“In a tasting menu restaurant, everybody gets a dessert. So if you have 80 a day, you gotta have 80 desserts a day. We have to be very fast. There's only a couple of other restaurants in the city that has two Michelin stars.” Go behind the scenes at Providence with pastry chef Mac Daniel Dimla for a day crafting decadent desserts in the heart of Hollywood.
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00:00 Providence is a two-star Michelin restaurant in the heart of Hollywood.
00:04 There's only a couple of other restaurants in the city that has two Michelin stars.
00:08 I started as the head pastry chef at Providence when I was 23 years old.
00:12 In a tasting menu restaurant, everybody gets a dessert.
00:15 So if you have 80 a day, you gotta have 80 desserts a day.
00:19 We have to be very fast.
00:20 There's only two of us in the morning to do prep,
00:23 so we have to be efficient and ready to get to work.
00:26 Hi, welcome to Providence.
00:28 My name is Mac. I'm the pastry chef.
00:30 Come on in.
00:30 The menu that we serve here is a 10-course tasting menu.
00:34 So as a pastry chef here, two of them are my responsibility.
00:37 There's a lot to do.
00:39 I gotta get started.
00:40 Morning!
00:44 Providence is a seafood restaurant that primarily focuses on seafood.
00:51 That's the fish side. That's where all the fish, seafood dishes get worked on.
00:55 And this is the meat side.
00:57 I don't have to fight for space in the morning, but at night, it's a free-for-all.
01:01 It's 8 a.m. and the first thing I do is check the low boys and our region in the back.
01:10 I'm looking for anything that's gone bad.
01:12 I'm looking for anything that's been a little bit of a mess.
01:15 I'm looking for anything that's been a little bit of a mess.
01:17 I'm looking for anything that's gone bad.
01:21 Or I'm checking what we need to make today or get ready to make for tomorrow.
01:25 This is a peach syrup that we use for the peach dessert.
01:30 I'm gonna taste that to make sure it's okay.
01:32 And there's dates on them, but you want to confirm it by tasting it.
01:35 I have primue here that I know I made last week.
01:38 And this side, we have a bunch of our bulky prep.
01:43 I'm just checking for ice cream that I need to bring upstairs.
01:46 So this is the cocoa husk gelato.
01:49 Now I've checked all our low boys and region.
01:52 I'm gonna write the prep list.
01:53 So for us at Providence, at least for the pastry department,
01:58 we kind of break it down between like the desserts.
02:00 We have a pre-dessert and the chocolate dessert
02:02 and all the component that goes in that dessert.
02:05 And if I need to make it, I'll write it down here where it says we need to make it.
02:09 Or if I don't, we'll put a dash on it.
02:12 We don't need to make it.
02:13 So what I'll do now is put our initials and individual tasks.
02:16 So we both know where the day will lead us to.
02:19 Do you want to make the mousse today?
02:21 I take on the projects that take the longest amount of time
02:26 to kind of know the ins and out of the recipes.
02:28 Okay, that's it.
02:30 I'll go change.
02:31 Okay, see you in a bit, Naomi.
02:33 Behind.
02:36 Morning, Matt.
02:40 Oh, the peaches came in.
02:41 Are they good?
02:42 Pretty good.
02:42 Pretty much I start my day up here and I end my day up here.
02:55 I'm gonna poco the ice cream that needs to be used for service.
02:58 The ice cream base that we make, we freeze them in these specialized beakers.
03:02 This is a California Almond Sorbet for the peach dessert.
03:05 Once they're pretty much rock solid,
03:08 you put them in this container with a blade.
03:11 And the blade's bitten so fast that it creates a very smooth ice cream.
03:16 Just delicious.
03:17 We do it in the morning so that it has time to set for service.
03:20 When I go up here, I poco and then throughout the day, I'll be going up here.
03:25 I'll check the ice cream and I'll bring it down when it's ready.
03:27 This is where we dry age the fishes.
03:30 We have two separate dry ager for seafood or fish
03:34 and then one for proteins like duck or meat.
03:37 Anytime that I go up here, which is pretty much every morning,
03:40 any tasks that are up here while I'm pocoing the ice cream, I will do.
