We Put 14 Cameras in a Busy Mexico City-Style Taqueria

Bon Appétit

Tania Apolinar, owner of Taqueria Ramírez in Brooklyn, takes Bon Appétit behind the scenes for a hidden camera look at what it takes to serve 600 customers on a busy Friday night in the heart of Brooklyn.

Transcript

00:00 [upbeat music]

00:02 This is what a busy summer Friday night

00:06 looks like at Taqueria Ramirez.

00:08 It's a Mexico City style taqueria in Brooklyn,

00:11 where we'll have 600 customers pass

00:13 through our 400 square foot restaurant.

00:16 My name is Tania Apolinar.

00:18 My husband's partner's name is Giovanni Cervantes.

00:22 We are selling 1,500 tacos on a busy day.

00:25 We don't really have a break in our service.

00:29 Everything has to be working perfectly

00:31 so we can really serve the demand.

00:34 We have six type of tacos.

00:36 Al pastor, suadero, longaniza,

00:39 campechano, de tripa, and taco de nopales.

00:43 This location used to be a coffee shop.

00:46 Our kitchen is quite small.

00:47 As much as we wanted to add more options to the menu,

00:50 we are also very limited in our space,

00:52 so we wanted to have the classics.

00:54 We have four people total in the kitchen,

00:57 the registered person.

00:58 Then we have Carlos in the choricera,

01:00 Ricardo on the tortillas and assembling the nopal taco.

01:05 And we also have a pastor person, Bernardino or Gerardo.

01:09 The first taco we're making is the al pastor taco,

01:13 probably the most classic from Mexico City.

01:15 We inherited from Middle Eastern cultures in Mexico.

01:19 The pastor takes two days of work.

01:23 Every Tuesday, we do the adobo, the marinade for the week.

01:27 It takes half a day.

01:28 On the morning, the next day,

01:31 we will marinate the meat at the beginning of the day.

01:34 It's usually 100 to 200 pounds of meat.

01:39 So all that amount of meat takes around two hours

01:42 in the morning only to marinate.

01:44 Our recipe for our adobo is a secret Ramirez recipe,

01:52 but I can tell you it has a lot of spices,

01:55 dried chilies and achiote,

01:58 which gives it a more reddish color.

02:00 The marinade also has vinegar,

02:03 which makes the meat last throughout the day

02:07 with indirect fire contact.

02:09 The process to mounting a pastor,

02:12 we need a stool that can go high enough

02:15 and that can handle all the weight.

02:17 We have a cast iron base.

02:19 Then we have to put the spit on the middle.

02:21 Bernardino can start putting layers of meat.

02:24 So he will start with a small piece of meat

02:27 and go bigger and bigger.

02:29 He will start turning the base so it's balanced enough.

02:33 And in between, he would also add onion and pineapple.

02:37 That gives it a lot of flavor.

02:39 The pineapple, it really balance out the flavor

02:42 with the chilies, the pork.

02:44 The fully-billed al pastor on the spit is called a trompo,

02:48 which is the Spanish word for top,

02:50 like the spinning children's toy.

02:52 In order for it to be cooked more evenly and faster,

02:56 he needs to shape the trompo.

02:59 On the busiest days, the trompo will weigh around 200 pounds.

03:04 We had to build, custom-made the base

03:08 where we put the spit.

03:09 We also had to build custom handles

03:12 to be able to move the trompo

03:15 from the base to the appliance.

03:18 It takes three people to lift the trompo right now.

03:22 We're in the process of building a machine

03:25 that is able to lift the trompo

03:27 and move it into the appliance.

03:29 The appliance for the trompo,

03:31 it has five burners, actually,

03:33 which can be controlled individually.

03:35 They are vertical burners.

03:36 It does have a motor to spin by itself.

03:40 We only use it the moments

03:42 that someone cannot attend the trompo.

03:45 So in order to shave the pastor perfectly,

03:48 you need a very sharp knife.

03:51 It has to be long enough.

03:53 Bernardo has a particular angle

03:55 in order to get those perfect slices in the taco.

03:58 So suadero is muscle that is between the belly

04:03 and the leg of the cow.

04:05 It's mostly used for ground meat in United States.

04:09 It's a very hard muscle.

04:10 Mexicans invented this slow cooking process

04:14 in the choricera.

04:15 It is salted before,

04:16 and we actually make a crisscross with the knife.

04:20 After that, it's thrown directly to the choricera.

04:23 Once the steak is ready to be served,

04:26 Carlos will touch it.

04:28 He already knows how does it feel when it's ready to go,

04:31 and then he puts it in the butcher block and he chops it.

