- 16 hours ago
Bon Appétit spends a day on the line with chefs Will Murray and Jack Croft at Fallow, London’s busiest restaurant, serving up to 1,000 people a day. See how the Fallow team runs a busy restaurant kitchen while building a massive YouTube audience, from content planning to maintaining afternoon service; this is what it takes to keep Fallow running from morning to night.
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00:00Fallo's been a journey.
00:02Me and Jack met working at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal.
00:05We basically know pretty much exactly how each of us is going to think about any given situation.
00:09We'll have 80 members of staff and then roughly we'll be doing around about 800 covers every day throughout the
00:15week.
00:15So it's a very large team.
00:17We're amassing over 100 million views a month on all of the different platforms that we do between Instagram, Facebook,
00:23YouTube, TikTok.
00:24That's been over 2 billion views since we started, which feels very strange to say that out loud.
00:29The restaurant in London is the reason that the channel is successful.
00:33It's our main point of difference for most creators.
00:35It's our sort of competitive edge in the food space.
00:38With so many people watching online and so many people coming with an expectation of what Fallo is in their
00:42heads already,
00:43the pressure really is on for our teams to deliver something that's exceptional every day.
00:47Hey guys, I'm Will Murray.
00:49And I'm Jack Croft.
00:50We're here in St. James' Market today at Fallo Restaurant.
00:52We're going to be showing you behind the scenes of how we cook for 1,000 covers a day and
00:56also run a YouTube channel.
00:57Shall we get cracking?
00:58Yeah.
01:01So we're on breakfast service.
01:03It's 8.30 and this is our first breakfast wave.
01:05We can do anywhere between 150 to 250 covers before 11 o'clock.
01:09While Will's doing breakfast, I'm going to go downstairs and get all the orders put away.
01:13The funny thing about Fallo is it's actually a daytime restaurant, so we do 55% of our covers on
01:18breakfast and lunch.
01:19We wanted it to be this all-day dining bistro, super accessible for everyone.
01:23Whether it's a business meeting, whether it's a celebration, lifestyle or tourist breakfast experience, we're trying to deliver that Fallo
01:29experience like right from the beginning, 7.30 in the morning.
01:31As soon as the guys get in here, it's only really one speed, which is set up and go.
01:36The guys work a three and a half day week, which is really good, but they just know when they're
01:41in the building, it's going to be pretty much full on busy the whole time.
01:44It's one of the only restaurants, I reckon, where you're not concerned about how much food you have to prep.
01:49You just know if you prep it, you will sell it.
01:51Breakfast is one of those meals where you don't really need to overcomplicate it.
01:54People are coming for breakfast meetings.
01:56They just want something that's delicious, quick, super tasty.
02:00This is Archie.
02:01Archie's new on breakfast.
02:02So the way that the sections work at Fallo, it's not like fixed.
02:05Everyone will do a little bit of everything, so it's really important that everyone can jump on.
02:09If there's holidays or gaps, so having the flexibility among all the sections is really good.
02:13And also, it keeps it fresh for the guys.
02:15They get to sort of duck and weave out of different services.
02:18They learn really, really fast.
02:19Here at Fallo, because we've got such high volume, we typically use these little trays and sort of freshly bake
02:25the eggs in batches.
02:26We get the perfect result every time, and it's completely consistent.
02:29The hardest thing about doing 1,000 cupboards in a day is keeping the standards.
02:32So anything that we can do to make life easy and deliver a consistent product.
02:37Only gets three minutes at 180 with steam.
02:40We've got this really beautiful sort of rare breed pork mince.
02:43We just whack everything on this grill, which is a synergy grill.
02:46This thing never stops all day, and it never misses a beat.
02:49This is genuinely inspired by a Mackie's breakfast in the best way possible.
02:54It's what you want to eat in the morning.
02:56You've got your patty there, delicious smoked bacon from H.G. Walter.
03:00And then we're going to whack some beautiful American cheese on there.
03:03This is our laminated croissant puff.
