“We use traditional Peruvian techniques, but elevated with influences from Miami.” Today Bon Appétit spends a day on the line with prep chef Giuliana Intriago at Maty’s–Miami’s best new restaurant and a 2024 Conde Nast Traveler Hot List Restaurant Winner.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 Ever since we started a year ago with Mati's,
00:04 the restaurant just blew up.
00:06 We entered the Michelin Guide.
00:08 Over 10 publications have written about us.
00:10 I oversee the prep kitchen.
00:13 My team preps for the entire week, not only for one day.
00:16 We are ready for war.
00:17 We are ready to keep crushing.
00:19 We use traditional Peruvian techniques,
00:21 but elevated with influences from Miami.
00:24 Mati is actually Chef Val's grandmother.
00:27 Most of the recipes have been passed down for generations.
00:30 Learning these recipes from a family
00:32 that I didn't come from is very special.
00:34 I will forever be grateful.
00:36 (upbeat music)
00:39 Oh my God.
00:43 (laughing)
00:52 Hi, how are you?
00:54 Good morning, I'm Julie.
00:56 I'm the prep chef here at Mati's.
00:58 I just got 200 pounds of oxtail.
01:01 Let's get to work.
01:02 Coming in.
01:03 I do this probably once a week, twice,
01:06 depending on how busy we are.
01:08 This is our dining room.
01:10 Follow me, I'm taking you through the kitchen
01:12 where magic happens every day.
01:15 This is the first thing we should do in the morning
01:17 since it takes six hours to braise.
01:20 We're just gonna do 25 pounds this morning.
01:22 I'm gonna put this away.
01:23 I'm gonna change.
01:25 No one has come yet.
01:26 I'm the first one here.
01:28 Oxtail is the tail of the ox.
01:37 This is the bone and it is surrounded
01:40 by a lot of tendons and meat and fat.
01:43 So that's what we're gonna sear first
01:45 so we get all the caramelization from the fat and the meat.
01:48 We sear fry it during service with onions,
01:52 scallions, tomatoes, and crispy potatoes
01:54 coming all the way from Peru.
01:56 This is a hot skillet.
01:58 Big quantities, this is where we do it.
02:00 We're gonna start putting some oil.
02:02 We're using oxtail just to make honor
02:08 of the Caribbean culture.
02:10 My boss is Valerie Mando.
02:12 I grew up here in Miami eating Caribbean food.
02:15 But the braise and the sauce we're making
02:17 is from Mati's recipe.
02:19 See the color?
02:21 That's what we want.
02:22 Every single piece, every side,
02:24 and this is very hot.
02:25 Everything is good when we cook it slow.
02:27 I am a very patient person, honestly.
02:30 I think you have to have a lot of patience to be a chef.
02:33 If you're gonna deal with people,
02:34 if you're gonna, you kind of act like a psychologist also
02:37 with working and leading the kitchen, you know?
02:40 So this, all of that is left right here in the skillet
02:44 is the caramelization of the oxtail, the fat,
02:47 and that's where we wanna cook all the vegetables
02:49 so they get all the flavor from the meat.
02:53 200 pounds makes like 50 portions.
02:55 We just started doing like 300 covers a night,
02:58 and maybe before when we started,
03:00 we started cooking only 25 pounds.
03:02 This is nonstop, nonstop, nonstop, and it's pretty fun.
03:06 Not even in our wildest dreams,
03:07 we thought we were gonna be where we are right now.
03:10 But like right around September,
03:12 we just got three nominations, like in the same week,
03:16 and it just popped.
03:18 These are scotch bonnet peppers.
03:22 Can you feel that?
03:23 (laughs)
03:24 We're just trying to sweat all the vegetables.
03:27 A little bit of soy sauce
03:29 so everything can come out from the bottom.
03:32 Oyster sauce.
03:33 This is a very Asian ingredient.
03:35 There's a lot of Asian culture
03:37 in the Peruvian cuisine, hoisin sauce.
03:40 Okay, good morning.
03:41 - Hi!
