In a strip mall in Aberdeen, New Jersey lives an unassuming James Beard-recognized restaurant. Inspired by his mother and grandmother's recipes, executive chef and "Top Chef" alum David Viana opened Lita, a modern Iberian restaurant serving Portuguese-leaning dishes, like rissóis de camarão, paella, and braised chicken with saffron spaghetti. On the charcoal grill, chefs fire up pork shoulder, whole fish, chicken, and more. Thanks to the restaurant's unique hybrid work model, all chefs rotate into the role of servers every week to get a chance to interact directly with customers and understand the full hospitality experience.
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00:00What a fire, one bravas, one rabbit.
00:04Lida is an Iberian restaurant with an ambitious goal to change the restaurant model and to
00:09kind of modernize and give people an authentic feel of what it is to eat in Portugal and
00:14Spain.
00:15Fries going in.
00:16What makes Lida special is our hybrid work model.
00:19We hire 12 chefs here at Lida, six work in the dining room and then six work in the kitchen
00:25and every week those two teams of six switch places.
00:28So one week you'll come in at 11 o'clock in the morning, you'll set your station up,
00:32you'll meet some boss, you'll work service and go home, and then the following week you'll
00:35come in at three in the afternoon and you'll set the dining room and then work the floor.
00:39It's an opportunity to get rid of the pay divide between the front and back of house.
00:44We are polished, not pretentious.
00:45We try to get people in the door to take care of them, take care of the details, but without
00:50assuming that they should know that we're fine dining.
00:52Lida is located in a strip mall in Aberdeen, New Jersey.
00:55It's a very rural town, but I like the dichotomy.
00:57I like that when you walk through the doors, you smell the food on the hearth.
01:02There's this cozy, intimate space in this building and you have, you know, an opportunity
01:06to transport yourself to almost like the middle of New York City with the level of care and
01:11the level of food that you're going to be getting when you're on the inside.
01:20Here at Lida we have a prefix menu, so it's divided into three courses.
01:23One is the opening bite.
01:24It's kind of when we were in Spain, you do like a little bar crawl, you get a beer and
01:27something that you can hold in your hands.
01:29And that's the first course.
01:30So right now we're going to be doing one of the steps for rissois.
01:33Rissois is a shrimp turnover hot pocket, I like to call it.
01:38It's my mom's recipe.
01:39It's a very celebratory dish.
01:41It's something that was always out when we were kids.
01:43Every special occasion was an opportunity for my mom to make these little shrimp pockets.
01:47And right now we're going to make a pate a choux dough.
01:49So we're going to start with water, olive oil, salt, and then we're going to add flour.
01:53So what you're going to do is you're going to cook out the flour until it forms a dough ball.
01:58We usually get about 100 rissois out of one batch of dough.
02:02Basically the dish is like a shrimp bisque and a hot pocket had a baby.
02:05We want something really creamy, really rich in the filling of this special meal.
02:10So we're going to melt butter.
02:11We're going to add onions to it.
02:13And we're just going to really slowly sweat this onion out.
02:15Then we're going to add Portuguese bay leaves, lots of flour, milk, tomato paste, and then
02:21a lot of shrimp.
02:24One last taste, adjust for seasoning, and then we're going to get it out of this pot.
02:28We're going to spread out thin over the sheet tray and go in the walk-in with it so that,
02:33you know, it cools as fast as possible.
02:39Corner, hot corner.
02:42Now we have our pate a choux dough.
02:43We're going to cut off pieces of this dough.
02:45We're going to roll it through the pasta roller.
02:48And then we're going to lay out nice flat strips of dough.
02:54We took the bechamel that we made with the shrimp, we cooled it, and then we stuck it
02:58in a pastry bag.
02:59And now we have all the dough rolled out of our pate a choux.
03:03Basically, it would be like making ravioli.
03:05So you see we're being super generous with the amount.
03:08You want every pocket to be full to the brim.
03:10There's a lot of shrimp, a lot of bechamel, a lot of filling.