03:05So basically, you make a croissant dough, and then you compress it between a really strong metal ring and two
03:10trays.
03:11In the UK, we've got this HP sauce, Houses of Parliament sauce.
03:14So this is our version of that.
03:16This is walnut ketchup.
03:17We make all these sauces.
03:18It's got a lot of pickled walnut in there, which is like an Old English preserve.
03:22And then we just put our pork patty, and then we just go on with a beautiful egg.
03:27So we have about 80 of these patties across this group a day.
03:30I'd say for lunch and breakfast, it's a different kind of service because it's a bit more of a functional
03:35meal.
03:35So you have to take a bit of the ambition of creating a really cool creative menu and do something
03:39that fits perfectly with what people want to eat.
03:41You can reinvent the wheel, but at the end of the day, people just want to smash a Port Royale
03:45every now and then.
03:46I do right now, actually.
03:48It's 8.45 now.
03:49Breakfast service is about to get busy, see the customers coming in.
03:52This is probably a good time to go downstairs and see what Jack's doing with the deliveries and the team
03:56briefing.
03:57So one of the most important parts of our day is our first senior briefing with the sous chef team.
04:00So we've got Sean, the head chef.
04:01We've got a delivery of contents coming in later this afternoon.
04:03We've got ISOs in charge of pastries today.
04:05Strawberries are looking beautiful.
04:06Peak season, English strawberries, right?
04:07Then I've got my two sous chefs.
04:09So every day we do a handover, highlighting any issues with food, any service issues, issues with any of the
04:14product.
04:15So that we can start the day on top of things.
04:17So in a team this big, communication is arguably one of the most important things.
04:21So everyone knows what their focus is for the day.
04:24And we can have clear action boards and make sure that everyone is performing at the highest level.
04:27Sean, do you want to focus on cold larder and garnish communication?
04:31AJ, you focus on meat and fish?
04:33Absolutely.
04:33Cool, right, let's get cracking.
04:34Split the sections out.
04:35So Sean and AJ are now going to go and brief the sections individually, making sure they're all happy with
04:39all the recipes they need to make for today.
04:41Making sure they've got all the product in the building that they need.
04:43And making sure that their services are covered.
04:45So every section in our kitchen is around about eight people on each section.
04:48Basically like its own little kitchen.
04:50They'll be switching between services.
04:52They might do prep, they might do lunch service, they might do dinner service.
04:54So obviously when we're cooking for a thousand cupboards, it's very important that the front of the house, as much
04:59as the back of the house, know exactly what they're doing.
05:01So every day we'll write down the fish that we've got for the day, the sizes we've got.
05:05Because we're buying whole carcass as much as we can, the meat sizing and variety and breeds change as well.
05:10So we'll fill out daily and then hand it to the front of the house by 10.30 so they
05:13can then brief their teams.
05:15We have a senior checklist to complete every day.
05:17First one is obviously the morning briefing, which we've just completed.
05:20Next one on our list is checking with all the sections, go through the handovers and go through all the
05:23prep lists.
05:24Then we've got all the cleaning checks, pest checks, grease management checks, all the fundamentals which are super important in
05:30any high functioning restaurant.
05:32Most of the job is managing people now, you know, especially of a team this size.
05:3535 chefs a day, 60 chefs on the rota in total.
05:38Just writing the rota alone is a mammoth, mammoth task, which takes hours a week.
05:42I think it's really important to keep some things in the knowledge of the chef.
05:45If everything goes too automated, everyone forgets how to do things.
05:48Every chef in this kitchen should know how much the produce they're prepping costs, where it's come from and how
05:52to best utilize that product.
05:53That's our job as mentors and managers, to train them on these things.
05:57So you can see the prep is fully underway here.
05:59We've got seven whole halibut's here, which Depp is just prepping down for the a la carte.
06:03And then behind me, you've got Ashwin, who's grilling all the bread for one of our most popular dishes, which
06:07is mushroom parfait.
06:08So he grills about 45 loaves of Campayou bread a day.