03:42 - We're back!
03:43 (laughs)
03:45 Where's the Asian influence come from?
03:48 You see it right here, you know?
03:50 My grandmother and my grandparents.
03:52 My great-grandparents immigrated from China to Peru
03:55 in the late 1800s, and then here we are.
03:58 I think our menu is a mix of all the Peruvian traditions,
04:02 but somebody who's already left Peru 20 years ago,
04:04 so we have to work with the product we have here.
04:06 My grandmother did write a lot of recipes,
04:08 but also we were just born in a house that cooked.
04:10 Food was so important that we just grew up
04:13 eating really good food
04:14 and watching our grandparents cook really good food,
04:16 and our great-grandparents cook really good food.
04:18 We are very much...
04:21 We're bestie.
04:22 (laughs)
04:23 This is sauce from the previous oxtail,
04:26 so that's why we're not adding salt,
04:28 we're not adding any chicken stock,
04:30 since this has already a lot of flavor
04:32 from the six hours that cooked last time.
04:34 It's like a mother's sauce.
04:36 Oh my God, hold up.
04:39 There you go.
04:42 There is a lot of heavy lifting,
04:43 and we are pretty much all women here.
04:46 Working with a lot of women feels very powerful.
04:49 It's a women-dominated kitchen, so it feels great.
04:53 We're gonna add the water, oxtail, mushrooms,
04:56 and then that's it.
04:58 Now this is gonna go for about 45 hours.
05:01 So now it's 9.15,
05:03 I'm gonna go to the prep kitchen in the back.
05:05 Let's go check on the list
05:06 and see what we're gonna do for the day
05:08 and assign tasks to everyone.
05:17 Good morning! (laughs)
05:21 This is Mama D.
05:22 She's the mama from everyone.
05:25 This is our fish counts for the day.
05:30 This is what we have from the night before.
05:33 Normally I get the counts of what we did in the week
05:36 to have an idea of how much I can prep for the day.
05:40 We're missing three other people.
05:42 They're late.
05:43 They're gonna make family meal.
05:44 When they're late, they make family meal.
05:47 So we're gonna do six cases of limes today.
05:51 Mama, leche.
05:53 The leche de tira, we squeeze every lime
05:57 with the hand squeezer, so it's very painful.
06:00 If we over-squeeze the limes,
06:01 we get the oil from the limes, the cascara.
06:04 We don't want the bitterness in our leche de tira,
06:07 which is the main thing, probably for every dish.
06:10 I'm responsible of overseeing the prep
06:13 and making sure everything is ready for service.
06:16 And I also think I'm very organized,
06:19 one of the most organized here.
06:20 I am gonna work on gui-toc.
06:24 This board is only for fish.
06:26 For today, we're gonna do 30 mixtos.
06:28 I want 100 oysters pre-shocked.
06:30 I want 60 portions of scallops,
06:34 25 tunas, and 25 campachis.
06:37 By 3 p.m., I want this ready, okay?
06:40 I'm gonna put this where I want for everyone to see,
06:45 and then we have some gui-toc that we're gonna clean.
06:49 This is heavy.
06:56 Oh, my God.
06:57 Oh, my God.
07:02 We just got this gui-toc from Washington.
07:05 Gui-toc is one of the largest clams
07:07 that we get from shellfish farms.
07:10 It's part of our ceviche mixto.
07:12 In our ceviche mixto right now,
07:14 we are working with black grouper.
07:16 We have surf clams, shrimp, and octopus.
07:20 We make it with our rocoto leche de tigre,
07:23 which is very spicy.
07:24 It's one of the hottest peppers in Peru.
07:26 I love ceviche.
07:27 I can eat that every day.
07:29 Look at the reflexes of the gui-toc.
07:32 They're still moving.
07:33 See that?
07:34 This means it's very fresh.
07:37 Water is ready, so we're gonna put and cook the gui-toc
07:40 to change the texture of the gui-toc a little bit.
07:43 We're gonna put three first.