03:14Got to make mom proud.
03:15She comes in regularly to eat and always orders one of these and always will let me know if
03:21it's not up to her standard.
03:23It's been a very long time since I've disappointed her when it comes to these.
03:26So mom's happy.
03:28So just like you would a ravioli, a little water and a paintbrush so that the dough sticks
03:34close.
03:37So now we're squeezing out all the air out of the pocket so that they're nice and flush
03:42and full.
03:43If there's air in the pocket, it might explode in the fryer.
03:47They're going to be breaded next, and then they'll fry to order.
03:54So it's 10 a.m.
04:05The kitchen's really quiet.
04:07I always think that it's important for chefs to be in the kitchen, like a meditative time,
04:13before the whole staff gets in.
04:15So I plan out my day.
04:16I have my coffee.
04:18I do a meditative process.
04:20I make pasta.
04:21It's one of my favorite things to do.
04:22And it gets my day all started before any kind of possible chaos can happen.
04:25We're going to be making four batches of this pasta.
04:29That'll get us through the next few days.
04:30This dish is particularly special to me.
04:33It is my son's favorite dish.
04:35I make this once a week at home.
04:36We don't need fresh pasta at home.
04:38My son likes the gorilla spaghetti.
04:41But we do fresh pasta here at the restaurant.
04:43And it's a stewed Portuguese chicken dish.
04:45So this pasta comes on our second course of our menu, and it's called galinha de avó,
04:50which means grandma's chicken.
04:52This is a straightforward Italian recipe.
04:54The only thing that really makes it a little different is I put a little bit of paprika,
04:58turmeric, saffron.
05:00Some of the flavors that are in the stew are now going to go into this pasta.
05:09When the dough looks like sand like this, it means it's not properly hydrated yet for
05:13what we want.
05:14You want it to be a little tighter than that.
05:16Still too sandy.
05:18So what was before really sandy in the bowl, you see this, how it all like kind of got
05:24bigger up the sides.
05:26That's great.
05:27This is perfect.
05:28And I can already tell how clumpy.
05:29It didn't fall like sand.
05:30It's clumped into bigger chunks.
05:32Right now I'm just kneading it into a nice little ball.
05:36Just finishing up the dough process.
05:39And now I vacuum seal it and it instantly rests the dough.
05:43It normally rests it.
05:44It would take about an hour in the fridge.
05:46You put a damp towel over it in a bowl.
05:48You just need time to relax the gluten that's formed from rolling it.
05:51Vacuum sealing force pressurizes that relaxation, hydrates it instantly.
05:56So it's ready to go.
05:57Two arbonios, caviar, and a pasta.
06:00Mike Ayori is a great example of finding someone who loves what they do and who knows how to
06:05nurture and take care of people.
06:07That is the ideal leader you want in any space.
06:09We have a Bronzino here.
06:11We got it delivered today from our purveyor, Local 130 Seafood.
06:15So what I want to do is debone it completely and keep the spine intact so that both fillets
06:20are still there with the skin on and all.
06:22The skin, in my opinion, is the best part.
06:25It's crispy.
06:26It's got like that layer of fat underneath it.
06:29When these fish live in cold water, that layer of fat is super important to keep them warm.
06:33And that layer of fat, as everybody knows, fat carries flavor.
06:37So that's going to be like the best bite in my opinion.
06:40There's something about charcoal and its ability to really make things crispy really adds to
06:44this dish.
06:45It adds that textural component to this dish and it really makes it like really stand out.
06:49This is a super important dish to our menu because it's something that is eaten in many
06:53Portuguese homes.
06:54Portugal is a seafaring society, so fish is a huge part of the Portuguese diet.
07:00So the reason why we keep the spine intact is because what I'm filleting right now is
07:05going to be one whole portion, so you get one whole fish with your order.
07:08The next step is air drying.
07:11Personally, I always want my sear side to be as dry as possible.
07:16So I leave them in the refrigerator on the sheet tray uncovered so it can dry out with
07:21the moving air.