06:12Just after 9am here in the Fallot Prep kitchen, while I crack on with some prep down here, you guys
06:16are going to go and hang out at the wheel and see how the media team is briefed for the
06:19day ahead.
06:19So a lot of our media happens in our restaurant, Fowl, which is our sort of chicken restaurant.
06:24They're actually connected.
06:25These little corridors are always super busy all day.
06:27Our YouTube set is here.
06:32It's a chicken restaurant.
06:33So this is where we film our content.
06:35As chefs, we're always trying to push ourselves.
06:37This dish pushed us to our absolute limits.
06:39So we set up a camera and lights over there, and that's it.
06:42It's not very high tech.
06:43It's very functional, I would say.
06:44And then the rest of the week, it's a chicken restaurant.
06:47We do all of our filming condensed into that one day.
06:49So sometimes it's like a 14-hour day.
06:52Whole shot between different shifts.
06:54So it's almost like a restaurant service.
06:55We treat it like that.
06:56And this is our media team.
06:58We all talk about what the upcoming schedule is.
07:01We separate it up into four different categories.
07:04Long-form content for YouTube.
07:05A series of ad reads using the Every Pan Chef's Need to Know video.
07:08Short-form content.
07:09There's not quite a lot of short-form going out this week, which is great.
07:11We've got a team who's working on a book.
07:13We've got meetings with publishers.
07:14And then we have a more traditional marketing team as well.
07:17End of the week is extremely busy with visits to Sheffield.
07:20So one really good positive thing is I just got a report through from the fellow chef China.
07:24We got 2.1 million views on Muscles Like a Chef on Chinese TikTok.
07:29And then we've got an extra 62,000 followers on Red Note, which is huge.
07:34So we just need to keep pushing on the Chinese social media because it's completely different.
07:37And on Instagram, we've put the new tracking links in to the link tree.
07:40So we can see now directly who converts from watching a post to making a booking in the restaurant.
07:45Oh, nice.
07:46Okay, great.
07:46So content planning is looking really good.
07:48It's 11 o'clock.
07:49We're going to go down to the Fowl basement kitchen to start getting ready for a very busy day at
07:53Fowl.
07:55To make the chicken, we marinate it for around about 24 hours.
07:58It's in a mix of spices.
08:00We kind of wanted to get the flavor of a KFC hot wing onto our chicken burger.
08:05So it's nice and spicy.
08:07The unique thing about Fowl is, and it's very rare to find this, we're 100% free-range chicken shop.
08:13We take the whole bird, butcher it all down, and then spread the carcass out throughout the rest of the
08:18restaurant group.
08:18So once we've got our chicken really nicely coated in this sriracha spiced slurry,
08:23the perfect dry dredge needs to have a good amount of starch in there so it sticks to the chicken.
08:28And this recipe is quite high in corn flour, which probably out of all the starches had the best adhesion.
08:33The beauty of a thigh is there's more space for the dredge to hang onto rather than a chicken breast.
08:40We just lightly lift it up.
08:41And as we do this, we count to 60 in our heads, so 60 times.
08:45A small amount of moisture is released from the crease of the chicken as it gets tossed over.
08:51This insight came from a chicken consultant, which does exist.
08:54He actually came up with the recipe for the McChicken Burger,
08:57and they worked out that if they basically tumble dry the chicken in a huge spice mixer 60 times,
09:03it gives the optimum level of crag.
09:05We obviously don't have a huge tumble dryer, we just have our hands.
09:07For even more adhesion, we have a mixture here of buttermilk, a few more spices,
09:12and then some corn flour with some water, and then we just drop our chicken into there.
09:16The thing that you always hear is you need to pack as much dredge on,
09:20but fried chicken is actually about how much dredge you take off.
09:24Fried chicken is hard.
09:26I thought it was easy, but fried chicken is difficult.
09:29So this is what I mean about the crag.
09:31This crag formation is the pinnacle of fried chicken.
09:34You can't get that unless you literally just stand there, turn it over 60 times,
09:38and really, really look after it.
09:40I want to tip off a little bit of the excess dredge, but not too much.
