“We're spending about $15,000 to $18,000 every single week. It's about 1,000 pounds of fish. One of the biggest challenges running a seafood restaurant in Texas is making sure that you're getting the freshest possible product.” Come behind the scenes for a Friday with executive chef Fermin Núñez at Este—one of Austin's best new Mexican seafood restaurants—the morning they receive their big fish order for the weekend.
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00:00 One of the biggest challenges running a seafood restaurant in Texas is making sure that you're getting the freshest possible product.
00:06 We're spending about fifteen to eighteen thousand dollars every single week. It's about a thousand pounds of fish.
00:13 My role as the executive chef, it's being able to recognize where I'm needed the most,
00:19 making sure that the restaurant as a whole is working properly.
00:22 To be able to get people excited about the unusual things about the Mexican way of cooking fish.
00:29 That's one of the funnest challenges. This is what I do, what I love to do every single day.
00:32 Hey guys, my name is Fermin Nunez.
00:41 I get to be the chef of Este in Austin, Texas.
00:43 Come join me to see what a little bit of a Friday looks like for us today.
00:46 All right, so we got a very exciting day today. It's Friday. It's about 10 a.m.
00:55 Usually that's when we get our big fish ordering for the weekend. We open for lunch in about an hour and a half.
01:00 I'm gonna put on an apron, put on my shoes, check in with the team and see where I can be the most helpful today.
01:04 My shoes that I go to war with every single day that I'm here.
01:09 Now we're gonna check in on the prep list, see where the team is at. I'm gonna see what I can do before the fish comes in.
01:15 So part of running a restaurant is being organized.
01:20 This is one of the most important things in the kitchen, to make sure that we have a successful service.
01:24 At the end of every night, closing chef will go over this list, highlight anything that we need portion or prep for that day.
01:31 We have one of these for every station in the kitchen.
01:34 And then we have a master prep list that all the highlighted item gets transferred into this list.
01:38 And just by looking at it right now, I see that Billy has a really hefty list of things to get done before he's out of here at 2 p.m.
01:45 So I'm gonna check in with him to see what I can help him with, so you have a smoother day.
01:49 Buenos dias, Billy.
01:50 You have a hefty list, huh? Can I take a little bit of something off your hands?
01:54 Maybe the charred puya sauce?
01:56 Yeah, puya sounds good.
01:57 My role as an executive chef is to make sure that I can recognize where my attention is needed,
02:02 so I can keep steering the ship in the right direction.
02:04 The only thing that's missing is a couple of things that the line can do, and that's it.
02:08 Nice, muchas gracias, chef.
02:10 Make it cheap.
02:10 Buen dia.
02:11 Fish is just getting here, so we're gonna go to receive it.
02:14 Fish is here, guys! Fish is here!
02:18 The fish! Let's go get the fish, chef! Let's go get the fish!
02:21 Unlike steak or other types of proteins that come in,
02:24 fish is the best the moment it walks into this door.
02:27 We're getting about 250 to 300 pounds of fish just for today,
02:31 and we usually get that two to three times a week.
02:33 It's fish day! Yay!
02:36 Karina and Spencer and myself are gonna start putting all this fish away.
02:38 We're gonna pull the speed racks on the walk-in, so we check all the fish.
02:43 If we have any older fish, we pull that and we make sure we use that first.
02:47 FIFO, first in, first out.
02:49 So this is our trout.
02:50 One of the biggest things that you look for a fish is looking at the eyes,
02:53 make sure they look clear, making sure that they look alive.
02:56 When you press into it, making sure that you don't have fish
02:59 that is just gonna sink in. You want to have a nice little rise.
03:02 Sometimes people think gills be a little bit sticky.
03:04 That's a bad thing. It's not. It means that it's a very fresh fish.
03:07 I smell.
03:08 You want to make sure that it smells fresh. It smells of the sea.
03:11 When you go to the beach, you smell the salty water that's happening,
03:15 and that's a little bit of what we want to smell in here.
03:17 This passes fresh fish food certification for Estes.
03:21 Usually, we spend about 45 minutes to check the fish,
03:25 to put all the fish away, to rotate everything properly.
03:28 That's just a normal part of running a fish restaurant.
03:30 I think the halibut, that's about the same size as Karina.
03:34 Yeah, almost.
03:36 So I'm checking the quality of this halibut, the firmness.
03:40 It's gonna feel a little bit soft than your usual fish,
03:42 but that's not a bad thing because it's gonna balance out the fish.
03:45 But that's not a bad thing because it's gonna bounce back
03:47 a little bit faster than all the other fish.