07:22We roast it over the hearth, over the coals, skin side down, so it gets really nice and
07:26crispy.
07:27To me, it's a very simple dish, which is in and of itself exciting.
07:32I think simplicity is absolutely key when representing a culture.
07:42We're going to go into one of the most important ingredients in the entire restaurant.
07:47I would say it is the lifeblood of our restaurant, so it's sofrito.
07:50A lot of cultures have it.
07:51It is an aromatic blend of vegetables that become the baseline of stews and our paella
08:00and our pasta dish as well.
08:02We start with a good amount, a very generous amount of Portuguese olive oil.
08:05Very, very proud of using Portuguese olive oil.
08:08I think it's among the best olive oil in the world.
08:10It's like a swimming pool of olive oil.
08:12The fat becomes a spinal cord of flavor for the whole dish.
08:16The onions and the peppers and the tomatoes and the garlic and the shallots, they're all
08:20very flavorful, but that's not...
08:22They're going to infuse the oil, which is the oil is what's going to be going throughout
08:25the dish.
08:26We make sofrito every single day.
08:28We make it in large batches.
08:30The young chefs in our kitchen are responsible for working on their knife skills, and this
08:36is how they do it, by dicing up onions, using tomatoes on the box grater, peeling and dicing
08:42peppers.
08:43We still always joke that for a recipe of how to cook one clove of garlic, it's still
08:47use three.
08:48That's how I feel about garlic.
08:50I think every Jersey boy feels that way about garlic.
08:53We want to make sure that our sofrito is consistently delicious, weighed out, and ready to go, so
09:01we want it to be elevated.
09:02It's not something we're buying frozen.
09:03It's not something that we think of as an afterthought.
09:07It's going to be in so many of our dishes.
09:09It's got to be a high-priority, important thing that we do every day.
09:13Yeah, I'm going to let this rock here for like two hours.
09:15When you go to culinary school, you learn French technique and a broken sauce.
09:21When olive oil separates and is no longer homogenous, it's considered a flaw.
09:28Something was misdone.
09:30I remember I was in culinary school when my grandmother was still alive.
09:34I was watching her cook.
09:35I'm like, oh, you broke that sauce.
09:38I'm correcting her.
09:40This poor woman had the patience of a saint, tolerating this brash 20-year-old, telling
09:44her that she's doing something wrong, that she's been doing her whole life.
09:47But then this sofrito will only be done when there's a big layer of olive oil on top.
09:53When this is broken, when all the moisture has been driven from the vegetables, when
09:59there's nothing left but the flavor, concentrated flavor, so much so that the oil has nowhere
10:03else to go but a nice layer on top, that's when we know it's done.
10:08Exactly like my grandmother was doing.
10:09Exactly the way I was correcting her, telling her that she was doing something wrong.
10:12Now 20 years later, she was so right.
10:18This is Chris, Randy, and Manny.
10:21They're breaking down whole chickens, and they're going to be turning them into half
10:24chickens that are on our menu.
10:26We have two items that get half chicken.
10:29One is our frango asado, which is a half chicken roasted over the hearth, de-boned except for
10:34the wing.
10:35And it also goes in a paella, chicken chorizo paella.
10:39Randy and Manny, as soon as they started working together on the hearth, gave themselves the
10:43nickname the hearth robs.
10:46Everybody loves to stare at the hearth when they're sitting at their tables.
10:49So it's fun to be able to talk to a table and be like, those guys over there, the hearth
10:52robs?
10:53Yeah, they're killing it right now.
10:57After we butcher the chicken, we're going to go right into making our brine.
11:00We have a pineapple brine.
11:01It's about a 5% salt ratio.
11:03It's a house brine.
11:04We use it for everything we brine, which is the puerco secreto and the half roast chicken.
11:09The four cans of pineapple juice, and we're going to go right into a hot pot.
11:13Pineapple has an enzyme in it that helps break proteins down, and that's going to help the
11:18chicken be more tender throughout.
11:21So we use this brine, this pineapple brine, for both our chicken and our pork dish.