09:43And then we lay it into our clean oil.
09:45Really important to use fresh clean oil every day.
09:48We only stay ahead 10 portions.
09:49We'll roughly sell around 150 to 200 portions a day.
09:53This fryer, all day long, a chicken steam bath.
09:55We're looking for a blonde crust, but an internal temperature of 70 degrees,
09:59and then we chill it down.
10:00Actually, on the second fryer, what we've found is the chicken retains a lot of its moisture.
10:04We can just whack one of these perfect ones into a fryer.
10:07This is what we're looking for.
10:08It's like fine crag formation all over it.
10:10Make it super crispy.
10:12This goes into a 190 fryer.
10:14There's a lot of science and neuroscience that goes into the perfect fried chicken.
10:17Basically, the most addictive foods are ultra-crispy foods matched with something tender.
10:22So that's why our brain just tells us to love high-protein fried chicken.
10:26So we take out our chicken, and then what we've got is this chicken salt.
10:30A mix of, like, chicken bouillon powder.
10:32All of the flavors we love about.
10:33Chicken-flavored crisps.
10:34With some szechuan as well, which is a bit of hot and numbing.
10:37And then we cover it with our sriracha honey as well.
10:40And then we just whack on one cheese slice.
10:42That just goes under the sally for one second, just to soften.
10:45And whilst we're waiting for the chicken, we just build up our burger.
10:47Black pepper ranch.
10:49Whack that on the burger.
10:50And then we finish with these house-made pickles.
10:52And then just put our fowl bun on top.
10:54So that is the infamous fowl chicken burger.
10:58Part of the job is that you always taste the first bit of chicken as well.
11:01So that is absolutely everything you want out of the fried chicken burger.
11:05Now that the chicken's done, we're going to head back over to Fallow to see Jack running
11:09and organizing the tastings at Fallow before lunch service.
11:12Now 11.30.
11:1412 o'clock, we start lunch service.
11:15And we go all the way through till 10.30 p.m.
11:18So we've got about 15 chefs upstairs at the moment.
11:20And they're taking all the stuff out of the fridges for breakfast and transferring it to
11:24all the a la carte stuff, as well as cleaning the kitchen and flipping the restaurant.
11:27It's the busiest part of the day.
11:28So we're going to jump on, help the guys clean, bring up all the stuff.
11:32A few coffees for the boys, of course.
11:34We've got about 350 covers for lunch.
11:35All the business meetings in the area coming in, they want their food quick.
11:38So if we're behind on the setup, we're behind on the tastings, or there's not enough food
11:42upstairs, we'll be behind for the rest of the day and it'll be a really hard day.
11:45We quite often find sort of like towards the end of the week, people are having breakfast
11:48a bit later.
11:49They're taking their time a little bit.
11:50Whereas start of the week, people might be finished breakfast by about 10 and you might
11:53have an extra 15 minutes, which is like a godsend.
11:56So we're just going to set up the pass, get all the crockery changed over from breakfast
11:59to the lunch crockery.
12:01We'll have a team of about usually three to four sous chefs upstairs when we're doing this
12:04transition.
12:05As you can see, Sean the head chef, AJ's senior sous chef.
12:08We like the sous chefs to be fully involved in the kitchen, helping the guys set up so that
12:12everyone feels on the same page.
12:13Whenever I'm on the pass here, I want everything within reaching distance of me.
12:17And that's the same on every section.
12:19Everyone needs to have everything within their reach so they're working efficiently rather
12:22than having to move around the kitchen too much and becoming inefficient.
12:25Due to the nature of how busy we are and the volume we're doing and the amount of food
12:28product that's coming through the kitchen, we like to do the pre-service fridge check.
12:32This is our starter checklist.
12:33It's probably around about 50 items or so.
12:36We've got the same for the main course list as well.
12:38So it's a big old challenge, it usually takes us about 20 minutes, half an hour to get through
12:42this and we do that before every service.
12:43Perfect, waffles are looking great.
12:45By the time we get to service, things have already been checked two, three, sometimes
12:48four times.
