jon] Sure.
-And less here, you said.
-[Micah] Yeah, less on the tail.
-Should I bring it in?
-Yep.
[Micah] So this is gonna sit like this now
for about two days.
We'll wash the cure off of all of it.
We'll let it dry in the walk-in
for other day or so.
-[Jon] Uh-huh.
-[Micah] And then we'll smoke it.
This is probably my favorite place
in the whole restaurant.
-[Jon] Oh, wow.
-[Roy] Wow, this is great.
[Micah] These are our smoker racks
that are there just to hang whitefish
and trout.
This has been brined,
and now it's just doing its air-dry.
That's our sturgeon
hanging out over there.
That's my caviar suitcase right there.
-Ooh. Is there caviar in there?
-Yep.
[Roy] Nice.
This is our lox right on here.
-[Roy] You can eat this just like that?
-[Micah] Yeah.
-Go for it if you want to try it.
-Yeah, let's try it.
[Micah] We call this "nugs" sometimes.
[Roy] Nugs, yeah.
Looks so good. I love
[Jon] That's so good.
[Micah] This is actually the piece
off the tail piece I like,
-'cause it's salty.
-Has a little jerky to it.
Mm-hmm.
But also has a lox-y flavor.
It's really good.
It's funny how you added, uh, caviar
to the-- to the menu,
'cause that was never on a Jewish table,
but the flavors fit perfectly
with everything else.
They really do. It's funny,
that was also, sort of,
our nod to, like, the classic
New York appetizing shops.
You know, you go to Sables,
Barney Greengrass, Russ and Daughters,
they all sell a shit-ton of caviar,
and it goes so great
with this kind of food.
-We were like, "There's no culture--" Yes.
-I could have a dollop of caviar on this.
There's just, like, no culture of that
here in Los Angeles,
and we really wanted to add that
and create it.
-It works. It's great.
-Yeah.
[Micah] So, this is
Dana's matzo ball soup.
Dana's my mom.
She makes the best matzo ball soup
in the world, in my opinion.
You know, growing up,
she'd start it early in the morning.
I would be woken up out of my bed
by the smell of the chicken soup.
It was just this certain intense, poultry,
you know, chicken grease thing happening.
That's an experience
that I always have with me.
So when we opened here, it was
really important that we had soup,
and she walked me through it a little bit.
I have my tweaks to it,
but it just, from the get-go, I have to
put it on as "Dana's matzo ball soup,"
-'cause this is my mom's, you know?
-Yeah.
-That's-- That's what it is.
-I can't wait. I can't wait.
[salsa rhythm playing]
[Micah]
So I have chicken wings, turkey necks
-[Jon] Turkey.
-and whole chickens.
The whole chickens are really important.
A lot of the flavor comes from that.
The less that we cut the chicken up,
the clearer that the soup is going to be.
-[Jon] Right.
-So we wrap the chickens up
in the cheesecloth so that we can
pull them right out afterwards.
-In the cartoons, the stork would bring--
-[laughs] That's right.
-Would bring the baby.
-In the span style="style2"Looney Tunes.
We have all of our aromatics here.
Onions, we have dill, parsley, celery,
thyme, carrots, bay leaves,
whole black peppercorns.
So the idea here is to keep everything in
pretty big chunks and pieces, right?
So just cut them in big pieces like that.
-[Jon] Throw everything in?
-[Micah] Throw it all in.
There's a pressure cooker
right underneath you, Jon.
-[Roy] That's not the one on span style="style2"Iron Chef.
-[Micah] No.
You can pop that right there.
This is the beast of pressure cookers.
The outside is aluminum,
and it's got an inner core of steel.
I know he's appreciating 'cause I know
Jon's aesthetic on machinery.
-I know, like--
-I know you love it.
I'll put this in a movie.
I can make some span style="style2"Star Wars thing
out of this.
[all chuckling]
[Micah] The pressure cooker
Everything is almost undisturbed in there,
you know.
If you put a pot on, you turn it on,
it starts simmering and boiling,
and things start to fall apart
and whatever,
you open the top to the pressure cooker,
and everything is, like,
almost about to fall apart
but not actually falling apart,
and it's just given up the perfect amount
of its goodness
and everything that's inside of it,
and it's it's perfect.