04:35 He adds that to the basket

04:37 that is also inside the choricera.

04:39 Chopped meat will stay hydrated,

04:42 and then he will serve it directly from there.

04:45 The choricera is pretty much a pot

04:48 that has a little bump on the center.

04:51 The bump is usually to warm tortillas

04:54 in classic Mexico City-style taquerias.

04:56 Since we have a lot of demand,

04:58 we just fill the choricera with meat.

05:00 It's a slow cooking process.

05:02 It starts with lard and with water.

05:04 The lard is very important in the process of cooking

05:07 because it adds all the flavor to the meats.

05:11 We start cooking in the morning.

05:13 The first we need to put in there is the tripa

05:15 because it's the one that takes longer.

05:17 It takes around four hours to be fully cooked.

05:20 After that, the suadero will be added.

05:23 It takes around three hours for the suadero

05:25 to be fully cooked.

05:26 And then the last meat we add in there is the longaniza.

05:30 That takes around an hour or so.

05:32 The taquero's responsibility is to see and calculate

05:37 how much meat he's gonna put each hour

05:40 because we keep adding meat as the day goes by.

05:43 And then he pretty much chops the meats beforehand

05:47 so we have a batch ready to serve.

05:50 And he will keep doing that throughout the day.

05:52 The meats that are ready, he will move them clockwise.

05:56 It's like a cue so he knows which meats are fully cooked

06:00 and which are gonna take a little longer.

06:02 The next taco is longaniza.

06:04 Longaniza is pork.

06:07 It is very classic in Mexico City.

06:10 It has a little more fat than chorizo.

06:12 Once it's fully cooked, it's also chopped.

06:15 The next taco is tripa or beef small intestines.

06:21 I haven't seen tripa tacos in many places in New York City.

06:26 A lot of people are scared to try the tripa

06:28 but it has gotten its reputation slowly.

06:32 It's one of the favorite tacos at the taqueria.

06:34 The people that are willing to try it,

06:36 they always leave surprised.

06:38 In Mexico City, it's fried.

06:40 The blowtorch is actually not traditional at all.

06:44 That's gonna give it a little crispy texture

06:48 on the top of it and it will also add

06:50 a little smoky flavor to the tripa.

06:52 People really feel very attracted to fire,

06:56 I guess, in general.

06:57 And that's what we like in our kitchen too.

07:01 The next taco is nopales.

07:04 Nopales takes a lot of time because,

07:06 first of all, it's a cactus.

07:08 You have to really clean it well to be able to serve it.

07:11 It could be slimy, it has to be boiled and then cooled down.

07:15 People have a misconception that it's not tasty

07:19 but I think we have been changing people's minds.

07:22 - Steven!

07:23 There you go, Steven.

07:24 - Once we give our guests the tacos,

07:27 they will go to the toppings section

07:29 which has all the veggies and the salsas.

07:33 Cilantro, onion, lime, salsa roja, salsa verde.

07:37 One is more mild, the other is more spicy.

07:40 People go through the salsa verde faster

07:42 because it's less spicy.

07:44 The salsa verde has serrano chili, has tomatillo.

07:50 It is a very classic salsa because of the tomatillo

07:54 and we decided to add avocado to it.

07:58 A lot of people think it's guacamole

08:00 and they put a lot of it but it's also spicy.

08:04 And tonight, Carolina is our runner

08:06 which is the person who is mostly on the back.

08:10 Being a runner is you really have to be

08:12 on top of everything.

08:14 It's only a small entrance on the bottom of the register

08:18 so sodas have to be passed through there

08:21 and every time there's something that's needed.

08:24 If we're going through sodas really fast,

08:26 we will be calling them or if the tortillas are done,

08:31 we will need that person to come and just squeeze,

08:34 pretty much squeeze in where there's room,

08:37 they will pass you everything.

08:39 It's actually a position that we implemented this summer

08:46 because when the host is taking care of running around,

08:50 it's a lot of work, a lot of chaos with people.

08:53 Like you don't have someone to tell them

08:55 what to do in that moment,

08:56 they will just go for their tacos.

08:59 Nothing matters except getting in there.

09:01 I'm really proud of the culture

09:04 we have been exposing in here.

09:07 People are starting to get more familiar

09:10 with the different kinds of Mexican food,

09:13 getting out of their comfort zone and try different things.

09:16 I'm just really proud of all the work

09:18 we've put into this project

09:21 and it's just the right way to make people happy with food.

09:27 (upbeat music)

09:29 [Music]

Category

Transcript

Recommended