12:50Upstairs, everything is designed so that it can be finished very quick in service.
12:53So just making sure the batter is correct, they've got the correct seasoning on them.
12:57Just before lunch service is the best time to walk around the kitchen because every
13:00drawer is full.
13:01We'll go through about six, nine pans of these shiitake mushrooms every day.
13:04Checking that they've cooked correctly.
13:05They're marinated long enough, the thickness is right, it never gets old.
13:10Quick maths, 21, 22, 23, it must be 45 drawers, maybe.
13:15That's upstairs alone.
13:16Check all of them every day.
13:17You can't rely on just two or three people to taste everything.
13:20So it's all about teaching the chefs on the sections to be their worst critic.
13:25Too many kitchens work in a way where it's like, oh, whatever the sous chef says goes.
13:28Where it should be about making these guys better cooks, teaching them how to cook, teaching
13:32them how to check their own start, and that's ultimately our job.
13:35There's a big element of trust with a team this big.
13:37You're working 50 hours a week.
13:39You want to work with a team that you enjoy, you're having fun with.
13:42Arguably one of my favorite tastings of the day is the mushroom parfait.
13:44It was the first dish we ever did.
13:46I must have tasted it.
13:47God.
13:47It's been open five years, 50 times a week.
13:50God knows how many times that is.
13:52It's always nice when you taste something after all those years and you're like, oh,
13:56it's still good.
13:57I still like that.
13:58I'm just finishing off my starter checklist.
13:59I'm taking control of the starter side today.
14:01So if you want to go and check in with AJ, who's a senior sous chef, who's going to be
14:05doing the tastings on the main side.
14:06We're kind of split into two sections.
14:08So I will take maybe the hot side of the kitchen and he'll take the cold side.
14:11Because I was here yesterday, I know that there's a few things that sometimes aren't perfect.
14:15So those are the first things I'm going to go for.
14:17For example, something like our burger sauce for our burgers.
14:19Finding out what's good, what's wrong.
14:21If I want to double check something, I'll speak to him, obviously.
14:24There's that common rule that everyone says that you can never have two head chefs.
14:27And that's what was really hard at the start for Will and I.
14:29But if we were both happy, we knew it was good.
14:33So it really cooks perfect the dish.
14:35Right, guys.
14:36Gather round quickly.
14:37Let's have a quick briefing.
14:39Guys, we've got 350 for lunch.
14:41About another 400 for dinner tonight.
14:43All tastings are done.
14:44Looking forward to a really good day.
14:46Sun's out, so we should be expecting a fair few walk-ins.
14:48First check is on.
14:50Corn ribs parfait, followed by a cauliflower.
14:52Follow on three.
14:52One, two, three.
14:56So right now, it's just after one o'clock.
14:59We're getting into the thick of lunch service.
15:01We've done about 100 covers already.
15:03Still got about another 250 to come.
15:04We're right in the swing of it.
15:06Nice cauliflower.
15:0774 there, please.
15:08So as the tickets go across here, we're focusing on starters on the left-hand side.
15:12And as the starters are sent, we then pass the tickets over to the main side.
15:16And then we fire them.
15:17Two Caesar, one Tartar.
15:19We always send the starters as and when they're ready.
15:21Because if we waited for the whole table to be ready before we sent it, quite often some
15:25of the dishes will be going cold.
15:26So we believe it's good to get the first round of food on the table as quick as you can.
15:30We want people to be talking and chatting and sharing with the food as they eat it.
15:33And then we sort of group together the main courses or course two.
15:37And then we send that all at the same time.
15:39So we're predominantly fully booked for about two months ahead.
15:41But it's constantly ebbing and flowing.
15:43Due to the nature of how fast people eat, we're able to add in walk-ins into slots throughout
15:48the day as and when people finish.
15:50It's such a well-oiled machine now five years down the line.
15:53Most of the front of house managers are in the room talking to customers, dealing with
15:56issues as they arise.
15:57In terms of the kitchen, AJ and Sean, they're the direct contacts of the chef's cooking.