03:44 Today's Paul's birthday, one of our sous chefs, so we're making him a cake.
03:49 Even though I am the Haitian chef, I still make people's birthday cakes.
03:52 We make our own chocolate at Providence.
03:55 This has been going for about three days.
03:58 The melangeur really is designed to refine small batches of chocolate.
04:03 This is actually one of our newest origin, Indonesia.
04:06 This is a test batch to see if it's origin that we want to use.
04:09 So this is a grindometer.
04:11 We're going to put a little bit of chocolate up here and we're going to swipe it down.
04:15 We're usually aiming for 10 to 15 microns and it's actually pretty there.
04:21 That's where the chocolate starts mostly breaking up.
04:23 This is ready.
04:24 We'll empty it later on when we finish downstairs.
04:28 This is the half-spear Hawaiian chocolate mousse.
04:33 That's the base of the chocolate dessert.
04:35 Usually the morning after we make them, whoever's up here, usually me, we'll unmold them.
04:40 We make sure that we work really efficient.
04:45 There's only four people in the pastry team and it's a lot of work really.
04:49 So kind of want to make sure that you're working very efficient.
04:53 This is lemon verbena pâte à fouille.
04:55 In English, pâte à fouille means fruit dough, but really it's just jelly.
05:00 Usually it's made with fruit, but here we have lemon verbena from the garden.
05:04 I'll lay them out in a rack like this so the outside can desiccate a little bit.
05:08 These we just got today.
05:10 You never want to squeeze your peaches.
05:12 It's going to bruise them.
05:13 You're looking for around this area for it to not be green.
05:17 When you smell it, it smells like a ripe peach.
05:21 Next thing I need to do is get these peaches ready for the peach dessert.
05:25 But before that, we got to grab some herbs in the garden.
05:28 [music]
05:34 We're literally on the famous Melrose Avenue, smack dab in the middle of Hollywood.
05:40 We also have our very own bee neighbors.
05:42 I don't want to mess with them.
05:43 Right now, the bees are very active.
05:46 This is their time to collect pollen.
05:49 So this is red shiso we're using for the peach dessert.
05:54 This is what we poach the peaches with.
05:56 This is white Elysium.
05:57 We use it to garnish the peach dessert.
06:00 We're going to pick it for service tonight.
06:02 Speaking of urban, we're in the middle of our fence.
06:07 But we do have like the lemon verbena out here.
06:10 This we use for the pâté au fruit that I cut.
06:14 When I'm feeling like writer's block, I'm out here trying to figure out what dessert I should do next.
06:19 It's very inspirational when you're out here.
06:20 It's very peaceful.
06:22 You get a lot of ideas.
06:23 So now I have all the herbs I need.
06:25 It's time to head back to the kitchen.
06:26 So right now, the peaches are the best as they can be.
06:34 It's very nostalgic to have a poached peach dessert.
06:37 The peaches are cut in half.
06:39 We'll finish it with Elysium flowers,
06:42 top with almond sorbet that we pocked with earlier.
06:45 And then we make a syrup out of the poaching liquid that's poured table side.
06:49 In the poaching liquid, we have water, sugar.
06:54 I'm going to add the sake and then I'll add red shiso that we picked earlier.
06:58 And then I'll finish it with a little bit of yuzu juice and I'll bring it up to a boil.
07:02 I'm going to blanch the peaches.
07:05 Before that, I'm going to score the peach with a razor.
07:09 We've been doing this dessert, at least a version of it, for about three years now.
07:14 We used to do it with prosecco and lemon verbena.
07:17 But upstairs, we have a bunch of shiso, which really works well with sake.
07:22 So that's why we're doing it.
07:23 So it only takes a couple of seconds.
07:25 Now I'm shocking the peaches so that they don't cook.
07:34 You kind of just want to loosen the skin.
07:36 See how it just kind of peels really nicely.
07:40 We usually make about 80 peach desserts a day.
07:44 I mean, at a tasting menu restaurant,
07:46 you kind of have the advantage of knowing how many desserts you're going to do.