It makes such good soup, so
-let's pop it in.
-Here you go.
-Meat in first?
-[Micah] Yeah.
[Jon] Now, we don't brown it, huh?
[Micah] No, no browning at all,
'cause we're not trying to introduce
any caramelized flavors.
Chicken wings.
All the salt goes in, yeah.
-You throw everything in?
-Yeah, throw it all in there.
Yeah, so we're actually
going to put cold water
-right here.
-[Roy] Cold water.
-That's like my dentist's office.
-[Micah] Ha! I know, right?
We gotta leave this head space.
Because essentially it's going to take it
a degree or two above boiling,
and everything is gonna expand,
so it has to have room
so it doesn't explode and kill us all.
Have you had disasters?
I actually haven't.
This thing is such a beast, like,
you'd really have to try to explode it.
So we need this first.
This is the weight.
Five pounds of pressure, ten pounds,
-15 pounds.
-[Jon] Yes.
So we do it at ten pounds, right here.
So that's basically the pressure release.
-[Jon] Then it hits the ceiling?
-When it starts-- Yeah. [laughs]
When it starts to get to ten,
we'll hear it, it'll start, kind of,
clanking around a little bit, like that.
And that's when we'll turn it down
just a little bit for, like, 15 minutes,
and then turn it off
and let the pressure fall.
So now we gotta make matzo balls.
[Jon] All right.
[salsa rhythm playing]
[Micah] All right, we're gonna make
some matzo balls,
which is something that I have
a true, true passion for.
-Yeah.
-[Micah] So, Chris is kind of
the matzo ball master.
-Maven, so to speak.
-Um, yes.
-The matzo ball maven.
-[laughing]
The single most important ingredient
that separates a good matzo ball
from just your very average,
kind of, flavorless matzo ball--
Love.
Love, for sure,
but this is love in a tangible form,
which is schmaltz.
You absolutely must have this.
We make it here.
We get a bunch of chicken skins,
we put 'em in a rondeau with some water,
and we cook it down.
As the water evaporates,
it starts to cook off the fat,
and eventually they get crispy.
-[Jon] Yes.
-Those crispy pieces are the gribenes,
and then the liquid that's left
from that whole process is the schmaltz.
So back to the Yiddish words
where they look like what they sound like.
-Yes, exactly.
-Yeah.
Look [chuckles]
-Yes. Schmaltz gribenes.
-You're so right. Yeah.
So schmaltz was a thing
that was ubiquitous
in Ashkenazi Jewish food forever
in my grandparents' generation.
That's mostly 'cause of the Kosher laws
'cause you couldn't use butter.
So if you wanted to use fat in a meal
that wasn't a dairy meal,
-you had to use an animal fat.
-Right.
-I think it's two things.
-For fleishik issues.
One is the Kosher laws,
but also a factor of,
if you look at fats that are used
in cultures,
whatever country they're in,
it's always sort of
what they had in that place.
-"We got a lot of a lot of pigs--"
-But they had dairy.
-They had dairy for sure.
-Tevye was a dairyman, right?
-That's true.
-I only know through movies.
-Dairy on Sundays only, maybe.
-[laughing]
[Micah] Matzo meal,
that's what we make matzo balls with.
Salt, baking soda.
There's a lot of eggs
that go into this, too.
-Schmaltz in?
-Schmaltz can go in, for sure.
-[Jon] These are nice, dark eggs, too.
-[Micah] Yeah.
-Like for pasta making.
-Orange yolk. Exactly.
And then a secret ingredient
my grandmother taught me,
which is seltzer.
It's like a little insurance policy
to just make sure they're nice and light.
Chris, why don't you take over,
show us the, uh--
Let's see the technique.
Gotta make sure all the eggs
are really well broken up.
[Jon] Nice, dark color. That's not
the color of most matzo balls.
[Micah] No, it's not.
[Jon] There's only one type
of matzo ball, right?
Yeah, so, you know,
there's kind of this great debate
of, like, "Hey, should your matzo ball
be fluffy or should it be dense and hard?"
It-- Whatever people grew up with,
-that's the right thing to them, okay?
-Right.
But it is a dumpling. Okay?
So it's a dumpling
that's poached in broth,
so by nature,
it should have a certain lightness to it.
