Watch America’s #1 Burger is Served at NYC’s Best New Bar | On The Line

[upbeat music]

The Sip and Guzzle is a American Japanese

hybrid cocktail bar.

We got number one burger in North America,

voted by world’s best steakhouses.

My title is Executive Chef.

I did 10 years at three Michelin, Alinea, as Executive Chef

and I’m taking all of my creativity

and applying it to the bar.

It’s a cocktail bar.

A lot of the food wouldn’t work in all environments.

Here, having a 13-inch mochi fry, that’s chewy

and it’s a French fry with a couple of cocktails and a beer

makes absolute sense and it’s fun.

[upbeat music]

Hey, what’s up? Welcome to Sip and Guzzle.

I’m Mike Bagale, Executive Chef. Come on in.

[bright music]

This is actually Guzzle Bar.

Downstairs is Sip Bar.

Upstairs focuses on classics

and classic cocktail-making, prohibition style.

And then downstairs is a little bit more technique driven

and the kitchen supports both programs.

So, come into the kitchen and let’s get started.

[bright music]

♪ Hey ♪

We’re checking in on some morning production.

Chef here is getting ready to grind our A5 Wagyu

for our signature Tavern Burger.

This Tavern Burger is a byproduct of another iconic sandwich

that we do, the Royale with Cheese.

We take all the trimmings from that

and we grind it into patties.

That was how this dish was birthed.

We use A5 Miyazaki specifically

’cause the Royale with Cheese sandwich is an iconic sandwich

in Japan called the Katsu Beef Sandwich.

And our version is a little bit Americanized.

We put minced onions

similar to how big fast food brands do it.

We make our own Japanese ketchup, our own version

of cheese sauce on it.

Specifically, this is tenderloin.

This isn’t just A5 Wagyu, it’s the most tender cut on top

of it already being tender.

And the reason for which is when you bite

into this really thick sandwich, it needs to disintegrate

and eat almost like a marshmallow.

But for the burger, we do 12 a day, very specifically

because that’s our yield of our byproduct.

So, it is sustainable.

This is like a nose to tail, if you will,

of our in-house production.

There’s a lot of fat here.

It’s not traditional for a Tavern Burger,

so we need to strengthen it.

So, we add a little bit of gelatin

and then we add Japanese Jidori egg yolks

to give it a little bit of a binder as well.

It’s a Japanese chicken that’s actually a fertilized egg.

It is chicken eggs they use in Yakitori.

We start this in the morning, let them really,

really firm up ’cause we’re gonna pan base those

in a lot of French butter and caramelize ’em.

And we need to make sure that it’s fresh ground daily,

that it’s bound properly

and that it has time to rest

so the meat softens even a little bit more,

but it’s still compact.

And then we assemble the burger by adding

what I call Parmesan singles to mimic like a craft single

where we take Parmesan and cream and lay it into a sheet

and cut it into perfect square so we can drape that over

and steam it over the final product.

And then we do our own fermented shishito relish,

napa cabbage slaw, fermented pickles, just a light brushing

of tare on it and the Breads Bakery sesame buns.

This looks great, chef.

I’m gonna head upstairs and check in with Chef Isaac.

[upbeat funky music]

I like to start my day with Chef de Cuisine Isaac here.

Isaac runs not only the day-to-day operations,

he helps me streamline the systems

to make sure every dish is consistent.

Let’s check out this caviar.

You gotta see how it’s gonna work.

This is Golden Osetra caviar.

We get it farmed from Greece.

It’s just a rare quality egg.

It’s a little bit richer,

a little bit more buttery

than you would typically get from a caviar.

Any luxury ingredient,

there needs to be a form of education

from the product to the guest.

The best way to serve it is in abundance.

That way the guests feel not only are they getting

the quantity of which they want,

but they’re able to make their own assessment

into why they like it.

[Isaac] Dealing it in with ice cream a lot.

So, thinking maybe we just do a special with a fat dab

of caviar on the Hakata milk saucer.

Mm-hmm. Really good. It’s delicious.

This batch is super nutty.

Alright, we’re gonna check some of the deliveries

that are coming in now.

[upbeat music]

Some of our deliveries come up to the bar.

This is our Breads Bakery delivery.

A very prestigious list

that rated us number one burger in the country,

is partially due to this amazing

partnership with Breads Bakery.