16:02My role here is really directing the traffic, bacon burger fries 104, making sure that the
16:07timings are on track, making sure food's going to the right table, and ultimately just giving
16:11the many pointers that I see throughout service.
16:13So we've got our muscles up.
16:15The beauty of Fallow, or what Will and I think is the beauty of it, is that we never really
16:19understood why restaurants stopped serving food in the afternoon, especially like when
16:23you're in central London and you've got the demand.
16:24Usually around three-ish, half three-ish, it'll get slightly quieter, but we remain open.
16:29So we have a little clean down as and when we're going every hour throughout service.
16:32But the service continues straight away when we started lunch at 12, all the way through
16:36to the last orders at about 10.45pm.
16:38We're going to head downstairs and get stuck into some prep with Will.
16:41Okay, so it's 2.30.
16:44Codheads basically come in at two different times during the day.
16:47First thing in the morning, but then we get a second batch of codheads delivered later on.
16:51This is the collar attached to the main bulk of the meat, obviously the cheek, the throat,
16:57and we just give them a really good wash with some crushed ice.
17:00So when we first started prepping these, they used to come in whole.
17:03We used to use a wood saw.
17:04They used to take absolutely ages.
17:06Sometimes they do forget to do them.
17:08That's an absolute stitch up.
17:10Basically a third of a cod's total weight is its head.
17:13So there's so much meat left on these bad boys.
17:16The codheads first came on the menu because we asked for the contents of one of our fish suppliers' bin.
17:21Slowly over time now, they're way more sort of accessible.
17:24I think we're just known as the codhead restaurant.
17:27But what's happened is they've stopped cutting them off at sea
17:30and they're now sending them into the food chain, which is a really positive thing.
17:33So what you want to do is just make sure the gills have been removed
17:35and then separate the collar and the head.
17:39And then we put it in an upturned container just to drain off any of the juice
17:42so you get a nice char on it.
17:43Now it's got to the point where we get too many.
17:46We get about a ton a week.
17:48The fishermen would still be throwing it away if we were just selling 12 a day.
17:51Like when we first opened the restaurant, we didn't think that business would be coming
17:54and ordering a cod's head and chips for lunch, but they do and then they come back.
17:58I compare it to like a whole chicken.
18:00When I explain it to the customers, I say this is like the jewel of the meat.
18:03This is like a scallop.
18:04It's firm.
18:05It's delicious.
18:05It obviously does a lot of work as cods are predatory like cold water fish.
18:08This area here is super gelatinous, which is what people love.
18:11The collar is more recognisably what you'd associate with large flaky cod meat.
18:16And then you've got these beautiful pucks of meat under the eyeball, under the eye socket.
18:20The reality is people come to Fallon Island.
18:22They kind of have the order in their head what they want to eat.
18:25And cod's head's normally on that list.
18:27It's one of those things I think people feel that they need to work themselves up to it.
18:30But as soon as you start eating it, it's a beautiful fish.
18:33And there's really no difference between picking off a head or a collar.
18:36Oh yeah, you can eat the eyeball.
18:38That's the best bit.
18:38People fight over the eyeballs.
18:40We try and grill them downstairs just so there's enough space for the grilling upstairs.
18:44And it doesn't disrupt service.
18:45They stick really badly.
18:47So we're just drying them off.
18:49Then we're going to lubricate them with a little bit of veg oil and some fine salt before whacking them
18:53on the grill.
18:53We take it to around about 56 degrees.
18:56So what we're looking for is just an even grill all over the cod head, including like the underside of
19:02the chin.
19:03The cod's head dish specifically has become synonymous with the restaurant.
19:06I mean, we didn't sort of set up Fallon with like this vision of completely transforming the food industry.
19:11Like we're a sustainable restaurant, but we do believe in not sort of ramming it down your faces.
19:16But this is a product that's like a win-win-win.
19:18It's a waste product that is underutilized in the food chain.
19:21Cost-effective, it's easy to get at scale, and it's absolutely delicious.
