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.
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LifestyleTranscript
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]