“Working in a restaurant that never closes is a little bit different…the hoods are always going, the lights are always on, the people are always here.” Today, Bon Appétit spends a day on the line with Chef Jackie Carnesi, executive chef at Kellogg’s Diner in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. At 96 years old, this diner has just started back up its 24-hour service and given its menu a Tex-Mex makeover.
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00:00Kellogg's Diner is a 96-year-old culinary institution here in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
00:06Working in a restaurant that never closes is a little bit different because there's not that
00:10moment of solace when you walk into the kitchen and nobody's arrived yet.
00:14The hoods are always going, the lights are always on, people are always here.
00:18The executive chef role can look a little bit different at different restaurants,
00:21but here at Kellogg's I was brought in to develop the menus and we have seven of them currently.
00:28Breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, late night, dessert, and the kids menu.
00:34This new role is really fun and challenging.
00:36I particularly love it because Kellogg's does mean so much to so many people
00:41and I've had an opportunity to fulfill that nostalgia and carry the torch.
00:51I'm Jackie Carnese, the executive chef here at Kellogg's Diner.
00:54We are open 24-7. It's noon on a Tuesday and I just got here so y'all can follow me.
01:01I'm all suited up. It's 12 30. We're here in the kitchen.
01:05The lunch and breakfast team are working currently and there's a lot of action happening.
01:10You can follow me downstairs. We're gonna check in with the pastry team and do some inventory.
01:14We have two kitchens here at Kellogg's.
01:17The upstairs is largely culinary. Downstairs is where the pastry team works.
01:21We're gonna check in with Jadelle and Reina and see how their day is going so far.
01:25Hi Reina. Hi Chase.
01:27We're almost close.
01:28Hi Jay. Hi.
01:29This is Jadelle. She's uh head of our pastry team right now.
01:34I'm making the meringue for tonight's service. It's going to be going on the passion fruit pie.
01:39Reina's doing the base of the passion fruit which is the graham crust.
01:42A couple of our the most popular dessert here are the passion fruit pie
01:46and the strawberry pretzel salad.
01:49Those are two desserts that I really wanted to see on the menu and they made it happen.
01:52A pretty small team that cranks out a lot of product and rightfully so.
01:56Our pastries here have gotten a lot of attention.
01:59It's a really phenomenal pastry program and these guys do a lot of work.
02:03Let's see. Okay so it looks like our mussels came in and our clams.
02:08We'll get these purging.
02:09For Christmas Eve and Christmas we're doing a special menu a feast of the seven fishes.
02:13So I ordered a bunch of product to work on
02:16R&Ding that brand new menu that we're doing just for a couple of days
02:19and I need to make sure that all of the seafood that I ordered came in.
02:23Our snapper did come in.
02:24We're going to pull it out make sure that it is nice and fresh and good to go.
02:30Clear eyes.
02:32The gills have already been removed but obviously we're always looking for fresh gills.
02:35We'll get these changed out onto fresh ice and get it back on the walk-in.
02:39A lot of times diners are viewed as places that where the menu is like pretty stagnant.
02:44We're really trying to avoid that.
02:46We currently have seven menus in rotation.
02:48We use all of them at any given time.
02:51I think if I had to total it up it would probably come to like something like 200 menu items.
02:56With the exception of pastry all of those have been
02:59recipe tested by myself or somebody on my team.
03:02So now we're gonna go from my favorite space in the restaurant
03:05to do my least favorite task which is answering emails.
03:08We're here in the office.
03:10I would much rather be in the kitchen working on stuff but emails have to be answered.
03:14So here we are.
03:16Don't look at my password.
03:17I just got a couple emails here talking about how Kellogg's was just mentioned in
03:23Grub Street as a feature of the best new food in New York of 2024 which is really exciting.
03:27I'm really proud of our team.
03:29We've worked really hard and it feels really good to be acknowledged in that way.
03:33A lot of the emails that I answer are emails that I get from my team.
03:37Emails that I answer are between like the owners and myself
03:40trying to figure out things that we need to change about the restaurant.
03:43Being a line cook is really great because you don't have to answer email but
03:47being a chef is really great because you don't necessarily have to work the line every single night.
03:53And as much as I love working the line it is exhausting and the older you get the less
03:58feasible it becomes to work the line six or seven nights a week.