19:25And when cooked right, it rivals any sort of prime piece of fish, in my opinion.
19:29And then serving it with an absolutely banging sriracha sauce, which is lightly fermented,
19:34cut with lots of butter emulsion, confit garlic, lemon juice, pickled lemon juice.
19:38That's the thing about food in London.
19:40We've got some of the best international cuisine in the world.
19:42I suppose we never really focus on it being pigeonholed into any sort of specific type of cuisine.
19:47Okay, so once these are all grilled off, they'll go upstairs.
19:49They'll get finished on the grill again, and then in the oven, slowly brought up to about 56 degrees.
19:55Allowed to rest.
19:56Really important, because the heat needs to go through all those different crevices in the head.
20:00And then they're served with our sriracha butter sauce, a little bit of herb oil, and some pickled lemon juice
20:04to finish.
20:05So the fish is going upstairs for service.
20:06We're going to check out what meat we need to prep for the rest of the day.
20:09Here we have our dairy cow section in the fridge.
20:11So we use only dairy cow beef.
20:13This is typically what we hold at any one time.
20:15The dry aged for a minimum of 46 days.
20:18The difference between dairy cow and other beef, typically it's five to six to seven years old.
20:23And it's finished on grass.
20:24You get this beautiful creamy yellow fat.
20:27Very similar to what you would get in like a Rubia Galicia in northern Spain.
20:30We like a full-flavored type of beef.
20:32And we've got a lamb here, which is going on the menu.
20:35So I'm going to take this out so Jack can prep it.
20:37Here we go, chef.
20:38Oh, special delivery.
20:40Here we go.
20:42Leave it to you, chef.
20:43You're hunting that one yourself, did you?
20:44So new lamb dish on the menu at the moment.
20:46Whenever we're doing new dishes, you're just trying to create the best dish possible.
20:49But when you're trying to do a dish when you've got a restaurant at this volume,
20:52can we source enough of that product?
20:53Because loads of farms are going to give you a lamb,
20:55but how many are going to give you seven a week?
20:57Can the team actually reproduce it?
20:58Because it's not necessarily about what you can do yourself.
21:01You're then looking at the overall amount of prep that's on the section.
21:04And quite often we'll balance it out by removing something else
21:06or making something else simpler.
21:08So it's an ongoing development process between the three restaurants
21:12and breakfast and media.
21:14Lunch menus, brunch menus, Christmas menus.
21:18Before you know it, you're back to square one
21:20with trying to figure out the next menu writing.
21:22The way that we drive people to the restaurant is by creating new dishes
21:24and using that as a marketing tool.
21:26Now we're in this really beautiful little ecosystem where we'll be researching for a video,
21:30doing a video on a topic, and then what we found out through that video then features onto the menu.
21:36It's great for customers because they can almost get a taste of what they've watched,
21:40but also it's amazing for staff because they're getting to see the process happen
21:43and then seeing it on the menu and then learning about the process by doing it over and over again.
21:47So we would buy seven lambs a week, take all the legs off and we use those for Sunday roast.
21:52Then we would take the shoulders off, braise those down, roll them and press them
21:56and then we get a small piece of the braised shoulder and braised belly together on the a la carte
22:00dish.
22:01And then with the rack and the saddle, we'll de-bone that, stuff it with the chicken mousse, roll it
22:06together
22:06and that will feature as the main element on the a la carte dish.
22:09And then all of the trim, we use all of that to make our sauce.
22:12And then we've got all of the bones as well, which you get from the whole carcass,
22:16which we'll roast down to make all of our stock inside the brat pans.
22:19It's just an endless cycle of meat preparation in a restaurant of this size.
22:22Will's going to start portioning a few ribeyes for tonight.
22:25Quite often there'll be usually sort of four or five people working down here on this section alone.
22:29There's different meat coming in all throughout the day.
22:31The more we can teach staff to do, the more engaged they are.
22:34I've always said when people come work at Fallow, we can teach you everything.
22:37You can leave Fallow in two, three years with all the skills that you need.