03:49 We only needed a half a halibut, so I'll be able to flip it
03:53 and truly look at the flesh.
03:54 Make sure that it's really nice and bright and white.
03:56 And it smells great.
03:59 So now I'm gonna be able to mark the invoice and put it in the walk-in.
04:02 The invoice for today is $5,498.
04:05 When we opened this restaurant, I would look at the invoices
04:09 and the amount of money that we were spending on fish.
04:11 It was really scary that we were spending over $10,000 in one single delivery
04:15 and hopefully we would sell it, right?
04:19 A week on fish, we spend about, I would say, $15,000 to $18,000,
04:23 depending on how busy we're gonna be.
04:24 This fish will usually last about, you know, two and a half days,
04:27 and then we get to start all over again on Monday.
04:29 We're gonna check the oysters.
04:31 One of the things that we're looking for on oysters
04:33 is making sure that they are a nice size, that they're not open.
04:36 If they're open, that means that they're bad.
04:37 Making sure that they're cold is a big one.
04:39 If you get warm oysters in any delivery, that's gonna be obviously a big no-no.
04:43 This is a tag that is super important.
04:45 This is gonna tell us the harvest date and where it came from.
04:48 If we end up getting somebody sick,
04:50 this is something that the food department has to have on hand.
04:53 We have to keep this for three months.
04:55 We want to make sure that, A, we set a travel, we don't get anybody sick.
04:57 I'm gonna open one to make sure that it tastes nice and good.
05:00 You always smell them first to make sure that they don't smell rotten.
05:04 When we go to rinse them, we'll also be able to check them
05:08 individually to make sure that none of those are open,
05:10 to make sure that we don't get anybody sick.
05:12 We finished putting away the fish order.
05:14 It's 11 now.
05:15 As you can see, the kitchen is super busy.
05:17 Everybody's getting ready to serve lunch.
05:19 Every day before service, we have a lineup to see how many reservations we have.
05:25 We're gonna do a little bit of stretch and drive before lunch,
05:27 and then we're gonna get after it.
05:28 We're gonna have two tasters of torta at 11,
05:32 and two tasters of polvoron at 11.
05:34 We'll make that one today.
05:36 Last weekend, we put a few new dishes on the menu.
05:38 I feel like that was the easy part.
05:40 Now is the real test, right?
05:41 Doing it every week.
05:43 Let's stretch.
05:44 We're gonna take a deep breath.
05:46 We're gonna lift our arms all the way up to the ceiling.
05:51 Melt into the floor.
05:53 Down here, breathe in.
05:56 And push your knee out.
05:59 And I personally feel very thankful to be working with you guys.
06:03 Let's always make good food.
06:05 Let's have some fun.
06:06 One, two, three, lunche listo!
06:08 So it's 11.15.
06:12 I'm gonna get in there and start butchering some fish.
06:14 We got the tilefish.
06:19 We get this in from New Jersey.
06:21 We're gonna start breaking it down so we can use it for our catch of the day,
06:24 where we wrap it in banana leaf, and then we cook it over the charcoal grill.
06:28 And it's served with tortillas that we're making house one at a time,
06:31 a little bit of black beans, and pickled red onions.
06:33 And a little bit of lime to make your own tacos.
06:35 One of the most important things for me when breaking it down
06:37 is making sure that you're keeping it as cold as you can.
06:40 For that, I have a hotel pan lined with ice and then another one on top.
06:44 I only grab one instead of grabbing them all.
06:46 So I'm constantly able to keep them cold as we go.
06:49 I'm gonna start taking care of all these fins.
06:51 Taking the top fins is gonna allow me to have more precision cuts.
06:55 This is my George Chen scissors.
06:57 Team George Chen.
06:59 They're the perfect size to use them for.
07:01 Breaking down this part of the fish.
07:03 Now I'm gonna take the head off using my slicer knife.
07:07 People always think it's all about the knife.
07:11 It's more about knowledge of the anatomy of the fish.
07:13 I was able to get through the joints and take this head off really nice.
07:17 If I take this fish head to the bank and I tell them to deposit in their bank account
07:22 to make payroll, they're gonna be like, "What? You're crazy."
07:25 But if I take this fish head, put it inside of a flauta,
07:28 charge money for that flauta, I can take that money and make payroll with that.
07:31 So we take all the scraps of mostly all the white fish, steam it, we pick it,
07:35 and then we mix it with a little bit of chili paste, a little bit of quesillo,
07:38 a little bit of potatoes, fill it in a tortilla, crema, tomatillo, salsa roja,
07:42 a little bit of cotija, and you got yourself a winning dish.
07:45 Super important that you always get to sell everything that you buy
07:49 for a little bit more than what you paid for.