04:02Now we get to go back into the kitchen and do what we love to do.
04:07It's two o'clock.
04:11We're experiencing a changeover right now.
04:13Morning shift is leaving and night shift is coming in.
04:18So there's a lot of traffic.
04:20People are setting up their stations, putting stuff away
04:23and I'm getting ready to work on the soup of the day.
04:26Every sandwich is served with the soup of the day so it needs to be something that any guest can eat.
04:32I think today I'm kind of feeling cheesy potato soup.
04:36But the soup of the day is really kind of like I get to choose whatever I want to do
04:40in the moment type thing.
04:42There are only a few stipulations that I try to hold myself to which is
04:46I try to make sure it's vegetarian or vegan.
04:49Now we're in our dry storage area.
04:52Here are all my beauties.
04:53We actually have three walk-ins in this restaurant.
04:58The first one is upstairs.
05:00It is just for food that has been processed already.
05:04Down here is only produce and bar.
05:06In our other walk-in is just meat, dairy and pastry.
05:10Let's grab some onions.
05:12I try to the best of my ability to not order any extra produce.
05:17Even though we would go through it very quickly, we just don't have that much space.
05:21So I try to just use what we have.
05:23And one thing we have is a lot of potatoes at all times.
05:27So typically I try to produce at least 22 to 30 quarts of soup at a time.
05:34That'll last us roughly three days.
05:38I very much could have developed recipes and passed this task along to the prep team.
05:46But once we opened up for lunch, I just found that I really enjoyed doing it.
05:51It's kind of my once a week little zen place.
05:55One of my favorite things to do is steal a pellegrino from the bar.
05:58It makes me feel important.
06:02So we're just going to go ahead and peel all of these potatoes.
06:05Get everything prepped out.
06:06Kellogg's recently changed ownership.
06:10It was closed for a period of time and I was brought on and tasked with changing the menu.
06:17Being from Texas, I was really excited to put a little bit of Tex-Mex flair on it.
06:22Feature some dishes that really meant a lot to me like migas, which is a dish that I grew up with.
06:28We're going to cut up our onions for the soup.
06:29One of my biggest gripes about working here is that nobody takes labels off of anything.
06:36There's this big thing among the chef community,
06:40or at least every other restaurant that I've worked at,
06:42where it's considered so, so offensive to leave labels on stuff.
06:47And here, nobody cares.
06:49Would I prefer that people take their labels off stuff?
06:52A thousand percent.
06:53Because then I end up with things that say French toast, personal severity.
06:59And it's, I can't get them off.
07:02You know, you got to pick and choose your battles for real.
07:05So I have to be strategic about like when I do decide to cook the soup.
07:10There's this like kind of sweet spot at changeover
07:14when the AM prep team is leaving and the pastry team is leaving.
07:19So I can prep here pretty quietly and out of anybody's way.
07:23And then once the AM prep team has gone from upstairs,
07:26then I can take everything upstairs and cook the soup without being in their way as well.
07:34It's 3.30.
07:36I haven't eaten yet today.
07:37We do do family meal, but it's not up for like another hour.
07:41And I'm really craving migas.
07:42Migas are on the menu because I grew up eating them.
07:46There's a restaurant called Mi Torito in Brownsville, Texas,
07:48that my family and I used to go to after church every Sunday.
07:52Migas are essentially day-old chips,
07:55typically crisped up in a pan and then a little sauteed onion, tomato.
08:00We put jalapeno and poblano in ours and then scrambled egg.
08:04I really like to eat mine specifically with doña sauce.
08:08So doña sauce is really popular in Austin.
08:12It's hot sauce just made from roasted jalapenos, garlic,
08:15lime juice, salt, and some blended oil to emulsify everything.
08:19And I put it on anything and everything.
08:22We fresh fry all of our tortilla chips in-house.
08:24We have the half-moon shapes that we use for flat nachos,
08:29which are an homage to a restaurant that I grew up eating at
08:32in Brownsville, Texas called The Vermilion.
08:34Basically, flat nachos are just individually assembled nachos,
08:38refried beans, melted cheese, marinated fajita steak,
08:42pickled jalapenos.
08:44It's great.
