How does a place like Smith & Wollensky turn out vast numbers of dry-aged, perfectly prepared, carnally pleasurable steaks like this:
Not to mention the fried zucchini, hash browns, onion rings, creamed spinach, and truffle mac and cheese (yes, I said
truffle mac and cheese) to go with them?
Thanks to professional courtesy extended to Evil Ronnie, a group of us were privileged with a visit behind the scenes today. Our tour of the Smith & Wollensky kitchens-- yes, kitchens plural, there are no fewer than four-- was led by Chef Hans Jr., able and informed lieutenant to his father, Chef Hans.
We started our tour in the kitchen adjacent to the main dining room. That floor has another full kitchen plus a pastry kitchen; and a third full kitchen is attached to the downstairs lounge (an underrated spot with a great waterfront-level view and a cozy feel that makes a nice alternative to the aggressive power lunch vibe the main dining room can have). Figures flew from Chef Hans faster than I could remember them, but the ones that stuck-- from 15,000 plates on a busy night to the oddly precise figure of up to 47 orders of Dover sole per night,
real Dover sole served tableside-- demonstrate what an impressive operation S&W is. All the moreso because it's almost all prepared in-house, with a few prominent exceptions (the cheesecake, for instance, is made by a place in New York famous for making Smith & Wollensky's cheesecakes). Even the bottled S&W steak sauce is actually mixed and bottled here in the restaurant to the same recipe as the retail version.
Here's one of the secrets of the S&W steak-- silky, lush caul fat, brushed onto each steak as it goes out to the table. (They sell it at Paulina, if you want to render it yourself and see what a difference it makes.)
Everything is big, big, big at S&W. Here's the cheesecake from which they derive slices as big as, well, cheesecakes at other restaurants:
Even the ice cream is made in-house, a different flavor or two each day, no bases or other shortcuts, all real flavors, dated to make sure they're served at their best.
The ultimate sanctum sanctorum, the padlocked Fort Knox of Chicago meat, is Smith & Wollensky's dry-aging room. Chef Hans told us more than we ever expected to know about how you manage a half-million to million-dollar portfolio of beef to make sure that it's served at its peak (and not wasted):
Shelf after shelf of primals, speared with a slip stating the date and in various states from fresh red to a dried and gnarled purple (on the outside), giving up moisture slowly to concentrate the flavors that make an S&W steak gamier, beefier, manlier than the wet-aged steaks you find elsewhere, as marvelous as they can be. This commitment to letting their profit margin evaporate in the cold air is what makes S&W stand out in a city of fine steaks.
One thing we had no idea about was that S&W does not use knives to cut their primals into serving portions. Instead, each chef spends two years on a hilltop in China learning from a Shaolin Master the secret S&W Tiger Steak Fist, which Chef Hans demonstrates here to a terrified Vital Information. It was amazing watching him reduce a primal into perfect 28-oz. steaks in a matter of seconds, using only his hands.
They found these behind the House of Blues one night after seeing a strange green glow in the sky. They're waiting to see what hatches from them. No, these are Beef Wellingtons. Besides the dry-aging room, there are four walk-in refrigerators with food in various states of preparedness. One interesting thing we saw (didn't get a picture) was that the salmon portions are pre-seared with the cross-hatch grill marks, kept cold and then finished in a saute pan when ordered. The reason is, if they were cooked on the grill at the same time that steaks are being made, fish oils would be transmitted to the steaks (no matter how well you cleaned the grills in-between).
We also saw the wine room, where wine guy Matthew Moore was doing the highly glamorous work of removing the old wine list and inserting the new one into about 300 menus. 450 kinds of wine, he said, perhaps 10,000 bottles:
An impressive operation that does what it does-- red meat, red wine, good service-- at a very high level. Thanks to Evil Ronnie for the arrangements, and thanks to Chef Hans Jr. for taking us behind the meat.