07:50 But also in a tasting menu restaurant, everybody gets a dessert.
07:54 So we brought the poaching liquid to a boil.
07:57 And now I'm going to add the peaches.
07:59 And then we'll put a cartouche on.
08:02 Such a big pot.
08:03 So I'm going to put three.
08:04 So the cartouche keeps the peaches submerged so they cook evenly.
08:09 Also, sometimes the top part of the peach will
08:12 pop out of the liquid and it'll turn brown.
08:14 It'll oxidize.
08:16 This is a French top.
08:17 And if I move the pot towards the center, that is the hottest part.
08:21 Now we just want to cook them very, very, very gently.
08:25 So I'll pull probably half of it out of the French top itself.
08:29 So that's just touching pretty much the outer part, which is the least hot.
08:34 And we'll leave it there for 30 minutes.
08:36 Now it's time to make the mousse.
08:37 Let's go.
08:37 The chocolate dessert, it starts with a half sphere of chocolate mousse.
08:45 We dip it in chocolate and toasted coconut.
08:48 And then we'll top that with a long pepper and chocolate cremeux.
08:51 Garnish it with a tempered chocolate and a cocoa husk gelato.
08:55 And then we'll finish it with a long pepper and chocolate croissant.
08:59 On the table, the servers will finish it with a coconut and fig leaf coulis.
09:03 Chocolate dessert is the main dessert.
09:04 We've been serving this dessert for about a month now.
09:07 But even now we're thinking of the new dessert that we'll replace it with.
09:12 I'm just going to bloom the gelatin in the cold milk and let that soften.
09:16 So I'm just lightly whipping the cream, getting it ready for the mousse.
09:24 And this is about how far I'm going to take it.
09:26 Almost like ribbon stage.
09:29 We're going to make the ganache.
09:30 A ganache really is just chocolate emulsified with usually cream or milk.
09:36 So I'm warming the milk just to melt the gelatin.
09:40 And then I'll incorporate it into the chocolate.
09:43 Whenever using the French top, it's just you're playing with the temperature.
09:46 And I don't want it to boil, so I'm pulling it.
09:48 And then we'll incorporate it in the chocolate.
09:51 Okay, that's the ganache.
09:55 So right now it's a little separated.
09:57 But that's okay because we're going to use an emulsion blender to bring it back together.
10:01 This mousse is definitely very light.
10:05 Just perfect to end your meal because it's not a heavy chocolate dessert.
10:09 This mousse is going to set up fast, so I got to run upstairs and put them in the mold.
10:12 From my experience here at Providence in terms of our prep, we have to be very fast.
10:20 There's a lot of multitasking happening.
10:22 I just like getting things done.
10:24 I don't want to let the station down.
10:26 I was 23 when I got the pastry chef position here.
10:29 It was a big surprise to me.
10:31 To me, it's very unusual.
10:33 The level of trust that they have to give me.
10:36 It's a lot of pressure, but I realize I like working here.
10:40 I like doing what I do here.
10:41 I like the people here.
10:42 Mousse are in the freezer, and now we're going to shape the bread.
10:45 This bread is our main bread for service.
10:52 I'm going to start with the large bread for the bigger parties, which is 700 grams each.
10:58 For the smaller parties, like from one or two, they'll get a 300-gram sourdough.
11:06 So we'll do 12 big loaves, and the rest of the dough will be small loaves.
11:10 I like shaping the bread.
11:12 I mean, everybody likes shaping their bread.
11:14 So the sourdough that we make, it's made with a Hatchipi grain project, red fife, and a bruisey
11:21 rye.
11:21 Their farming style is they don't water.
11:24 You just let nature do the work.
11:26 We work with the farmers, the suppliers, as long as I can remember.
11:31 The relationship is definitely there.
11:33 That just means we get really good product.
11:36 These are going to rest for about 10 to 15 minutes before we do the final shaping.
11:41 There's like a feel-good feeling when you come and eat and you have your own loaf of
11:47 bread for some reason.
11:49 So these are all done.
11:59 Time to get them in the fridge for tomorrow's service.
12:05 Behind you.
