“People are going to decide whether or not we’re good. It's how they feel when they leave—that’s going to determine whether or not they’re going to go come back.” Chef Evan Funke brings Bon Appétit along for a day of sourcing California farm-fresh ingredients, designing a menu, and operating the kitchen of his new, namesake restaurant in Beverly Hills.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 100-hour weeks are easy if you spread them out over seven days.
00:03 But that's what it takes.
00:05 This is a brand new restaurant, brand new team.
00:08 And for me, it's extremely important for the entire team
00:11 to see that I'm in it.
00:13 Cooking Italian food is 90% ingredients and 10% technique.
00:17 I'd only cooked Asian and French technique for seven years
00:20 before I moved to Italy.
00:21 All that went out the window, all the manipulation,
00:24 all of the puréeing and the sous vide.
00:26 And to make it look like something else,
00:29 I just didn't want to do it anymore.
00:31 I wanted it to be pure.
00:32 And the pristine ingredients that we have in California,
00:35 this is an extraordinary palette to paint with.
00:38 My name is Evan Funke.
00:45 I'm the chef/owner of Funke in Beverly Hills.
00:47 We're at the Santa Monica Farmers Market.
00:49 It's about 6.45 in the morning.
00:51 Typically, I'm the first chef on the scene,
00:54 which seems to be the case at the moment.
00:56 I've got three restaurants, Funke, Felix, and Mother Wolf.
01:00 Funke is nine weeks old,
01:02 and we typically spend about $8,000 to $10,000
01:06 a market every Wednesday, week in, week out.
01:09 My goal is to have the first pick of figs
01:13 or the only case of something that a certain farmer brought.
01:17 And that's why I show up so early.
01:19 This is Karina.
01:21 She's our market liaison.
01:23 She does a lot of the communication with all the farms,
01:26 making sure that pre-orders are done.
01:28 This is a pre-order kind of guide.
01:31 Pre-orders kind of happen Sunday, Monday.
01:34 We'll make pre-orders and then obviously go through
01:36 and check everything and make sure that it's tight.
01:38 We've added on a couple of different things.
01:40 We added on, ooh.
01:41 Yeah, these are big.
01:45 9.40, so almost a thousand bucks just on stone fruit alone.
01:49 And we'll sell that in two days.
01:51 These are Violeta artichokes.
01:53 If the artichoke gets too much heat, it'll bolt.
01:56 So basically go to flower,
01:58 and it'll develop these like hips.
02:00 So if you squeeze the artichoke, like this one right here,
02:04 you squeeze it, you can feel that there's hips.
02:07 Even though it's small, you cut this open,
02:09 it's gonna have the choke on the inside
02:11 versus something like this is very tight, no hips.
02:16 Cut it open.
02:17 Perfect.
02:20 No choke.
02:21 240 pounds, we'll sell that in four days, maybe.
02:24 This is first of the season, Violeta de Bordeaux figs
02:28 from JJ and Lone Daughter Ranch.
02:30 This is all the competition.
02:32 Us getting a single flat is actually a win.
02:35 I'm stoked, we're gonna sell all those tonight.
02:38 All of them.
02:39 Pre-orders actually look pretty good.
02:40 Everybody's nailed it this week.
02:42 So this is our last farmer that we're paying.
02:44 We're about to pack up everything.
02:46 It's like 8.30, so it's about to become a social scene.
02:49 And we're gonna head back to the restaurant
02:51 as soon as possible.
02:52 Merci beaucoup.
02:54 [upbeat music]
02:56 So it's 10 o'clock, we just got back
03:03 from the farmer's market.
03:04 Produce is on its way.
03:06 We're standing in the Amaro Bar.
03:08 This is the Pasta Laboratorio.
03:10 Beyond that is the main dining room.
03:12 And then upstairs we have a mezzanine,
03:14 which is also full dining,
03:16 as well as a private dining room that's just upstairs.
03:18 And then we have a rooftop, Bar Funky.
03:21 Last night on Tuesday, we did about 500 all in.
03:25 So it's been a very steep ramp up nine weeks ago.
03:29 All right, we're gonna go check in
03:30 and then see if the produce is here
03:31 and we're gonna get after it.
