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ZIMMERN: When New York City calls it a night,
a different world comes to life.
[ Horn blares ]
PLAUT: Oh, these people are idiots.
Everything here's fresh, brother.
In the city that never sleeps,
tomorrow's food journey begins long before daylight.
80,000 pounds of product.
There's millions of pounds going through here.
A billion pounds a year moves through this building.
SCHIFF: Oh, yes.
You didn't really eat that, did you?
Bleagh!
ZIMMERN: And delectable dishes are served up at all hours
if you know where to look.
There are not a lot of places
that really know what they're doing with a goat head.
The textures of the squid and pork belly are what I love.
It's happening in New York City overnight.
Just when you think New York is out of surprises...
Yeah, I can't do it.
Yeah, that's right.
I'm not -- I'm not even touching it.
I'm Andrew Zimmern...
Welcome to New York, kids.
...and this is "Bizarre Foods: America."
-- Captions by VITAC --
Closed Captions provided by Scripps Networks, LLC.
New York City by night is a world all its own,
especially the hours between midnight and daybreak.
While most streets are dark and quiet,
there are pockets of exuberant activity
from Brooklyn to Queens, Manhattan to the Bronx.
In order for some New Yorkers to party all night long,
others have to work to keep the wheels turning.
The New York City cab driver picks you up,
takes you home, and tucks you in.
There's something phenomenal about the relationship
between New Yorkers and the folks that nurture them.
Melissa Plaut is a born-and-bred New Yorker,
author of a book about cabby life called "Hack,"
and working in a job where 99% of the drivers are men.
I just -- I started it 'cause I wanted, like, the adventure.
ZIMMERN: Right.
And then I'd, like,
gotten laid off from an advertising job.
What was the experience like when you first started driving?
I drove day shift for the first two weeks and I hated it.
And finally, they were like,
"We don't have a cab for you today.
You're gonna drive night shift."
Never went back to day shift again.
It's just more fun.
Night shift, you're like,
"Fine, you're gonna be drunk in my cab.
You'll be annoying, but you'll probably drop a $20 bill."
And you know, people are -- it's just more interesting.
Yeah.
Out of necessity, night-shift cabbies
have developed their own ideas of where the best food is found
between midnight and daybreak.
Halal Guys started as an overnight food cart
primarily serving taxi drivers.
Now its drawing a wider clientele,
but cabbies still get special treatment.
So, there's a huge, long line of just non-cabby people.
Yep.
And then on the other side of the cart
where there's no line is where the cabbies go up.
Basically, cut the line without the line knowing it
and get served right away because they're the core --
you know, the O.G. Halal eaters.
People not in the know -- non-cabbies -- are here.
There you go, sir.
But I'm with you.
[ Chuckles ] Let's go to the other side.
So, this --
Oh, geez Louise.
Right.
The menu is simple.
Platters of chicken and lamb over rice
and street-friendly sandwiches wrapped in a pita.
Regulars swear by
the do-it-yourself application of white sauce,
although for some customers, it's not just a garnish.
It's an entire food group.
Look at this guy.
[ Laughs ]
What you got to do.
What the hell is wrong with you?
It's soup!
Oh. Oh. Careful. Just a little hot.
[ Laughs ]
Regulars appreciate
Halal's fast, cheap, and convenient food.
I think the reason that they're so popular
is 'cause you get tons and tons of food.
You do.
Real chicken hacked apart with painter's equipment.
And they haven't raised their prices
in I don't even know how many years,
so you get a ton of food for not so much money,
so it's affordable.
ZIMMERN: As the night wears on,
the city's more genial crowd fades away.
And the riders get rowdier.
2:00, 3:00, it's like the same New Yorkers,
but it's the other side of the coin now
where they're uncivilized, vomitous, like, shirts untucked,
and you know, all self respect is out the window, but it's fun.
About half of Melissa's fellow cabbies
are from India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh.
Haandi Restaurant offers a Pakistani buffet until 4:00 a.m.
Melissa started going here when she began her overnight shifts.
And there's a couple of cabs.
Yeah, look at that.
But it's slower than normal.
Cabby central and a little bit of rain.
And a little bit of rain.
Haandi bakes bread from scratch.