Every day, deliver in the morning between 12

and 15 buns just baked like an hour ago.

[Mike] We don’t make it in-house

because we don’t have the time commitment,

the proofing, the ovens.

One thing coming from Michelin kitchens

is there’s like a stigma of not making everything in-house.

And if you’re not making your own bread

or your own cured meats or whatever-

Then you’re a hack.

Yeah, then you’re an idiot and you should go home

and never come back.

Bread looks awesome and we have a few other deliveries

that we need to check on.

[upbeat music]

Come on in. Thank you.

Straight to the kitchen. Alright.

This is our bluefin tuna.

Really high quality, as you can tell.

Clean, beautiful product that we use a lot of.

Typically what we’ll do is we’ll separate this loin

and use the loin specifically

for putting into our volcano roll.

We like to give it a little taste, determine if we want

to age it on the skin a little bit downstairs

to impart a little bit more umami and flavor.

Or sometimes it’s kind of ready to go now.

What do you think?

I think it’s great.

I think sit on it for a couple days

and let it kind of concentrate, just on the skin.

Okay. And we’ll break

it down and get it ready.

It could go right now.

I’d be happy with it right now.

But yeah, let’s give it a few days and we’re okay.

Let’s pack it up and keep on moving.

[bright jazz music]

So, a big part of my day is checking in on production.

All of the production happens behind the scenes

before we start service.

Right now I’m checking in on our volcano roll,

which this is an homage to the Japanese hand roll.

This is a unique recipe of macerating nori

with sugar and soy and an invert sugar and then drying.

This is a perfect example of a dish that’s just hyper,

hyper minimalist, but it took about four months

of constant R and D.

This is actually two sheets of nori

that we’ve pressed together.

The next thing is to fry it quickly

and what we’re doing is we’re letting the sugars

that are in the soy caramelize, you take this bar

and you have to work very, very quickly

because as the sugar cools, it hardens.

So, what we’re doing is rolling this

and pressing it so that I’m getting it very, very,

very tight and structural.

And then the sugar temperature is dropping drastically

and as it cools,

[nori roll whooshing]

it forms a tube.

And we set it right here and we make 150 of those

and then we move on to the next project.

So, we’re almost done here.

Let’s go check on some more of the production.

[gentle music]

So, we saw some production upstairs.

A lot of the rest of the production happens down here

in our receiving kitchen.

You saw upstairs, me rolling the tubes and finalizing ’em

and then they get dehydrated.

Down here is where the production starts.

We lacquer and brush and macerate all the nori,

and then it gets air-dried before the final steps.

So, this happens every day, first thing in the morning,

as well as drying our chicken skins that we will puff later.

This is our Bikini production.

It’s the Bikini sandwich designed for my love

of the Spanish Bikini sandwich.

We call it the world’s thinnest sandwich.

The idea of this dish is that we fill it

with luxurious ingredients

that embody ham and cheese sandwich.

We use Comte cheese from France

and we kind of make like a Comte cheese ganache.

And then we layer that with fresh shavings

of Cinco Jotas Jamon Iberico,

which for me is the greatest jamon in the world.

This is the base of the sandwich

and as you can tell, it’s super, super airy.

It’s like a wafer. We need two of these per order.

We can sell over a hundred of these a night.

So kind of like everything else, it’s a huge production

that has to continually work with extreme efficiency.

These machines here, they have to continually go for hours

and hours to fill this.

It’s not a traditional stroopwafel machine.

It’s basically a flat iron press with non-stick surfaces

that I’ve used for a variety of techniques,

but it’s the only one I know that proves this technique.

The batter’s really special

because it’s a combination of the right amount of starch

and how those starches are introduced with flour

and how it’s rested and sits over time

to give it the resiliency it needs to be paper thin

and light without being overly heavy.

And over here, we have our chicken production,

Chef Will here, has been with us since day one

and he’s a monster.

Will can single-handedly prep almost all of it by himself

and we’re super lucky to have him.

This is a signature Electric Chicken.

It’s called Electric

because it has a heavy amount of Sichuan oil

and a little bit of Sancho, which is Japanese,

that has a numbing effect on the pallet.

It’s kind of like our version of Nashville hot chicken,

but we debone it for maximum surface area for crunch-

Crunch. For consistency.