07:45 We're gonna count one minute,
07:47 just not to lower the temperature of the water
07:49 and make sure that it's cooked properly.
07:51 We don't wanna overcook the gui-toc,
07:53 so that's why we put it right away into ice bath.
07:56 It helps to remove everything from the gui-toc.
07:59 Oh!
08:03 [laughs]
08:04 It's like, "I don't wanna get cooked."
08:07 Probably.
08:08 So Papa Chang, who is the dad of the family,
08:10 he's the master,
08:11 migrated to the US years and years ago
08:14 to provide for his family, of course.
08:16 After he arrived, his first job here was as a sushi chef.
08:20 That's why we work with a lot of seafood here.
08:22 They pretty much, that's what they did their entire life,
08:25 so, wow.
08:27 It's crazy 'cause out of this whole thing,
08:30 we just get this part to actually use it for the ceviche.
08:34 The other part that we don't slice for ceviche,
08:37 we use it to make stocks.
08:39 I'm gonna take out the shell first.
08:42 I'm taking out the membrane, the first membrane.
08:44 Gui-toc is probably the sweetest clam from all the clams.
08:48 This is the inside of the shell.
08:50 Look at that.
08:51 [laughs]
08:54 I wonder who dig in the sand and thought,
08:57 "Oh, let's try this, let's eat this."
08:59 Who thought?
09:00 But here we are.
09:01 Okay, so we're gonna cut it in half.
09:03 This is how it looks.
09:05 I'm gonna let it air dry in the walk-in cooler.
09:08 It's already 10.30.
09:10 Let's go make some huacatay oil for our scallop ceviche.
09:14 [upbeat music]
09:16 This is our service kitchen, actually.
09:22 This is our huacatay.
09:24 We get it frozen from our purveyor
09:26 just because we want big quantities.
09:28 I wish you can smell this, but it is delicious.
09:31 Delicioso.
09:32 It tastes like licorice, like peso.
09:35 It's a mix of tarragon, limes, very powerful.
09:39 I know Peruvians use it for a lot of dishes,
09:42 especially like stews and soups.
09:44 So we're just gonna pass it through boiling water.
09:48 Just like shock the huacatay and sear that green color.
09:51 And then we're just gonna stop the cooking in ice.
09:55 Just a super fast procedure.
09:58 I do this to help oxidation.
10:00 So if we don't do this, it will turn very dark super fast
10:04 and it won't last for our last purpose, you know?
10:07 So for the shelf life.
10:09 This huacatay oil, mainly we use it for the scallop ceviche,
10:12 which is also one of our biggest sales here at Matis.
10:16 The scallop ceviche has the Hokkaido scallop
10:18 that we get from Japan.
10:20 We cover the scallop ceviche with some green grapes.
10:23 Normally the person in charge of that station,
10:26 of the ceviche station,
10:27 has to shave the grapes every day for that dish.
10:30 Probably like four to five cases on a busy Saturday.
10:33 The dish actually is very beautiful.
10:34 It's green.
10:35 It's just a mix of sweet and spicy and limey.
10:39 It's perfect.
10:40 This is ready.
10:42 I like being a prep chef.
10:43 I'm a morning person.
10:45 I like my routines.
10:46 I like waking up early, get here.
10:49 Like I need to master things
10:51 and to know what we're doing during the day.
10:53 We're just gonna squeeze.
10:55 I like to do it in small parts.
10:57 I'm just taking out the water,
10:58 so we make sure we separate the water from the oil.
11:03 [upbeat music]
11:06 So what we're gonna do right now
11:07 is we're gonna weigh what we got
11:09 after squeezing the huacatay
11:11 and adding double of the amount of olive oil and canola oil.
11:15 We're gonna blend until the base is very hot.
11:18 It emulsifies better because of the heat.
11:21 It's very dense.
11:22 It's gonna take a day to actually get the oil from this.
11:27 We don't squeeze it by hand
11:28 because we don't want the sediments in our oil.
11:31 We want it as clean, as green as possible.
11:33 Okay, so I'm gonna leave this here.