-Right.
-So as much as I piss people off,
-the leaden, like, hard matzo ball
-[Jon] Yeah.
is just wrong.
I grew up with the light ones.
-Yeah.
-So I'm with you.
-[Micah] Yeah.
-[Jon] What's going on here?
[Micah] We've mixed this.
Now we need to let it rest,
which is really important,
for about 45 minutes to an hour.
-Doesn't rise, though, does it?
-Doesn't rise at all,
-'cause there's no yeast happening.
-Right.
Two things are gonna happen.
One, if you'll see now--
-Wanna grab the other one?
-So it's not unlike pasta making.
So far, every step. You're using the
-the bright yolks.
-Yeah, it's actually very similar.
That's why it's pasta to me.
To me, it's pasta.
-Yeah.
-'Cause I didn't grow up with it.
My chef mind went there.
It's like, okay, so why don't we--
Why couldn't it be treated like pasta,
in a sense, you know?
-Yeah.
-Or like a dumpling
where you add, like, a sauce to it, or
You could quenelle these and have them
be like gnocchi.
-[Roy] Exactly.
-Or like gnudi. It would be really good.
Okay, so this is one that we made
about an hour ago.
You can see the difference. It's kind of
darkened up in color a little bit.
But the main thing is, it's had time
for the matzo meal to fully hydrate.
-You want to show them how to scoop 'em?
-Yeah.
Now we're gonna get down.
So just an ice cream scooper?
[Micah] Yep. And these are going to
probably almost triple in size
when they cook.
[Jon] You like big ones, huh?
Here, let me, um
-Can I give that a shot?
-Yeah, absolutely.
-In that?
-Yeah.
-There we go.
-You might get a job here.
-Doing pretty good.
-Can you tell it's in my DNA?
[Micah] See how
it's starting to stick in there?
Every three or so,
you wanna dip in the water.
So then we'll basically
wet your hands a little bit,
and then we'll just take these
Bare hands or gloves?
Yeah, I like the bare hands.
I like to be able to touch it and feel it.
You like to feel?
Get in touch with your ancestors.
-Exactly.
-This is like when you talk about
-washing rice.
-Washing rice, yeah.
Pinching matzo balls is like washing rice.
I feel like you could stuff these.
[Micah] Oh, yeah. It's very masa-like.
Also, when it's cooked, it has sort of
-a masa-like consistency to it.
-Pupusas.
[Jon] What shape would you make?
Should we do a gnocchi shape
or something with this?
Maybe make it flat, like a tamale.
Tamale, you have to stuff it, though.
-Yeah?
-Put it in the shape of a tamale.
And your banana leaf.
-We can stuff one with a little pastrami.
-Should we try something?
-Let's do it.
-Let's do an experiment.
-All right, so--
-Bring it over here.
[Jon] Going into surgery.
[Micah]
All right, so I think if we take this,
a little bit of chopped pastrami,
and a little bit of burnt onion
-I need a little water.
-[Jon] A little water?
-We'll bring it in the other room.
-Let's bring it
-[Jon] Behind, sorry.
-[woman] Sorry.
You want to have at it, Roy?
You might need wet hands.
This stuff's really sticky.
[Jon] This is part of the suffering
of my people.
[Micah laughs]
[Micah] Roy's kind of got
that empanada shape going on.
So now, we're going to bring these
over to the water.
Really important that this water
is simmering and not boiling.
-If it's boiling, it'll blow them apart.
-[Jon] It'll move it around?
[Micah] It has salt and a little bit
of schmaltz in there as well,
and you'll see what's gonna happen
is they're gonna sink to the bottom,
and then after about 30 seconds
or a minute, they're gonna pop right up.
-There they go, all at once, right?
-[Jon] Oh, my God, perfect.
-Here comes the bad boy.
-[Roy] They're so delicate.
[Micah] This is gonna be fun
to test this out.
-[Jon] This might require a few tries.
-[Micah] Yeah.
[Jon] The test kitchen. It's like Noma.
-The Jewish version of Noma.
-[Roy] The Jewish Noma.
So, the lid is important, too,
um, 'cause if you can see,
the matzo balls,
they rise up out of the water
a little bit like this.