08:44Maybe it's a little bit depressing,
08:46but typically I eat my lunch here in the office.
08:48It's just one of the few places where
08:51I'm not going to be in anybody's way.
08:53So I'm going to eat this up and I'll see y'all later.
08:58It's four o'clock.
08:59I ate lunch and now we're going to move into
09:01working on R&D for our Christmas prefix.
09:04I'm working on a steamed mussels dish.
09:07I'm getting started by slicing up some shallots and garlic.
09:11So we're actually doing Feast of the Seven Fishes,
09:13which really is pretty abnormal for diner food,
09:16but we wanted to do something exciting and a little bit different.
09:21So we're going to get these mussels de-bearded
09:23and then we'll scrub them up.
09:25When I work on a new dish,
09:27either it comes to me organically like divine inspiration
09:32or the inspiration comes via the owner
09:36or another chef telling me,
09:38hey, I really think we need something like X, Y, Z on the menu.
09:42I'm going to run upstairs, grab a sauté pan,
09:45some wine and some other stuff,
09:47and I'll be right back down.
09:48I just need to grab a ton for a second.
09:51I'm going to do this, head back down, corner.
09:58It's so big and there are just so many people here
10:01that stuff is constantly moving around and going missing.
10:05Like the amount of time that it may take me to find a peeler
10:08is sometimes infuriating.
10:10But, you know, I get a lot of steps in.
10:13It's really about like kind of being flexible.
10:16I really have to just like figure it out every day as I go.
10:19And sometimes that can be, you know, a giant waste of time.
10:22And sometimes it works out beautifully.
10:25Okay, so what we're trying to accomplish here
10:27is create a steamed mussels dish
10:29that is a little bit spicy,
10:32filling, has a nice body to the sauce,
10:34but isn't saturated in butter.
10:37We're going to render out a little bit of this chorizo.
10:40We just don't have any hoods down here.
10:43So we're all going to be coughing
10:45because now I'm cooking chilies in a space with no hoods.
10:49So we're going to let those steam up.
10:50I'm going to run upstairs and grab some tasting spoons.
10:53Be right back.
10:56Can I grab some of these spoons?
11:02Cool.
11:04Man, it's really smoked up down here.
11:06Admittedly, I think the sauce needs a little bit of acid.
11:09We have a chimichurri that we put on our short rib hash
11:12that I think will probably do really nicely to finish off this dish.
11:16I want to reduce the sauce a little bit more
11:18so it gets a little bit more body.
11:20But other than that, I'm pretty happy with it.
11:23Yeah, definitely need some herbs in here.
11:25Maybe for a second, I might be inclined to be like,
11:28wow, this is so much work for one day or two days of service.
11:32But realistically, it's like the thing that I love to do the most is cook and create.
11:37So I got to check myself really fast if I ever start complaining about it.
11:44That needs a little bit of acid.
11:45It's a little bit on the salty side,
11:47but we're really close.
11:48Pretty good for the first attempt at what we're trying to do.
11:52Normally, if I'm creating something for the menu, I try to do a few versions of it.
11:58And especially since we're on a little bit of a time crunch,
12:00you know, the holidays are coming up.
12:02We're going to need to take photos of this food
12:04so we can show people what we're making and, you know, have the staff try it,
12:08create allergy sheets and information sheets for the servers to look at.
12:13It's five o'clock already.
12:15We have a bunch of guests coming into the diner right now.
12:18I'm going to put a pause on R&D for now.
12:20I'm going to run upstairs and check in on the kitchen,
12:23see if we can lend a hand on the line.
12:30It's just a little bit after 5 p.m.
12:32I'm going to go ahead and make the patty melt.
12:33Ours is a little bit different in that it is rye bread,
12:37but we also put pimento cheese as well as cheddar cheese on here,
12:41caramelized onions, and a five-ounce dry-aged burger patty.
12:45Pimento cheese is made in-house like everything else here.
12:48We do put fresh jalapenos in our pimento cheese,
12:51so it's a little bit on the spicy side.
12:54There you go.
12:55Patty melt.
12:56Nice and melty.
12:57Now it's time for me to kiss babies and shake hands in the front of house,
13:01make sure everything's good up there,
13:02and you guys got to get out of here.
13:04Thank you for coming.