07:51 Now I'm gonna start filleting this fish.
07:53 Most people will try to be parallel to the fish.
07:56 That, in my opinion, is what makes people kind of miss a lot of the meat
08:00 that is close to the bone.
08:01 I go a little bit perpendicular to the fish.
08:04 Try to scrape the bones as much as you can.
08:06 Remove the fish completely from the belly.
08:08 And I prefer to do this part with scissors,
08:11 just detaching the bones from the fish.
08:15 That's the last cut.
08:16 And that's a fillet.
08:18 I'm gonna put this over ice to make sure that it stays nice and cold.
08:21 So now I'm just gonna start doing the same process that I did on the other side.
08:26 Butchering fish, you're constantly having to repeat the same process over and over again.
08:30 I jump in the process as needed based on the fish delivery,
08:33 how many hands we have that day.
08:34 So it takes a whole village to be able to do what we do on a daily basis.
08:38 I keep this little container with ice water to make sure the heat from my hands and this
08:46 doesn't start to warm up the fish, taking out all the pin bones.
08:49 Sometimes people will look at this and start pulling up.
08:53 That's gonna tear a lot of the fish.
08:54 I like to pull it towards me and there's not gonna be a lot of meat.
08:59 Now I'm gonna take the skin off of the fillet.
09:02 The way I like to do this, I always kind of make a little indention over here towards the tail
09:07 and just slightly start to place my knife in between the skin and the fillet.
09:13 Rather than moving my knife, I'm gonna start moving the skin and let that do the work.
09:19 I'm gonna take the stylefish, put it in the walk-in, put it away for the rest of our team.
09:22 All right, so we got a halibut over here, similar to what I did with the tilefish.
09:28 I'm gonna start breaking down to the primals.
09:30 For lunch, we have a fried halibut torta, a little bit of avocado chorizo that we make in-house.
09:36 This is a flatfish.
09:37 This one has a top side where you have two fillets and then a bottom side where you have
09:41 the other two fillets.
09:42 There's a line that if you get really close you can see, so I'm just gonna try to follow that line.
09:46 I'm using the hand that I'm not using my knife with, just like help me open.
09:57 This is one noise that you always want to hear.
09:59 That's a good sign.
10:00 That means that you're getting close to the bone.
10:02 You're not puncturing the meat.
10:04 When you have something like a whitefish, like a halibut, you're gonna see a lot of
10:07 different layers throughout the flesh, and it's something that you don't really get when you have
10:12 a redfish.
10:13 This is why we like doing it in the milanesa style, because it's something that you wouldn't
10:17 necessarily expect, but when you have like a crunchy, nice fried texture, it's delicious.
10:23 I'm gonna go in on the outside and detach the fillet.
10:27 If you have any doubts on where to cut, you can always practice with your hand to get
10:31 the feel.
10:32 The halibut is free.
10:35 The way our fishmongers work, they know exactly where the fish is coming from and when it's
10:40 arriving from all over the world through airplanes.
10:43 Sometimes our delivery doesn't show up at the right time because the airplane got delayed,
10:48 so it's always really important that all this fish is transferred with ice.
10:52 From just this one side, we'll be able to get maybe eight to ten orders.
10:58 Mimicking what we do on the other side.
11:01 A sharp knife is super important in the kitchen because you cut yourself less.
11:04 Goal number one in working in the kitchen is you walk in with ten fingers, you walk
11:07 out with ten fingers.
11:08 Right, chef?
11:09 Ten fingers in, ten fingers out.
11:11 That's it.
11:12 Clock in, clock out with ten fingers.
11:13 Excuse me, chef.
11:15 What do you think about this one?
11:16 Very nice, very nice.
11:18 So this is a short rib torta that we're putting on the menu for this weekend.
11:22 A big part of my job is making sure that I'm tasting things that Ale, the rest of the sous
11:26 chef team, they get done and then making sure that everything that goes on the plate is
11:30 approved.
11:31 I think it's way better than yesterday.
11:32 I think more herbs, a little less salt too.
11:35 Super lemony, it's delicious.
11:38 Okay, so now I'm going to put this away and get the next fish.
11:40 So this is a moray cod.
11:44 We are able to get this at a constant size to where we can sell it whole, we can sell
11:49 it half.
11:50 We butterfly it, we know exactly what we're going to get every single time.
11:53 It has a firm and fatty flesh, so it's really nice and easy to grill.
11:57 We use this for the sarandialo, this that is originally from Nayarit, which is a way
12:01 of butterflying fish.