It also helps speed up the cooking process.

Then we brine the legs overnight.

It makes a juicier piece of chicken.

For me, you cannot fry chicken if you don’t brine it.

We air-dry it, it takes a little bit

of that moisture out of the skin

so that when we fry it, it gets even extra crispy.

Off the air-dry into buttermilk, out of the buttermilk

and into our dredge.

Out of the dredge into the fryer,

every single chicken gets fried for exactly seven minutes,

no more, no less.

Out of the fryer into our amazing Sichuan oil.

It goes in and outta that oil, which just allows

that textural crunch layer to be saturated

with all that chili.

But then we let it drip and dry

so that the chicken’s not overly saturated.

And then we finish it with a heavy dusting

of a lot more chili powder and Sichuan powder.

And you let the guests use a pair of scissors.

We instruct them to put a glove on

so they can handle the heat.

If we cut up the chicken, it immediately starts

to lose heat and also moisture.

All of the dishes are izakaya-style.

So, it’s all things to share.

And this is how we can make something that is a single leg

of chicken shareable for, you know, the whole table.

But that’s it for our chicken. Keep this thing moving.

We have a little bit more production to do.

[upbeat music]

[singers vocalizing]

We got about an hour before doors open,

get ready for service, do any final tastings,

any final garnish work

and make sure the stations are set the way

they need to be for service.

Here’s our nori rolls.

The cutting boards are coming out,

salamanders going on, ovens are going on.

Cotton candy machines getting warmed up.

This is another bit of garnish for one of the dishes.

This is our chicken skins, which we make chicken stock

and puree the chicken stock

with koshihikari rice from Japan.

It kind of puffs like a chicharron.

These are the skins that we had drying

on the speed rack downstairs.

We go through a lot of these.

We do a chicken chips and salsa.

So, this actually acts as like a potato chip.

The guests get to crack the chips that are seasoned

with the powder and dip it into avocado, pineapple

and salsa verde.

So, part of service is getting these last minute.

They stay super crunchy.

We’re gonna put up the chicken chips and salsa.

This is kind of a Ferran Adria trick

way, way, way, way back in the day.

He used to put salt air on his margaritas,

which is super ahead of its time.

Sometimes people will look at airs and foams

and they’ll criticize it as being sciency and molecular.

It’s no different than any other technique.

Making a foam, making a puff chip, making an anglaise

for ice cream base.

These are all science techniques.

You can either dip it or you can sip it.

It’s almost designed to be like a gazpacho.

Guests have a lot of fun with it.

We need to check the foie gras,

which is our signature Mont Blanc recipe,

which is toasted shokupan, sour cherry jam.

And make sure we’re tight there. Did you reblend that?

This is new. That’s new?

Yeah- It still needs

to be blended silkier.

This is a pato foie, a classic French pato foie

using cherry juice.

It’s kind of like a jam, which still gives it bite

and really holds up texturally to the foie gras.

We’ve lost a few chefs to this dish.

[chef laughing]

He’s our third chef to attempt this-

Today. Today.

Foie gras’s obviously really, really dense, right?

It’s pure fat.

And when fat gets cold, it gets really, really firm.

We stabilize ours with a little bit of gelatin,

so it’s flexible, but we don’t do a whole lot else to it.

So, inherently he’s working with a very,

very dense firm duck fat.

And he probably should start going to the gym soon.

He’s gonna fix the cherry.

So, I think we’re pretty much there, unless I’m surprised.

[laid-back music]

There’s also like a peanut butter and jelly thing going on.

Not in actual flavor, but in texture and design.

The sour cherry and the super fatty foie gras

and, of course, the bread your mind takes you

to a place, you’re like,

something’s very familiar about this.

And it’s done in a little bit more of an elegant fashion.

For service, like I’ll typically expedite

or Chef Isaac will expedite.

We have 110 people on the books,

but we could easily have 150 walk-ins tonight

that we’re not ready for.

And with that comes surprises.

That’s the nature of the beast.

We are all set up in here with tastings.

Now, we just need to finalize

getting the expo station set up

and fine-tuning everything

so we can get ready to go for service.

[upbeat music]

It’s four o’clock.

We’re about to get busy,

so I’m gonna have to kindly ask you to leave.

Thank you.

[gentle music]