11:35 It will be ready tomorrow.
11:38 I have to go and break some durats that just arrived.
11:40 So let's go.
11:41 Follow me for my next task.
11:43 [upbeat music]
11:46 We're gonna start breaking down the fish,
11:49 the way we cook it.
11:50 Normally we do like 60 durats a day.
11:53 On a busy Saturday, we've done 80.
11:55 It comes with a beurre blanc sauce,
11:57 which is a very French cheese sauce
12:00 based of white wine and shallots and garlic.
12:04 And we make it Peruvian, adding aji amarillo crema,
12:06 which is another pepper that Peruvians use.
12:09 We over-roast it with the skin side up
12:11 so we can protect the meat.
12:13 The skin gets crispy, crunchy, you can eat it.
12:16 It's probably one of the most delicious fish in Peru
12:19 due to their fat content.
12:20 It's like very hearty and tasty.
12:23 So we're gonna open it through the head.
12:26 Slice it.
12:28 Very tight to the bone and very careful.
12:32 We go all the way down without making a hole
12:36 on the other side.
12:37 What I like to do here is to open with my scissors.
12:42 We use a lot of scissors for precision.
12:45 And you will see why.
12:48 I'm just taking apart the spine from the meat.
12:51 I am butterflying this fish from the head.
12:54 We do the same on the other side.
12:56 Like a little bag.
12:57 You always have to wipe your knives
12:59 before doing another transition.
13:01 Not to get the meat dirty with blood, you know?
13:04 Here comes the fun part.
13:06 Before taking the spine, I like to open it through the mouth.
13:09 So my dad used to be a shrimp farmer
13:12 and I remember him waking us up at 4 a.m. in the morning
13:15 to go fish.
13:17 And I remember seeing all of this.
13:19 I never thought I would actually live by doing this.
13:22 Not even in my wildest dreams, like I always said.
13:25 Definitely cooking is my lifestyle right now.
13:27 Now I think, what would I do if I'm not doing this?
13:30 Like, I have no idea.
13:32 I thought I wanted to be like a professional gymnast
13:36 and I'm here, I'm breaking down a lot of fish.
13:38 I moved from my house when I was 18
13:41 and I started traveling.
13:42 I went to Argentina, I studied in Argentina
13:45 and then I went to Colombia.
13:47 After that, I ended up in Mexico
13:49 and then I ended up here six years ago.
13:52 I miss home.
13:53 One day, I'll be back.
13:54 We're just gonna cover it with our maguro.
13:57 This is bamboo paper,
13:58 which will preserve better the meat of the fish.
14:02 So now I have to finish 30 dorados for today.
14:05 So let's keep working before service starts at four.
14:09 We're ready to go eat.
14:12 After we have family meal,
14:14 we're gonna give the counts for today's service.
14:17 So let's do it.
14:18 [upbeat music]
14:20 As the morning sous chef,
14:27 I have to make sure everything is ready for service
14:30 and making sure that I'm giving all the counts
14:32 to my team that's gonna take on for the rest of the night.
14:36 Then they cannot leave until they're done.
14:38 This is Chef Lucy.
14:39 - Hello.
14:40 So basically we have two lists.
14:42 We have our opening list and our closing list.
14:44 At the end of the night, I leave Chef Julie our accounts
14:47 of what was our remaining inventory.
14:49 And then she tells me what the pars are
14:51 for the rest of the night.
14:52 And then I delegate that to my team over here.
14:54 - For today, oysters, we have pink moon.
14:57 For the mixes, we're gonna do-
14:58 - All the tartare has been cut.
15:00 - Everything has been cut.
15:01 So Lucy, I'm out.
15:03 [laughing]
15:04 I am done now for the day.
15:06 I hope you had a glimpse of my life here at Matis.
15:09 I'm done and I'm out.
15:11 I'm going to the beach.
15:13 Peace out.
15:14 Bye.
15:17 [laughing]
15:20 [laughing]
15:22 [upbeat music]
15:25 [BLANK_AUDIO]