-You want to steam the top?
-Exactly.
[Jon] Right on.
[salsa rhythm playing]
[Micah] Okay. So this is dry cured salmon.
-Gonna show you how to slice it.
-[Jon] Okay.
So, what we've done so far is we've just
removed the skin from the bottom of it,
and just cleaned up the sides here,
-and we pulled all the pin bones out.
-So it's like sushi preparation.
-It really is.
-You're preparing it
-for the line, basically.
-Yeah.
Except with sushi, you don't have
old Jewish women yelling,
"Thinner, thinner!"
Right, that's true.
This is Flaco.
-Hi, Flaco.
-Hey, Flaco.
Hey, guys.
-There is
-Nice to meet you.
-Nice to meet you.
-You, too.
There's nobody in Los Angeles
or in the West Coast
who slices fish quite like Flaco.
-So he's gonna give you a little lesson.
-[Jon] Okay.
[Micah] So he's cleaning up
all of the bloodline and gray stuff.
There's nothing wrong with it,
it tastes perfectly fine.
We want to make sure
there's that really nice, clean slice.
[rattling]
You hear that?
[Jon] There it is.
[Micah] Okay, that's what we've been
waiting for, so that's letting us know
that we're right about
ten pounds of pressure right now.
[Jon] We'll turn it down?
[Micah] Yeah, if we let it keep going,
pressure's gonna keep rising.
We try to open this right now,
it'll explode and be a disaster.
-Right.
-We're just gonna let the pressure fall.
And I want that to slow down
to where it's making that noise, like,
once a second. It's not going crazy.
[Jon] Gotcha.
[Micah] So what Flaco's doing right now
is what we call, kind of,
creating the angle.
We start at the tail, but always
in the direction of head-to-tail.
He's creating this angle that he's gonna
continue through the entire time.
Now, he's got the thin
[Micah] Right.
Read span style="style2"The span style="style2"New York Times through it.
-[Roy] That's the Hannibal Lecter
-[Micah] Yeah.
-Yeah.
-What do you mean?
-On the face.
-[laughter]
Now, this is edible, yes?
-[Micah] Yeah, 100%.
-Okay.
-Let's do it. Gonna show them?
-[Flaco] Yeah.
-[Micah] Not bad, Jon.
-[Roy] Nice job, Jon.
[Micah] That's really good.
It's not bad.
Too thin, 'cause it fell apart.
Right? You want it to be one piece?
[Micah] I've had a lot of people do
a lot worse
on their first slice.
So you clean your knife
every couple of slices.
-Right.
-And then,
-you want longer strokes, okay?
-Long strokes.
So you'll create less drag.
-Like a cello.
-Exactly.
[Jon] We're getting better.
As long as you show improvement.
Let me see.
Not bad.
We're getting there, Roy.
[Roy] I would die in this kitchen,
'cause I'd be eating this
every single day.
[Jon] We gotta get you 23andMe.
-You might be Ashkenazi.
-I might be Jewish. Yeah. [laughs]
[Micah] You want to come take a look
at the matzo balls?
All floating really nice, right,
they've allspan style="style2" really, like, doubled,
almost even tripled in size.
[Jon] Should we scoop out our mistake?
[Micah] Yeah, I'm gonna grab our tamale,
see how it is.
-Should we try the, uh
-[Roy] Yeah.
-Yes.
-the matzo tamale?
Just a little bit.
I need a little schmaltz, right?
[Roy] I could see, definitely,
if it was wrapped and steamed.
I agree.
I'm missing the flavor you get
from the soup
-[Micah] Right.
-with it.
You'd have to have a sauce with it.
-A sauce would be like
-If you put a mole over that
-If you put a sauce, you'd be good.
-A reduced chicken stock mole.
[Micah] Yeah.
-More braised meat in there, too.
-Mm-hmm.
[Roy] Here, Jon.
[Jon] Now we're really
[Roy laughing]
Got the whole Jewish experience
in one bite.
[laughing]
It's good. Well, how do you lose with that
and the good pastrami in there, right?
Have you ever made that type of sandwich,
pastrami and lox together?
-I haven't.
-I might have to make one today.
-The Roy Choi.
-Let's do it. Yeah, right? There you go.