03:33 [upbeat music]
03:36 Unloading an entire van into this area.
03:38 It's kind of where we have to stage.
03:40 This restaurant's full of little nooks and crannies.
03:42 So first thing I do when the van shows up,
03:45 I'll jump on something that's a heavy lift
03:48 for one of the prep guys.
03:49 I'll grab artichokes because it's a really long process
03:52 and I'm fairly quick at it.
03:54 And I'll just take that off of their plate for the day.
03:57 Wear gloves when you clean artichokes
03:59 unless you wanna taste bitterness all the way long day.
04:02 So first we wanna make some acidulated water.
04:06 If you just open up an artichoke,
04:10 it'll start to oxidize and get super brown.
04:12 So this keeps it nice and white.
04:15 My setup's really simple.
04:17 I always work left to right.
04:19 Peel the artichokes until you see the yellow color
04:24 halfway to three quarters up the product.
04:28 And then that's it.
04:29 I put it in this little bin and I just continue.
04:31 So these are for the carciofi alla judea,
04:36 which means Jewish artichokes.
04:38 It's a dish found in the Roman Jewish ghetto of Rome.
04:42 Typically there, they're just served with salt
04:45 and the Romanesco artichokes are slightly bigger,
04:50 but I like these 'cause you can eat the entire thing.
04:53 And we've made a slight change by adding salsa de achiugue,
04:58 which is like an anchovy vinaigrette and some lemon
05:01 and mint to it, which is delightful.
05:04 All right, so I wanna trim them first.
05:06 So I trim the bottom and I put them there.
05:08 I'm gonna peel these and as we turn the artichoke,
05:12 like turning a key, we're just about finished.
05:16 We've got some time to take a look at the menu
05:19 and talk to the sous chefs.
05:20 For me, shopping for produce when it's at its peak
05:29 is what it's all about.
05:31 So there's a lot of small changes that have to happen
05:34 every single day.
05:35 We're gonna verbal the melone prosciutto on the roof.
05:38 Verbal is a feature, something that's off menu
05:42 that's special.
05:43 It's very hot out today and super sunny,
05:45 so melone prosciutto is nice.
05:47 And then on the mezzanine and the main dining room,
05:50 we're gonna put on fichi e prosciutto
05:53 with those spectacular figs from JJ Londoner Ranch.
05:57 I think the rest of it is just counts.
06:00 Counts come down to like limited availability.
06:02 So tonight, for instance, the cipollina catanese,
06:05 last night we had 20 and we sold out at 830.
06:10 So we'll bump that number up slightly.
06:12 There's a thousand ways to bleed out in this business.
06:16 Learning how to do food costs is something
06:18 that I teach the youngest people here
06:20 because they're not teaching that in culinary school.
06:22 They'll teach you how to dice an onion
06:24 or make a chicken galantine,
06:26 but they won't teach you how to do this.
06:29 If I knew how much math I was gonna do as a chef
06:33 when I was a kid, I would have paid
06:35 so much more attention in math class.
06:38 It's just past noon.
06:40 Two chefs are wrapping up their primary tasks.
06:43 We're just gonna get in, go over the menu
06:45 and go over the changes.
06:47 - Tuna, we got about 18 orders for that.
06:49 - For all the fogi, two pizzas, three D.O.
06:53 - That's fine, I think you're fine.
06:55 These guys all know what to do.
06:57 I'm gonna do the agnolotti filling with Alan
07:01 and we'll get on to some pasta making.
07:03 [upbeat music]
07:06 Come on over, buddy.
07:09 Okay, we make this filling basically every single day
07:12 because we like it to stay as fresh as possible.
07:15 So this is the filling for the agnolotti d'Alpine.
07:18 It's a self-sealing pinched ravioli,
07:21 very small, about a half an inch from Piedmont.
07:24 All the pasta is made day of and sold day of.
07:27 There's about 19 on the plate
07:29 and it's served with a demi-glace of sorts
07:32 which is a highly concentrated meat jus, if you will,
07:37 blended with butter on the pickup
07:40 and then finished with Parmigiano-Reggiano,
07:41 baccarose five-year Parmigiano.