Their naan is cooked on the sides of a tandoor.
The steam table offers up classics like spiced spinach,
several types of dal, chicken tikka masala,
braised lamb, and lots and lots of curries.
Melissa comes here maybe twice a month,
sticking with a few basics.
Chicken tikka masala.
Yeah, it's...
Maybe I can help her broaden her choices a little bit.
I'll do the braised goat head.
Haandi's food is leaps and bounds tastier than Halal Guys',
but theres a similar emphasis on speed.
PLAUT: Cabbies come in, they get food.
Mm-hmm.
It's fairly fresh regardless.
It's delicious.
I always go straight for that.
What's this part right here?
This may actually be a lamb head.
I think it is a lamb head.
They kept telling me it's goat head.
But this doesn't taste like goat head.
This tastes like lamb head.
I'm pretty sure it's lamb.
What is this piece?
That's the brain.
That's the brain.
Which they make a nice cut there
so you don't have to get all messy scooping it out.
Are you into this kind of thing?
I'm gonna give it a try.
I will tell you the key to eating this kind of thing,
especially a first time -- a little bit of lime,
maybe a little bit of onion.
Just season it.
Mmm.
Wow.
Super rich. Really good.
It's really good.
Mmm.
[ Chuckles ]
I'm going back for more.
Wow.
The head is so just gorgeously fresh and tastes so clean.
Anyone would love this.
There's one more stop to make with Melissa --
her favorite overnight place
with surprises not shown on any menu.
And you know that it's made from scratch right here
'cause they even have the head on the plate.
Then it's on to the Bronx
to the place where they work through the night
to put food on tomorrow's plate.
Oh, my God. That's disgusting.
ZIMMERN: They're pretty rank
and just one of the foulest tastes in the underwater world.
Bleagh!
I'm still spitting it out.
[ Horn blares ]
PLAUT: Oh, these people are idiots.
ZIMMERN: The average New York City cab driver
covers about 200 miles in every 12-hour shift.
And it's just a nutty job. Everybody's insane.
[ Chuckles ]
At night with less traffic to worry about,
a driver has more time
to talk about what the life is really like.
What I realized is most cab drivers,
they may be crazy now, but they didn't start that way.
The job made them that way.
Right. It's like air-traffic control.
[ Chuckling ] Yes.
Finding her own form of comfort food
is one way that Melissa Plaut stays sane.
Is Zaragoza, you know, popular with other drivers,
or is this your place?
This is my place.
Zaragoza Mexican Deli and Grocery in the East Village
is a closet-sized mom-and-pop grocery store.
Maria Martinez runs it with help from her husband and son.
Her regulars call her Mama.
What do you got tonight?
MARIA: [ Speaks Spanish ]
Mmm.
[ Speaks Spanish ]
See, the world of food needs no translation.
Oh!
Chicken and pork tamales
are served with four varieties of salsa.
And tostadas are topped with perfectly-braised pigs ears.
Mama Martinez knows how to cook pig's ears.
Wow.
The outside is tender but the cartilage inside
is just still a little yielding.
Mm.
It's exquisite.
They should double their prices.
Shh.
I almost feel bad.
[ Chuckling ] I know, right?
I mean, seriously, I mean, this is homemade fresh food.
I mean...chicken jalapeño tamale from scratch.
Yeah.
Made with a lot of love, as well.
Lot of love.
The hits keep coming.
Piping hot bowls of menudo
brimming with beef tripe and hominy
and boiled cold chicken feet doused in hot sauce.
I don't know.
I can't seem to get my face around this thing.
That's all right.
Mmm.
You want to know what we say in the chicken-foot business?
Grip and rip. Mmm.
Just when we think we're about finished...
We also have rabbit in green mole
if you want to try a little bit.
[ Chuckles ]
The longer you stay, the more stuff that comes.
This is -- we are not making this up.
I come in, we ask, "What do you have?"
They tell us. We order.
Then magically, there's, like, four off-the-menu items
that they have available.
We order some of that.
We finish, and it isn't until we say the right words
about how much we like or don't like something
that they say, "You know, we've got
a little rabbit in green chili if you want to try that."