12:02 Fried red onions, raw red onions, a little bit of red chilies, oil, garlic, and then
12:06 we brush it on the fish right before it hits the grill.
12:09 Kind of like back and forth, moving in.
12:12 That's the sarandialo action.
12:13 Instead of going in from the belly, like most people will do and take the guts out, we're
12:17 going to go from the top, split the head open.
12:19 That way when you butterfly it, you're protecting a little bit of that cheek meat that if you
12:23 were to fly it the other way, it's going to tend to overcook a lot faster.
12:28 Tilt the knife with my left hand to where I can see a little bit of where the cross
12:33 section is going to be.
12:34 I can make the cut, following the bones, trying to scrape that.
12:40 This is where the belly is going to start.
12:42 If I start cutting through it, the guts are going to be there.
12:44 So before I open that side, open it from this side.
12:47 This is going to start the butterflying process.
12:50 I'm going to go down the head to be able to split it.
12:53 Once I find it, go all the way down.
12:57 When you're getting to the tail, you want to make sure that you don't cut straight down
13:01 because if we open it here, we're going to have a big hole.
13:03 Then we don't look like professionals.
13:05 And we're professionals because we're at Bon Appetit.
13:09 Don't forget to like and subscribe.
13:11 I had to say that at one point.
13:13 I'm able to take this bone out.
13:16 We can use for stock.
13:17 The fish is butterflied.
13:19 All the guts are removed from the fish.
13:23 That's how we grill it.
13:24 We break down about 40 or 50 of these a week.
13:28 You'll see multiple people working at the same time in the kitchen because just one
13:32 fish is one portion and we sell a good amount of those.
13:35 All right, just knocked out 15 of these.
13:37 That should get us ready for service tonight.
13:40 It's around 1.30 PM, so we're still looking good on time to be ready for service.
13:44 So now we're going to be making the puya cream sauce that I'm taking out of Billy's
13:51 Prepless.
13:52 I'm going to start adding my onions.
13:53 One of our popular dishes, we take trout, lightly pound it so it's really, really thin.
13:57 When we're cooking it, you only sear it on one side at a low temp.
14:00 And then we have the sauce hot, pour it over the top.
14:03 So it kind of finished cooking the trout.
14:05 We garnish it with a little bit of chili oil, a little bit of trout oil, some flowers from
14:09 the garden.
14:09 It's really exciting to have some of the ingredients that are in this dish be in our
14:13 backyard, which is our garden right behind the restaurant.
14:15 I've never worked in a place where you can literally step outside of the kitchen, harvest
14:19 a little bit of peppers, a little bit of flowers, a little bit of garnish, and then be back
14:22 inside the kitchen and use that.
14:23 That's something really special.
14:25 It's run by Ana Maria, our lead farmer, and a lot of help with volunteers.
14:29 And even my mother, she goes in there every Wednesday and Saturday to help harvest.
14:33 If we ever have any sort of leftover, we give it to the community around the neighborhood
14:38 too.
14:39 Now it's time to add the garlic.
14:40 One of the things that we have to do with this recipe is constantly be stirring because
14:46 we're cooking at a high heat.
14:47 I can smell that sweetness coming from the pan.
14:49 Now is a perfect time to add the chiles.
14:53 Mexican food is so unique in the way we use chiles.
14:58 They're not too spicy, milder than a chile de arbol.
15:01 They have a little bit of sweetness and they add a nice, really bright red color to the
15:05 sauces that you add them.
15:08 Now that the chiles are almost toasted, I can smell it and I can see how they're changing
15:13 color.
15:13 They're starting to be a little bit more of a deep red.
15:16 I'm going to go get the toasted sesame seeds.
15:18 We make sure that they're super toasted because that's when you can truly smell the sesame
15:22 and you get that nuttiness to the sauce.
15:24 This sauce is very simple.
15:26 It doesn't have a lot of ingredients, so we want to make sure that we take every ingredient
15:29 to the max so they can be greater than the sum of its parts.
15:32 I'm going to add heavy cream from a local producer.
15:34 Cream and fish is not something that a lot of people will run for, but to me it tastes
15:39 of us, which is Mexican in essence.
15:43 Pair it with this chiles and you're able to have a nice, really balanced cream sauce.
15:47 It pairs really beautifully with a trout.
15:49 That's something that I'm really excited to be doing here, showing people how you can
15:52 eat fish in different ways.
15:55 We're going to turn this down to a medium heat.
15:57 We're going to let it reduce for about 30 minutes.
15:59 In the meantime, I'm going to check with the team, see how lunch is going and how we're
16:02 looking for the rest of the evening.
16:04 (Music)
16:07 So we cook the masa every night and then we grind it every morning.