07:44 We're gonna start with butter.
07:45 Brown butter, not too brown, sweat the garlic,
07:49 little bit of color, all right?
07:52 And then we're gonna go straight in with the Swiss chard.
07:54 Italians cook vegetables perfectly
08:00 and then they cook them another 15 minutes.
08:02 So we're gonna do the same thing here.
08:04 Inside of the pasta is not where I wanna focus the texture.
08:08 The structure and shape of the agnolotti
08:10 is where the texture is gonna come in.
08:11 So I want the filling inside the agnolotti
08:14 to play second fiddle to the texture of the pasta.
08:17 You wanna add some salt to that?
08:18 So we wanna cook as much of the moisture
08:22 out of this as possible.
08:24 And the reason why liquid is the enemy of stuffed pasta
08:27 is that when you roll fresh pasta,
08:30 everything's at room temperature
08:32 and then we put that fresh pasta into a refrigerated setting,
08:36 the cold setting, osmosis happens
08:38 and the moisture inside the room temperature pasta
08:41 wants to come to the surface
08:42 in order to create balance, equalization.
08:45 That's why you see a lot of chefs
08:47 throwing a ton of semolina on top of their pasta
08:49 in order for it to not stick.
08:51 That's because there's too much moisture
08:52 inside the actual filling.
08:56 This is the estratto di pomodoro.
08:59 This is ground tomatoes grown in Sicilian volcanic soil.
09:02 Spread by hand on wooden planks
09:06 and allowed to dry over a long time under the Sicilian sun.
09:11 So this is used in the sauce for the agnolotti.
09:14 Per six ounces is like $38.
09:17 You wanna try, wait, well,
09:18 I don't even know if I've actually.
09:20 - Why not, let's just do it.
09:22 - You know that like raw, raw, that's intense.
09:25 Is that a caviar spoon?
09:26 - Yes, chef. - Okay.
09:28 Don't go too big 'cause you're gonna,
09:30 it's gonna be a day.
09:31 - Just tomato paste that makes you happy.
09:33 - And that's why it costs a million dollars.
09:35 So we're wringing out as much of the liquid as possible
09:39 out of the Swiss chard.
09:42 And we're gonna grind it with the meats.
09:45 So we have our meat mixture already here.
09:47 All right, load.
09:48 We want the farce or the filling for the agnolotti
09:53 to be super smooth and very refined
09:55 and also as dry as possible.
09:57 So we're gonna run this through
09:58 so that it's smooth-ish.
10:00 And then we're gonna add this
10:01 and grind it all together again.
10:03 Okay, let's run it one more time.
10:05 So we're gonna grind this one more time
10:07 so that it's absolutely butter smooth.
10:09 And then we break down the Swiss chard even more.
10:12 Okay, parmigiano,
10:13 wobba, and nutmeg.
10:17 Yeah, so into the piping bag.
10:22 When I make pasta,
10:24 I don't like the piping bag to be too full.
10:27 Because I have to pipe with one hand
10:29 and shape with the other.
10:31 So it has to be one-handed piping bag.
10:34 It can't be too full.
10:35 We are in the pasta laboratorio at Funke.
10:43 This is a temperature, humidity-controlled space.
10:46 And we make all of our pasta here every single day.
10:49 Start making pasta around 6.30 in the morning,
10:52 all the way sometimes till at 10 p.m.
10:54 We're gonna roll a sfoglia.
10:55 We're gonna roll a sfoglia from this dough here.
10:59 I've taught 15 people at this point to roll sfoglia.
11:02 We're gonna go over a new shape
11:07 that we're gonna be putting on the menu.
11:09 It's a shape that is a larger variation of the tortellini.
11:14 We're gonna do an egg shape right in the middle.
11:18 Maybe a little bit more.
11:19 Right in the middle.
11:21 We're gonna orient the sheet
11:24 in a diamond on top of the hand.
11:26 Conventionally, people would just fold this over
11:28 and then press it all.
11:29 And then you have double thickness pasta all over the place.
11:31 But what I do is I just roll it straight over
11:34 and then I press just around the filling
11:39 so that this is completely open,
11:43 so that the water can move quite freely throughout.