12:06 When the clock turns around 2.30, that's chocolate time for me.
12:17 So this is where I play around with chocolate.
12:20 This is where I'm most creative.
12:24 We started with the idea of playing around with making bean-to-bar chocolate around the
12:29 time when COVID started.
12:30 Just made sense because we weren't really doing anything.
12:33 I was at home.
12:34 Everybody was trying to figure out what to do.
12:36 I was buying different origins, planning that when we reopen that this might be something
12:42 that we will be doing.
12:44 I mean, I wasn't sure if I was going to move on with this kind of project.
12:48 So buying an expensive equipment wasn't really sustainable at that time.
12:53 This is a Champion juicer.
12:54 It's a juicer for like vegetables or fruits or anything.
12:58 But now nobody uses it because anything that goes through this tastes like chocolate.
13:03 This contraption essentially separates the husk and the nib.
13:08 When I drop mixture of the nib and husk, the heavier nib will fall down here and the husk
13:16 will go into the bin.
13:18 This is a very manual process because you'll have to be there and drop the cacao slowly.
13:24 So obviously the nibs get turned into chocolate, but then we have a bunch of this husk left
13:30 over.
13:31 What we do here is we steep it with fresh mint and we serve it as a cocoa mint tea with
13:38 the Petit Fours.
13:39 So here in the chocolate melters, we have our two main origins.
13:45 This first one is from Ecuador.
13:47 The estate is from Hacienda Victoria.
13:50 We use for the sesame snack bars.
13:52 These snack bars are part of our Mignardi service, Petit Fours.
13:56 They're sesame praline filling with an Ecuador single origin chocolate encasing that.
14:01 So I'm going to go ahead and finish these, add the last layer of chocolate, and then
14:06 we'll unmold them.
14:07 I've never made chocolate until we started playing around here at Providence.
14:12 Never.
14:12 But it's always been in the back of my mind.
14:14 That's one of the main reasons why I work here because I am able to do stuff like this.
14:19 I can explore different branches of what I do.
14:22 It's an environment where you just learn.
14:25 There's no fear in coming here and kind of make mistakes, really.
14:31 Making chocolate like what we're doing, bean to bar or bean to dessert.
14:35 I mean, bean to bar is already like a very long process, but bean to dessert is, I think,
14:41 extremely long process.
14:42 It involves planning ahead every single day.
14:45 This is sort of like a magical process because all you got to do is and they all come out
14:51 like that.
14:52 This is very satisfying.
14:53 So I'm going to leave these in the chocolate box and one of the team members downstairs
15:00 will grab them for service.
15:01 It's 4.45.
15:07 Doors are going to open in less than an hour.
15:09 I'm going to explain the rest of the menu to the staff.
15:12 But Max is going to tell you about table 10.
15:14 10.
15:15 Hi, everyone.
15:18 Tonight, the peaches we're serving are yellow peaches from Matsumoto Family Farms up in
15:24 Fresno.
15:25 The garnish we're using shiso blossoms.
15:28 And then for table 10, we're serving a melon becheram.
15:34 The melons are from Weiser Family Farms with cantaloupe sorbet and just fresh cream on
15:40 top of that.
15:41 Thank you.
15:42 Happy birthday to you.
15:58 Thank you.
15:59 This is what I was working on earlier.
16:03 He's in.
16:04 Hey, everybody has a birthday.
16:06 Max has to make like 70 cakes a year because we have about 70 employees and everybody has
16:10 a birthday.
16:11 Paul's nickname is the Panda.
16:13 So we're getting ready to plate the free desserts for everyone tonight.
16:26 Jin right now, she's filling the patsy crate tarts with salted caramel custard.
16:31 She's going to bake them in the oven.
16:32 And then when they're ready and cool, we'll finish them with a bourbon vanilla cream.
16:38 So when the desserts are fired, we usually get a ticket and that's when we know to send
16:42 out the desserts.
16:43 The reservations are staggered so that not all the desserts are sent out at the same
16:48 time.
16:49 Guests are starting to come.
16:50 It's getting really busy out here.
16:51 You guys have got to go.
16:52 Bye.
16:53 Out.