How Master Chef Craig Wong Runs his Iconic Jamaican-Chinese Restaurant — Mise En Place

- So I only half cooked this lobster because it's going to go in the deep fryer and then stir fry in the wok. Like all the best Chinese dishes, this comes together very quickly. Prosperity Jerk Lobster is our version of the crispy wok-stir-fried lobster you can get in Chinatown at 2:00 AM. m. when you have a table full of

chef

s. This is how we prepare the lobster for service. This is our three-step dredging method. So it starts with a dry, the next we go into a wet. This is exactly how we do it for each lobster. One at a time.

Alright, now the lobster goes into the fryer. While it's crisping up, we'll start on the sauce as well. This is where it gets intense. Cooking with a wok was a very different learning experience. - This is Jerk Butter. - Many of the

restaurant

s I worked in were predominantly French. - Onions. - So I didn't have the opportunity to use the wok as much. - Peppers, Maggi sauce. - It's not easy at all. - The lobster enters... - Like everything, all the

mise

en

place

has to be done well in advance. And you can't be like fuck, like you have to be super ripped... - Ready to plate. - I come from the world of fine dining, French cuisine, working in

restaurant

s with three Michelin stars.

And I have learned a lot of techniques. Come back for a second. It's Ritz cracker crumbs and a little more butter. -But I think it's funny that they're smug about our use of things like Ritz crackers. It's delicious. And if someone is too cheap to enjoy the things we are doing, then they can go to another restaurant. - Prosperity Jerk Lobster. - The Chinese date back to Jamaica. There are generations and generations of us there. When we first opened, people had no idea this culture existed, much less the cuisine. (upbeat music) - Let's go! - It's 8:30, time to start eating roast chicken. - This is Chef Nick, my right hand when it comes to ground beef and chicken. - Yes. - Chicken man. (laughs) - Yes, they eat a lot of chicken here, man. - A lot of chicken. (laughs) - Look at this idiotic pasta.

They are chives, scotch bonnet and soy sauce. This is what put us on the map. - When you want to dress up for Jerk Chicken, you'll want to fit everything inside the cavities. - In the background. - Deep down, yes. (Laughs) A waiter once asked me how much chicken I get. I often have my hands in the chicken. (laughs) - And this is only the first part. The fun part is when they started smoking. - And voila. - Jelena, let's tie up. - The truss is important because when you put it on the rotisserie, you want it to maintain that shape.

Stick with that last one. - Yeah come on. - Oh shit! (laughs) - He understood it, he understood it, he understood it. -Look, now he himself has extra life. Right now it is marinated for 24 hours. And then we put it in our smoker. - Our Jerk Chicken takes a couple of days to prepare. We start with dry brine and then cold smoke to get that smoky flavor. - One two three. (laughs) - Yes. - We smoked in the back of the restaurant. This is like a small narrow alley. It's definitely not the most ideal location, but you know it gets done.

And for this we need some firewood. - Continue. (inaudible speech) (laughs) - I used to be fast at one point. (laughs) Oh, I'm chopping wood at... Jordan One Breds. (laughs) - Location is important. You want to

place

some of the larger ones at the base. - So we're cold smoking this on this smoker because we want to finish the cooking on the rotisserie to keep it as juicy as possible. - Yes. - Normally you have chicken coming off the grill. Sometimes it's especially like the breast part is very, very dirty and dry. This helps give you the best of everything, of every world, to be honest.

Nice and spacious, smoke goes everywhere and then you close this baby. And that's how you get the best chicken in town. Since we are smoking chicken, we tried to smoke pork belly at the same time for our Yakisoba dish. - I have a new idea that I want to try on Mignonette. - Then please save me one of these pork bellies. I'll check this one out. - Alright. - And as you have seen before, I am very good at this point. (laughs) (inaudible murmurs) - I'm thinking about a new dish. So I'm going to smoke this pork belly almost like a Texas style brisket.