[salsa rhythm playing]
[Roy] Let's just start with a straight,
uh, pastrami sandwich.
-[Micah] Okay, perfect.
-With the coleslaw, that one.
-Yeah.
-Okay.
You want the MacArthur Park,
like the Russian and the coleslaw?
Yeah, the Russian and the coleslaw,
and then,
-do you have mustard on the line?
-Yeah, we got mustard.
-Wait, which one are you doing?
-He wants the MacArthur.
A MacArthur?
What is it, like,
Russian dressing and, um--
[Micah] So, yeah, the MacArthur is kind of
our ode to Langer's.
That's the deli that I grew up
going with my grandparents to.
It's, uh, Russian dressing, coleslaw,
pastrami, Swiss cheese on rye.
This is an East Coast,
West Coast thing though, Roy.
[chuckles] You wanna do the O.G.?
-I'm New York, so you know what I like.
-I'm with you, too.
I don't eat the MacArthur, only the O.G.
[Roy] Just do the one that Jon wants,
and I'll add to it.
-All right, let's do the O.G., then.
-O.G.
[Roy] Capers and tomatoes and onions.
Pickles.
[Micah] I like it already.
Getting Roy Choi-ified over here.
Is this the mustard?
[Micah] Yeah, this is the deli mustard,
and this one's Beaver honey hot mustard.
-[Jon] Oh, boy.
-[Roy] Oh, boy.
If you're starting on the MacArthur,
to me, that's already what you're doing.
That's a hat on a hat for me.
-[Roy] But no mayo.
-[Jon] No.
[Roy] Let's see if it comes out any good.
My grandmother used to get upset
if anybody put anything on
other than mustard to a pastrami.
-Where did she grow up? Here?
-Chicago.
[Jon] Chicago, yeah.
[Micah] And my cousins sometimes,
they liked mayonnaise on their sandwich.
So they would go to Langer's
and ask for mayonnaise,
and my grandmother'd go,
"You don't put mayonnaise
on your sandwich! That's for the span style="style2"goyim!"
[Jon laughing]
I feel like I snuck into the Louvre.
-Here's my contribution to, uh
-[Micah] I love it.
[Roy] to the Jewish community.
-[Jon] Surf and turf.
-[Roy] Yes.
-Roy Choi's surf and turf.
-[Micah] There you go.
-[Jon] Not gonna lie, looks good.
-[Micah] My grandmother's gonna be
-turning over in her grave.
-[Roy] I know.
Look at that,
it does look pretty nice, Roy.
[Jon] Looks like Roy's gonna get
a sandwich named after him.
-Which is the ultimate Jewish honor.
-It is, right?
-If your name's on the menu in a deli
-Yeah.
you've made it.
[Roy] So the next one, we have to make
a traditional bagel and lox, right?
[Micah] Yeah, let's do that.
So we want an everything bagel, obviously.
[Roy] Uh-huh.
[Micah] So just slice it in half,
right in the toaster.
Always toast,
even when they're fresh like that?
[Micah] Yes. A point of contention
when we first started.
-[Roy] East Coast doesn't toast.
-Yeah, I didn't want to toast at all,
because a great bagel
doesn't need to be toasted.
-Fresh bagel, yeah.
-We tried it for about ten minutes,
and every single person was like,
"Can I get this toasted?"
-West Coast, we grew up toasting.
-"Gotta toast everything."
On the West Coast, you never even think
of eating a bagel untoasted.
-Okay.
-[Micah] Want cream cheese?
-[Jon] That's not that toasted.
-No. I don't like a dark toast.
You just warmed it up.
[Micah] So when we do cream cheese, too,
we want a nice, even, thin layer.
-[Jon] A schmear.
-[Micah] Yeah.
Couple capers on each side, like,
maybe four or five capers.
[Roy] Why do you do so little?
-I would go more capers, too, at home.
-Okay.
Well, first of all, to me,
balance is number one,
and the most important thing
that's going on here is the lox, right?
And I don't want anything
to overpower the lox.
And I saw you only put a little bit
of onion, as well. Just a little bit.
Yeah, I want just a little of that bite,
but not too much.
-[Roy] You serve it open-faced, right?
-[Micah] Yeah.
-[Roy] That's it.
-[Micah] Our perfect bagel and lox.