16:10 Testing texture, flavor, making sure that the dough is seasoned because it's a canvas
16:16 of what we get to do every day.
16:18 This is a vehicle that we eat a lot of our food with.
16:22 Wiping a plate.
16:24 You can't have a taco without a tortilla.
16:25 (Music)
16:28 We had somebody call out for the morning because they were not feeling great.
16:30 So right now, Dave is training on his first shift on Hot Expo, which is a little bit more
16:35 like the senior stations.
16:36 How's it feeling?
16:37 Terrible.
16:38 Terrible?
16:38 Why terrible?
16:39 It feels amazing.
16:40 That happens at every restaurant, you know, you got to roll with the punches and make
16:43 it happen and then add the cameras, right?
16:45 Bring the cameras, work a new station.
16:47 F*** it, we'll do it live.
16:48 Yes, chef.
16:49 (Music)
16:51 All right, this looks like it's reduced enough.
16:53 I'm going to take it over there.
16:54 We're going to start blending it and we're going to season it.
16:57 When you're blending hot things, we don't fill the blender all the way up because if
17:01 we do that, the heat's going to rise as we know and then it's going to explode and then
17:06 it's going to be a really messy kitchen to clean up.
17:09 (Blender)
17:12 That has never happened in this kitchen.
17:13 That's why we don't look to the ceiling.
17:16 The kitchen came like that, right, Billy?
17:19 Yeah.
17:19 It actually gets thicker than what most people might think and that's because of the sesame
17:26 seeds.
17:26 The sesame seeds are also acting like a spigotting agent.
17:29 I'm going to call for Joaquin, who's our chef de cuisine, and he's going to help me
17:33 scrape all the delicious bits into here.
17:37 Teamwork makes the dream work and the puya sauce work, you know?
17:41 We paid for every single piece of sesame seed, so we want to make sure we get the most out
17:47 of every single one.
17:48 Still needs a lot of salt.
17:49 If you're seeing this at home, you're like, "This guy's crazy.
17:53 He's putting an insane amount of salt."
17:55 This is a big amount of sauce, so it's going to take a lot of salt.
17:58 Also, a lot of fat, a lot of heavy cream in there.
18:00 That's going to soak up a lot of that flavor.
18:02 That's the right amount of salt.
18:07 That's exactly where we wanted it.
18:08 Will you taste it, Spencer?
18:10 Yes, chef.
18:10 I get other people to try it, mainly because maybe my palate gets tired or overwhelmed.
18:17 Palate fatigue.
18:18 I think it's there.
18:20 I think it's there.
18:20 I'm going to cool this down.
18:21 I'm going to label it with a date, the name of the sauce, my initials.
18:24 If there's any issues with any sauce, where something wasn't made properly,
18:28 we can look at the initials and know where we went wrong.
18:31 It's not to point fingers at anybody.
18:32 It's just to hold everybody accountable and make sure we, as chefs, know where we need
18:37 to direct our attention.
18:38 It's now 3.30.
18:39 We're going to start transitioning to night.
18:41 People are starting to come in and get ready for service.
18:44 Roll tide!
18:46 Roll tide, everybody.
18:46 Mini roll tide.
18:47 All right, guys.
18:48 We have 202 on the books for tonight.
18:50 We had over 60 walk-ins yesterday.
18:53 So let's be mindful that we are going to be very, very busy on this Friday.
18:57 Station's ready to go?
18:58 Roll tide, C-Chef!
19:00 C-Chef!
19:00 All the lunch people are passing off the station to the night people.
19:04 The menu is very similar.
19:06 We're not closing between service, so we're still seeing a lot of food coming out of the kitchen.
19:10 And all the morning people are checking in with the night people to make sure that they're
19:13 going to be successful, and they carry on service until 10 p.m.
19:16 My role in this moment is just kind of like be the bird in the sky and check in that everything
19:20 is happening accordingly, because this is one of the most crucial moments.
19:23 Anything that we went through for lunch that we are now going to need to make for dinner
19:28 that we didn't account for this morning, this is where we can make the most mistakes
19:31 if we're not careful and we're not putting attention.
19:32 All right.
19:33 It's 5 o'clock.
19:34 My day at Este ends right now.
19:36 I'm going to go check in in our sister restaurant, Suerte, see how they're doing for the evening.
19:40 I hope this gave you an input into what it takes to run a marisco restaurant, Mexican seafood.
19:45 Come to Austin.
19:45 Visit us soon.
19:46 I look forward to cooking for you.
19:48 Bye.
19:49 [MUSIC]
19:54 You good? You good?
19:55 You good?
19:55 You good, chef?