So I'm mixing in some spicy Chinese mustard. This is the first time I've done this. I'm not really sure if this will work, but this is just a test. - And again, just like with the chicken, do you want to leave space between them? You don't want to lose the fat part, you want to add the meat because the fat is reduced, you don't want to lose all that fat because that fat is good. When it comes to liking winter, what year is this? There is ice everywhere. There is a moment when it is snowing. Sometimes the rain sometimes the hail.

It's cruel man, it's cruel. Canada, it's nice. Canada is really nice. And it's a really good thing all year round. Yes. - Is that okay, oxtail? - Let's do it. - Watch your back, watch your back. - The next big task we have for the day is the oxtail. Sometimes they come chopped, but sometimes they come whole like this. Now we have to deal with them. So I'm simply cutting the joints to separate the oxtail and get manageable pieces. We couldn't be a Jamaican-Chinese restaurant without serving oxtail. - Take it easy man. -How do you think I get rid of stress? - Oh Lord! (laughs) Look, I don't scream in the kitchen.

I take action in the kitchen. - Alright. - When I eat oxtail I like big pieces like this. - Do you want to have a big piece of oxtail on your fork? (laughs) - A good oxtail, a Caribbean would take it off your hands, man. You ruin the oxtail and they say, "What are you doing?" Most like the shocks you get into it. It's a big knife where you go... (growling) just like what he's doing. - The way we make our oxtail is that we start by caramelizing it. And we do that in the fryer. It is not so typical of a traditional oxtail, but it does make ours very different.

If I showed my uncles that I was browning oxtail in a deep fryer, who knows what they would do to me. - When I first saw him frying oxtail, I thought: "What are you doing? This is not oxtail. This is not oxtail!" But then, the flavors came out perfect. - This is exactly what we are looking for. That deep caramelization. - So when I started the sauce for the oxtail, we left out the onion... So you want them to be nice and translucent. And this is now the authentic flavor of oxtail. This is where true love comes into the dish.

Because if this is not done right, everything else we did is meaningless from the beginning. - So caramelizing ketchup is almost like napalm. It just stays everywhere. But Jelena has developed this technique to avoid it. - Any exposed flesh will burn. (laughs) She'll catch you. - The next step is the oyster sauce. It's that familiar flavor you'll find in Chinese cuisine and a little soy sauce. The last thing we'll add is a little bit of browning. Dorado is that caramel that you will find in Coca-Cola, it is what gives oxtail its characteristic slight bitterness. - Dorado is found in all Jamaican cuisines.

I think this dish merges both cuisines better, right? - Absolutely. - You have the Chinese influence, but still with the Jamaican flavors. This is what it is. Yin and yang, right? (laughs) - So now we're about to bring it to a simmer and then pour it over the oxtail and put it in the oven for three hours. My grandmother taught me Jamaican-Chinese food. We go back three generations to Jamaica and she cooked Jamaican food with Chinese ingredients, and she cooked Chinese food with Jamaican ingredients. They have been in the oven for three hours. That's the bull's tail for us.

Soft, tender, brown. You can't eat oxtail without rice and peas, and in fact we also accompany it with rotating meatballs. It is a very simple ball of flour and water dough. Fusion, for the sake of it, is definitely not something I like. But with a mixed background, like I have, it's just a natural progression for me to experiment and play with both sides of cultures and cuisine. - Yes. You can see they are still raw. The texture has changed slightly. You can smell it. This is what you are looking for. -When I first decided to make Jerk Chicken, I knew I wanted to make it on a rotisserie instead of a grill, but at the same time I wanted to make sure I maintained respect for the dish and the smoke adds a lot. flavor. - Jerk Chicken, Jerk Pork, all smoked.

Come on, okay guys. It's after four o'clock, let's start preparing for the service. Well? The marinated chicken, we try to make it as close as possible, because there's no point in doing all that work and you have chicken outside. You want it to be fresh, nice and juicy. I put everything in the chicken. That's how we like it, that's how we like it here. Rub some more. It gives you that nice crunch and that nice heat that you get. That's what Jerk Chicken is all about. Sometimes we don't even get to the bones. How about our Jerk Chicken that's on the go?