22:42Quite therapeutic. One of my favorite things in the kitchen is to sort of just be on the meat section.
22:46I love all the smells of like roasting meat.
22:48You can just sort of forget about life's problems and just prep a bit of beef.
22:51That's very philosophical, chef.
22:53Nowhere else I'd rather be next to you, chef, prepping some lovely meat.
22:57So we buy roasters, rib attached to sirloin, attached to rump.
23:01It's quite an involved process, which involves a whole sort of network of people
23:05that are working really hard to source this really amazing dairy cow beef for us.
23:10You can see the fat inside these ones.
23:13They're very dry aged, so it's quite a physical job to take it all out.
23:16This is a paddywhack, so this is the only thing that we don't really use.
23:20Not really good for anything, that paddywhack.
23:23Just use that for stock.
23:24It's all for stock, chef.
23:25I think they make dog toys out of it.
23:26Oh yeah?
23:29Not a confirmed sauce.
23:33We've got a fat box, we've got a trim box, we've got a bone box.
23:37When we actually trained, we didn't learn any of this stuff.
23:40We learned all this stuff when we left fine dining restaurants.
23:44I thought a butchery section was just taking the meat out of the packet and putting it into the fridge.
23:48We get a roaster for £14 per kilo.
23:52We're probably, due to all these extra steps, one of the only restaurants that's actually making proper GP on steak
23:58in London.
23:59All of our burgers are made from all of the trim that Will's just taken off.
24:04Look at our beautiful Finnish ribeyes.
24:05Got this really beautiful sort of colour on them.
24:08I think for dairy cow, it's a much older animal, it's done a lot more work.
24:13What starts to happen is that beautiful, herbaceous fat gets concentrated as the water in the meat evaporates.
24:20And the product that you get left with is just superior from a taste point of view.
24:24When we were first sort of learning about it all, dairy cow, for us, was coming from a supplier called
24:28Chileta.
24:29And they were getting it direct from Spain, but obviously we have amazing dairy in the UK.
24:32And the best way to cook this is pretty simply, like, good layer of fine salt.
24:36Flip every 20, 30 seconds, give it a nice rest, and then that's it.
24:39We serve it with a really nice smoky chipotle butter and a crispy garlic crumb and a really good quality
24:44sauce made out of all of this trim.
24:46As we come to the end of our feast prep, that's when we get the stock on for the next
24:49day.
24:50All right, so one of the best things about this approach is that we get a really good amount of
24:55very good quality trim.
24:57And then we colour this off until it's really, really roasted.
25:00I think we do believe that, like, the foundation of a good restaurant is in the sauce.
25:05The best thing about this is it cooks under pressure.
25:07We can cook it in three and a half hours rather than 18 hours, which is great for operations.
25:12But also, like, no one ever really talks about freshness in stock.
25:15These are 100-litre kettles.
25:17We'll use anywhere between two of these per day, minimum, and then sometimes overnight if we're in the weeds.
25:24Land fat is by far the best fat to use to make stock.
25:27It sort of permeates all of the sauce and you get this really rich lamb flavor.
25:30And this Maillard reaction is going to be the foundation to the flavor in the sauce.
25:34If you burn the pan at any stage, you'll taste it in the final sauce.
25:38So once we've got this beautiful golden color on our lamb, then we go in with a good amount of
25:43white onion.
25:44Onions are going to give sweetness to the stock and it also deglazes the bottom of the pan as well.
25:50So carrots go in, parsley stalks, and then we're going to roast our beef bones, add some tomato puree, add
25:55a bit of booze,
25:56and then allow it to pressure cook for about three and a half hours before chilling overnight, removing the fat
26:01and reducing tomorrow.
26:03Okay, so now that the stock's on, we can head upstairs, start on evening service.
26:07It's 5.30, so we'll have our first wave of customers coming in.
26:12Table 46 coming up now.
26:17Things are really heating up here, we're going to have to get back into the kitchen.
26:20Thanks for spending the day with us at Fallow HQ.
26:23Right, you're going to do one cod's egg and one fry.
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