[Jon] Wow.
-Can we do O.G. pastrami, too?
-Yeah, let's do one. For sure.
Rye bread.
-This is your standard--
-The O.G.
O.G., right.
-Mustard, rye, pastrami, that's it.
-East Coast.
[Micah]
A little mustard on the bread first.
-[Jon] On both sides?
-[Micah] Both sides, yep.
Normally there's two parts
to the brisket, right?
-[Jon] Yes.
-[Micah] We're gonna cut, um,
-about three or four slices off of here.
-[Jon] Yeah.
And then three or four slices
off the back side.
[Jon] Okay.
[Micah] That's perfect.
All right, you want to put
these layers down first.
Yeah, just kind of stack them like that.
Perfect.
That's great.
Exactly. And then just push it
right through. There you go.
Perfect.
[Roy] Nice.
-[Jon] We'll eat out there. Yeah?
-[Micah] Looks good.
-Should we get a couple matzo ball soups?
-[Roy] We'll get out of your way.
[Micah] So we keep our matzo ball setups
right in these deli cups.
The veg is all in there,
and a bit of the soup, too,
just to keep it all moist.
[Jon] So nobody keeps it in the soup,
like meatball and sauce.
[Micah] They're like a sponge.
Your soup will disappear.
[Jon] Right.
[Micah] So just put a little bit
of our soup in each one.
And these are the crispy chicken skins.
That's the gribenes.
[Micah] So we just kind of shake
a little bit over the top there.
[Roy] Chicken granola.
-[laughing]
-There you go. I like that.
-[salsa rhythm playing]
-[tires squealing]
[Michael] Let's get this to Chef Roy.
Here we go. We eat this every day.
We don't need it.
So I like the small veg.
I didn't want the veg to be too small,
where it's too chef-y and too deliberate.
-I love the dill.
-[Micah] It's sort of in between.
The matzo is really nice.
Usually, matzo ball soup in a deli
goes from good to very good.
But pretty much every diner in New York
has matzo ball soup.
-Really?
-And it's just like--
-What part of New York are you from?
-Manhattan.
-I've been out here for 13 years.
-Where?
Grew up in the Upper East Side, went to
high school in the Upper West Side.
I'm not Jewish. Micah's Jewish.
I'm not. I'm actually Lebanese.
-Like your grandfather before you?
-[Michael] Exactly.
-Long line of Lebanese deli men, exactly.
-[laughing]
And it's funny because, you know,
Micah and I
Micah comes from
a fairly conservative Jewish household,
and I just grew up in New York,
but we both have
such a love for deli food.
It means very different things to us.
You know, Micah, whenever someone's born
or someone dies, or a bar mitzvah,
he just thinks about lox.
For me,
deli food was more of a street food,
growing up.
It was like me cutting class,
going to Zabar's and eating a knish.
[Micah] There's a handful of foods
in America
that have kind of superseded
the original culture they came from
-[Jon] Yeah, yeah.
-and become American foods, right?
-Things like tacos, like pizza.
-[Jon] Yes.
-Jewish deli is definitely one of those.
-[Jon] Yeah.
[Micah] This is our smoked fish plate.
-[Jon] Awesome.
-[Roy] Beautiful.
-We have our lox, which we made today.
-This is amazing.
Um, this is our sturgeon,
our pastrami lox,
our barbecue cod, our sable,
hot smoked salmon and whitefish salad.
And this is the one
-everybody goes crazy for here.
-Whitefish salad.
Whitefish salad, which is
basically cream cheese, right?
-Right.
-Cream cheese, some mayonnaise.
This is why ours is different.
This is about 90% fish
and 10% the mayonnaise and cream cheese,
so it really is,
you know, a whitefish salad.
Such a difference if you hot smoke
the salmon vs. cold smoke it.
The nuances of the fish
are completely different.
This is really delicious.
This is not something I'm used to having.
-[Micah] Kippered salmon.
-[Jon] Kippered salmon is not a
It's funny, we like to have
the traditional names for things,
so we used to have that on the menu
as kippered salmon,
and we didn't sell it at all.
One day, we were like,
"Let's put it on as hot smoked salmon,"
and it just flew out of here.