So now it's pork belly. That's why we want to go with eight ounces. Very generous with salt. And then, you can do some more idiot base. And to be honest, this is unlike any spicy pork you've ever had in Jamaica. - One of the things I'm doing now that keeps me busy is our new restaurant, Mignonette. It's time to try the menu, it's the exciting time. And I have this idea for a new dish. It's actually loosely based on a shumai, a Chinese shrimp and pork dumpling. And I also smoked some pork belly. So we're up in Mignonette and we've done the big

mise

en place jobs in Patois.

And here we can play and prepare some new dishes. So I took this pork and I smoked it Texas brisket style, and I just put a little bit of salt on it, a little bit of pepper...it still has that crust on it because of the barbecue paper. In theory, this will taste good. - I trust you

chef

. - Yes. (laughs) Dripping. So juicy. The cut of the pork could be a little better but what we did was really good. Alright. So I'm going to make mayonnaise, but the base will actually be shiromiso and crab. And it will give us a very intense umami flavor. (Buzz) Okay.

My deal with this was the Ritz cracker, super simple. So we put some of this mayonnaise right on a piece of pork and it has some ikura. It just works in my head. This is a real test, the first time. - Health? - Health. It doesn't taste like I imagined, but somehow... - It tastes delicious. - It tastes delicious. - It's a bit heavy. - It is. - In all honesty. - Yes. Well, it was inspired by a shumai but it doesn't taste like shumai to me at all. - Because it doesn't have shrimp, right? (laughs) - Exactly, we had that crab and stuff, but I mean, it's a very loose interpretation.

Yes, we would have to think about it carefully. Alright man, that was fun. I have to go back and take care of the service. - Thank you so much. - See you. - Alright guys, picking up a Yakisoba. What makes this dish so unique is that we actually put oxtail sauce as the base of the sauce. We started with a lot of cabbage, broccoli. Yakisoba is traditionally like a ramen noodle stir-fried in a wok and we wanted to give it a different take. Here is our yakisoba sauce. (sizzling) - So, this is our pork belly for our yakisoba. - Top with a little Jerk glaze. - That's our roast pork yakisoba. - Now we plate our juicy Jerk chicken.

And you see, because of the grill, you see that all the juice is running out. The chicken breast is nice and moist and beautiful. And finish it with a little cilantro. (screaming) Connor, what are you working on now? Sometimes it gets chaotic. I mean, we don't have a lot of space and then there are a lot of people in line. This is our dirty fried rice. We have our ground pork, our Chinese sausages, and our homemade dirty spices. (bell rings) The chicken, two chickens. - So you can get our Jerk Chicken in two ways. Fresh off the grill or you can get it in a Jerk Chicken Chow Mein.

Shiitake mushroom. Jerk chicken and chow mein are a natural pairing of jerk pasta. There's the spicy flavor of Jerk chicken and the crunchy, spicy noodles in chow mein. (incoherent speech) Part of me is a storyteller. I really wanted to show some of my heritage. This is bok choy. Next up is Jerk Chicken Beef. Jamaican Chinese, it is very unique. And we finish with the bean sprouts. The noodles go to the plate and we take them directly from the wok. I don't think many people have seen that. So, of course, it's very important to me to show a little bit of my heritage in the foods we feed people. - Frame 32.

Oxtail with coleslaw! (bell rings) So we have a fry-up, a pull on our dirty rice. Alright, I'm leaving guys. Go. Here you have. Three zero two. Do you want the next burger? - I'll take that hamburger. - Okay, go, there you have it. Give me hot sauce please! There you have it, double idiot. Three zero four. - I was just in a bit of a hurry. It was pretty intense having everyone come together, but you know, it's what we enjoyed the most. - Alright. So now we are almost reaching the end of the service. Um, we have the last tables left to enter.

So let's put in a little more chicken just for those guys and then we'll wrap it up tonight, okay? Here I go again. (upbeat music)