11:26This is going to come up to a simmer, just so that everything marries.
11:29The garlic in there cooks and releases all of its flavor.
11:33We don't want to overcook this.
11:35We really just want to dissolve the salt, the sugar, and bring out the flavors of everything,
11:40the dry spices that are in there.
11:42As soon as that comes to essentially a boil, we're going to take it right off.
11:45We're going to strain it and put it in an ice bath to cool it as fast as possible.
11:51So it's two o'clock right now.
11:53We're fully in prep mode.
11:54The kitchen team is working around the island.
11:57So we have an open kitchen into the dining room.
12:00And what I love about the island is that it gives us an opportunity, one, to work together.
12:04And as a chef, I get to see how people are working, what they're doing, and it's an opportunity
12:09to prevent mistakes.
12:10To be perfectly candid, honestly, I've never worked in a restaurant kitchen that had a
12:14window.
12:15To be able to work in a room where the sun hits is truly a blessing.
12:19When we were opening up Lida, a landlord had another space next door that came like half
12:24way through our project.
12:25So we opened up a speakeasy, kind of like a secret little bar next door that kind of
12:30came on after the fact.
12:31It's called La Ochoa, which is the other woman, which is a nicer way of saying, you know,
12:35the person on the side.
12:36So there we have a much more casual approach to what we're doing.
12:41Think of New Jersey with Iberian flair.
12:43We also have an Iberian burger made with Iberian pork served with a crispy piece of pancetta,
12:49roasted peppers, a saffron aioli.
12:52It's a pretty bad-ass burger.
12:59This is Chef Nick.
13:00He just started with us last week.
13:02He's been a chef and a butcher for a long time, and he just started in the kitchen this
13:06week.
13:07He was on the front of house last week, so he's going to show you guys how we make our
13:11paella rice.
13:12This is the base of all of our paellas, all of paellas really, is this rice.
13:17It's similar to an arborio rice.
13:19It's like a short grain, heavy with the starch, and we don't rinse it.
13:23So we go right into the rice cooker, equal parts water to rice, and a little bit of what
13:28we call GGS, garlic, ginger, and salad.
13:32And then we have some spice mix and salt.
13:35I'm doing a triple pass for dinner service right now.
13:38We actually make a few of these because we fly through so much paella.
13:41The nice thing about the rice cooker, you get to do this.
13:44Set her down, and she's ready.
13:46And then take her out, break her down, throw some more salt, a little garlic oil in there,
13:50season her up a little bit.
13:53I made the pasta balls earlier today.
13:56This is the second half of that dish, what goes hand-in-hand with the pasta.
14:00We're doing grandma's chicken now.
14:02Chef David Chapo, he's been here since day one, one of our original members who signed
14:07up for this really experimental version of a restaurant.
14:09We go out of our way to teach chefs how to anticipate people's needs, how to go above
14:14and beyond, how to kind of read people and learn what they're trying to get out of this
14:18experience.
14:19So guys, what we're going to be making now is the cacciatore.
14:20One of my favorite things about Alita is the fact that we're not sedentary in the places
14:27where we're working.
14:28So right now, I'm prepping the sauté station.
14:29So this is my responsibility for the week.
14:30However, I'll be on the floor shortly to be doing the front of the house stuff as well.
14:36One of my favorite things about the place, you really get to see the customer reaction
14:39and then complete the hospitality experience.
14:41It's not like you're locked away in the back kitchen, you don't even see the guests or
14:44anything like that.
14:45I think there's a huge response from the diners in this building when they find out that the
14:49person guiding them through the evening is a chef.
14:51There's lots of moments from the chef who's serving you actually came up with a dish that's
14:56in front of you.
14:57That's a really cool moment.
14:58The cooking process for the chicken does not finish when we're browning it in the pan.
15:01It finishes when we're braising it in the sauce itself.
15:06Once the ginger and garlic starts to brown, I add my onions.
15:08The water that's released in the onions will stop the browning on the garlic and ginger.