See, people ask for mayonnaise here
all the time,
and we don't give it
because of my grandmother.
The only thing we don't give out.
[Jon] So, now, I'm a firm believer,
in the argument about
progressiveness or traditionalism,
-that it's not binary, it's a balance.
-[Micah] Yeah. Mm-hmm.
It's a constant tension, and either
without the other, the culture dies.
And so you've been honoring the tradition
-in a way I appreciate
-[Micah] Yeah.
and elevating it,
but still coloring inside the lines.
-[Micah] Yeah.
-[Michael] Totally.
Now it's time for the Roy Choi.
-Oh, my God.
-Roy's way outside the lines on this.
For every yin, you need yang.
And here it is.
[Roy] And I'm not doing this
to bastardize. It's just,
for me, coming from outside the culture,
it kind of blows my mind that,
why wouldn't you put smoked lox
and pastrami together?
-Right.
-But then,
when I said it and I saw his face,
it wasn't like it was insulting,
it was like it doesn't even register
-Yeah.
-to do that. But for me,
from the outside, it's like,
two of the best things in the world.
-Right.
-Why not put them together, you know?
Yeah, I mean, honestly, so much
of why that doesn't register for me,
it does go back to my grandmother,
-and hearing her voice in my head.
-[Jon] But here we go.
Here, grab a
-[Roy] Yeah, let Micah do this.
-Tell me what your sauce is.
I just took mustard and capers
and tomatoes and onions,
and just made it into, like, a remoulade.
-[Micah] Nice.
-[Roy] Without the mayo.
-You know what, it's good.
-It tastes good.
-This is a serious sandwich.
-[Jon] It's really good.
I thought it was going to be gross,
but it's actually really good.
[Michael] It's interesting,
when we originally opened Wexler's,
we kind of, like, wanted to bring
the traditional Jewish deli soul food
back to its roots
and make everything in-house,
while pushing
the rest of the stuff forward,
make the place an honest expression
of how we are,
and yeah, might piss some old people off
but it would be less authentic
if I was pretending to be 100 years old.
I'm surprised the older community
would be pissed off,
-because to me
-[Jon] Yeah.
again, coming from the outside in,
it feels like you guys
are honoring tradition
-Yeah.
-on every level,
but you're just
you're just the new generation,
and you're using different ingredients
from the market and things like that.
The thing is,
you don't know old Jews well enough.
[Jon] You don't know about--
-They get pissed off about everything.
-This would be like
This would piss an old Jewish man off?
This is the thing, okay?
-So, what about it would--
-In Santa Monica,
especially when we first came, a lot
of the old Jewish community'd come
"This isn't a deli.
There's no waiter coming to my table.
I don't like the way you serve this.
This isn't big enough." Whatever.
So just from the get-go,
having to order yourself--
But this is what happened
that's really interesting,
is they came back around.
They kind of stayed away from it,
and they came back around,
because I think there's something
undeniable about what we're doing.
The quality's at a certain level,
and the tradition actually is
very much there.
It just took them a minute to kind of
respect what we were doing.
You gotta remember, the whole religion
is based on "You can't change one word,
-one letter, one"
-[Micah] Yeah.
Everything is hand-transcribed.
But that's why it's been around
3,000 years.
-I know.
-So, like, without tradition,
you don't have that durability
through the ages.
You need people who are unwilling to shift
even one millimeter,
but on top of it,
each generation needs to challenge it.
And that's also
part of the Jewish tradition,
is argument,
-challenging
-Yes.
different interpretations,
different sects breaking off.
But you guys know this, as creatives,
like, the tension is where
the good stuff comes out of.
-Where it comes out of, yeah.
-When you dig deep into that place,
that's when something cool comes out.
I think you're becoming a
a zen master
-Thanks, brother. I appreciate that.
-of fish. Really.
[Roy] I just realized
if I ran a bagel shop, I'd go crazy
because there'd be poppy seeds
and sesame seeds everywhere.
-[Micah] Yeah.
-[Roy] And my OCD nature would be like
[Micah] I've been through, like,
so many different solutions.
I had this crazy vacuum at one point.
It broke in, like, a week.
[Roy] It's almost like,
I would create a grated floor.
[Jon] Really?
[Micah] So everything
goes right through? [laughs]