11:46 And we do a very gentle fold.
11:50 And then we pull this around
11:51 and connect the tiniest little bit at the tip.
11:56 So that if I was to open this up,
11:58 the pasta water has a very clear path of travel.
12:03 And everything is single thickness.
12:06 So that there's no hard bits, there's no overcooked bits.
12:09 Everything cooks very, very uniformly.
12:11 She'll start agnolotti at 2.30, three o'clock.
12:15 She'll roll it until say four, 4.30, five o'clock.
12:18 And as soon as the doors open,
12:20 she rolls again and starts to do the tortellacci
12:22 'cause these pastas will continue to dehydrate
12:26 and get stiffer and stiffer and stiffer.
12:27 So we wanna maintain as much of the freshness as possible.
12:30 I think we've gone over this maybe one time
12:33 and that is a very close facsimile of my shape.
12:38 Like that's really close.
12:41 I would just back off on the amount
12:44 of where you're touching.
12:46 So you want it to be like a quarter of an inch
12:48 off the top of the filling.
12:50 Instead of using the full pad of your thumb,
12:53 use the spine of your thumb as you close.
12:56 So you have a smaller footprint going all the way around.
12:59 Make sense?
13:01 And that's it.
13:01 We have tortellacci.
13:02 Very nice.
13:03 You're gonna finish that.
13:05 I'm gonna go in there, check in on everybody.
13:07 It's getting close.
13:08 It's about three o'clock.
13:09 So staffing is coming up at 3.30.
13:10 So I'm gonna make sure everybody's organized.
13:13 [upbeat music]
13:15 Staffing is broken down.
13:18 Everybody's broken, eaten, ready for service.
13:22 Three minutes to staff line up.
13:24 So let's go.
13:25 - Boris, head up.
13:35 - Boris, head up.
13:37 - Let's get into it.
13:38 I've got 20 Chippo all day.
13:39 Last night, fantastic job.
13:42 It took us all night to get there, but we sold all 20.
13:44 So good job.
13:45 10 each porcini tagliatelle.
13:47 And we're gonna verbal the funghi.
13:49 Porcini from Civic Northwest.
13:51 This is the last hurrah for all the porcinis.
13:54 People are gonna decide whether or not we're good.
13:57 It's how they feel when they leave.
13:59 That's gonna determine whether or not
14:00 they're gonna come back.
14:01 Everything that you do has meaning.
14:04 Every single repetition has meaning.
14:06 That's it, that's all.
14:07 Thank you so much.
14:08 [audience applauding]
14:10 [upbeat music]
14:13 So I expedite every single night,
14:15 and this is kind of like my only time
14:17 to set the intention for the rest of the night,
14:20 because I'm gonna stand in this spot
14:22 for the next five and a half hours
14:25 after already working almost 12 hours at this point.
14:28 So I need to reset my mind.
14:30 So this is part of it, setting up the pass.
14:33 And I set it up the same way every single day.
14:34 It's all done kind of like by rough measurement and feel.
14:38 It's actually weird that I'm talking about it,
14:39 'cause people are gonna think I'm super strange.
14:42 I just tear off four pieces of tape to start the process.
14:46 I think a lot of chefs have superstitions of a sort
14:51 in how they do things
14:52 when they're going into a busy service.
14:55 This is my mental mise en place.
14:56 Physical mise en place is all the food
14:58 that we prepare before we go in,
15:00 but the mental mise en place
15:02 is kind of how you set your station up
15:04 so that your mind starts to focus on the job ahead.
15:08 So it's 5 p.m., doors open,
15:10 and we're about to get our first ticket.
15:12 So we're finishing up the last little bits
15:16 just down to the wire, and here we go.
15:18 All right, everybody ready to go to church?
15:24 - Yes, chef!
15:25 - Fire focaccia, blossom, choke.
15:27 - Focaccia, blossom, choke.
15:29 - Ordering a fish.
15:30 - Fish!
15:31 - It's time for you to go, so please go.
15:37 Y'all can get busy.
15:38 There's literally 60 people outside
15:40 waiting to go on the roof, so bye-bye.
15:43 (upbeat music)
15:46 [BLANK_AUDIO]