15:12Cooking and doing the front of the house floor work, it gives me a great insight because
15:16I'm able to relate to the guests exactly what it is that we're doing and then I'm going
15:21to know what they're looking for too.
15:22It's like I have an intimate knowledge of the food that we're putting out here.
15:25So I just have a white wine here, I'm going to add about half a bottle and then this is
15:31going to cook down.
15:32I'm basically going to wait for this to cook down until it's almost dry.
15:35But once that's done, add everything else in, we put the chicken back in and we're ready
15:39to rock.
15:40This is for the lifer chef, someone who's an industry lifer.
15:44I do think that there should be homes for chefs that pay them a living wage, that give
15:48them quality of life and balance, and not every day going to the same station, to the
15:53same spot, standing in front of a hearth that's 900 degrees day after day after day, week
15:56after week.
15:57We deserve that balance to take care of our loved ones and do the errands that we normally
16:02had to reserve for one day of the week that we weren't necessarily doing those things.
16:05Every future iteration, every restaurant that I open up will have this model.
16:09I believe in it, I think our industry needs it.
16:14This is the dough we rolled out first thing this morning.
16:16We're getting ready to roll it into spaghetti.
16:19We go to the number five on our roller.
16:22So I do like a little bit of a thicker spaghetti.
16:25You see a nicely well rested dough, you don't have to manipulate it too much, once through
16:29every level.
16:40If you take a look at our sofrito here, you can see how oily it is on top, it's got this
16:43like oil stick on top, and this is what I was telling my grandmother she didn't do correctly,
16:49that this wasn't a homogenous dish, that the French don't let any sauces break, but ultimately
16:53this is exactly what you're looking for.
16:54This shows that there's no more moisture left in this, that everything, all the sugars are
16:58caramelized, everything is down to the most flavorful form, and that's when you know you're
17:02done.
17:03And we have this like beautiful red oil on top from the paprika and all the spices that
17:06are in there, it's beautiful.
17:09About an hour outside of service, we're getting to a point where everybody's finishing up
17:13their prep.
17:14They're setting up their stations before we go into pre-shift, we'll be in pre-shift in
17:17about 25 minutes, and at that point, family meal's up, everybody's got a plate of food,
17:24all the prep is done, stations are set up, and then we sit and we talk about the previous
17:28day, the next day, and how we can always keep improving.
17:32We have 41 on the bookshelves tonight, very similar service to yesterday.
17:3745.
17:3845, we're about 60, so up to 45.
17:41All right, first thing of the night, guys, let's have a good one, all right?
17:47A lot of the flavors of the Iberian culture, I feel, are misrepresented here in America
17:51because we don't cook over coals very often, especially not in restaurants.
17:54So I knew from the start of this project that I was going to have a coal-fired hearth.
17:58I thought that we would never get an authentic Iberian restaurant without it.
18:07So, from day one, the charcoals are how we cook most of our proteins, and every single
18:12paella starts on the charcoal.
18:13It's how we get that socorrot and that crispy bottom on the paella rice, something that
18:17I think is integral to the experience of having a paella.
18:20We peel rice over to show the crispy rice, so people know what's underneath, and just
18:25to make sure it's evenly crispy all the way around.
18:31Carne de purco Lentejana is a very, very traditional Portuguese dish.
18:35It's like a staple country national dish.
18:38It's pork, clams, and crispy potatoes.
18:40It has a special, deeper meaning for me in that I got eliminated from Top Chef on my
18:45pork and clams dish.
18:46So this is very much a redemption dish, and it's an opportunity to show the world what
18:50this dish is supposed to taste like and how delicious it could possibly be, and I feel
18:54like I would have won that challenge if they could come and sit here at LIDA.
18:59Order fire, one bread.
19:01Hands, please!
19:03So I just want people to leave here feeling special and feeling like the food of the Spanish
19:08peninsula is delicious.
19:12I like that New Jersey dining is unassuming, and I think there's some really special restaurants
19:16in New Jersey, and I feel fortunate to be considered among them.