[ Laughs ]
The rabbit is smothered in pipián verde --
a traditional sauce from central Mexico
that gets its rich green color
from a blend of pumpkin seeds and fresh chilies.
And you know that it's made from scratch
'cause they even have the head on the plate.
You aren't gonna fight me for that, are you?
Thank you.
[ Laughs ]
I've already had my share of heads at Haandi.
My focus now is on legs and loin.
They're perfect.
Wow.
Really clean.
Mm-hmm.
Fresh tasting, gorgeous roast chili and garlic flavor.
Yeah.
It's extraordinary.
Exploring the city by night this way,
even a born-and-bred New Yorker makes new discoveries.
One of the things I love most about this town
is the back story on everything.
Yeah.
It's the unspoken rule at the Halal cart
about who gets to cut.
[ Chuckles ]
It's the menu behind the menu at Zaragoza.
That's true.
I mean, just when you think New York is out of surprises,
you get surprised.
Yep.
Some New Yorkers might be surprised
that most of the food that they're eating
passes through one giant portal.
Hunts Point food-distribution center in the Bronx
is the largest wholesale-food operation in the world.
More than a million square feet
where the lights burn bright all night long.
There are separate operations for produce, meat, and fish.
I would say a billion pounds a year
moves through this building.
A billion pounds of fish a year.
That's staggering.
It is mind staggering.
The only market that's bigger than us
is the Tsukiji Market in Japan.
That's it.
Eddie Monani has worked at the Fulton Fish Market
since he was a kid working in his father's stall.
Every night, seafood comes here from every ocean in the world,
feeding New York's staggeringly diverse population.
And it's the first time I've ever seen a doctor fish.
This is eaten by the West Indians.
Mostly Jamaicans.
Mm-hmm.
And the reason why they call it doctor fish
is because it has medicinal purposes.
Yeah.
They boil it in tea for 8 to 12 hours.
Have you tried it?
I have tried it.
Yeah?
But I'm still the same old guy that I was before.
That's what I think about all this [bleep]
[ Laughs ]
Most of what's coming through here is more familiar --
tuna, ***, scallops.
Hours before dawn, restaurants and wholesale buyers
are scrambling to find the best fish at the best price.
Where are the scallops coming in from?
These are out of Jersey.
Uh-huh.
Jerry Phillips of Montawk Seafood
has been selling here for 30 years.
These are totes of fresh, dry-pack sea scallops.
This is a live one.
And there you have it in all of it's --
With the roe.
...visceral -- [Chuckling] oh.
The feet, stomach, reproductive organs.
That's a stunner.
What diners lovingly call a scallop
is simply the large, round muscle
holding the shells tight around the rest of the animal.
Those are good.
Can't beat that.
It's got the same texture that really delicate crab has.
You can almost feel -- you can almost taste the grain in it.
Super sweet.
I mean, that's ocean candy.
Jerry knows his business
but has never tasted some of his own product,
like blood cockles, also called blood clams --
a species growing in popularity here in America.
You can see that reddish juice starting to pile up
from which it gets its name.
I don't know about this, Andrew.
Cheers.
Believe me, you don't know about it.
You didn't really eat that, did you?
We just fake it on our show.
No, I'm just kidding.
You don't like that?
Oh, my God. That's disgusting.
Blood clams are popular in Asia and South America.
With a huge, stinky brininess,
they are usually served with plenty of lemon or hot chili.
No aroma,
and just one of the foulest tastes in the underwater world.
Bleagh! I'm still spitting it out.
They're pretty rank.
Yeah.
You got to really like raw...
stinky, putrefied, salty shellfish flavor --
...to like this.
And that's a fresh one, by the way.
Well, thanks.
By 4:00 a.m., most of the fish and seafood
is already sold and out the door.
The produce terminal is still going strong.
I'm headed there next.
Fruit can be the best food in the whole world
and it can also be the worst.
And then on to the meat market, where they don't just sell meat.
They transform it.
This is my idea, and if I keel over stone-cold dead,
but yes, I am actually going to eat some of this.
ZIMMERN: Welcome to the jungle --
the source for roughly 60% of all the fruits and vegetables
coming into the city.
A lot of it comes in overnight,
so it's fresh and ready for consumers tomorrow morning.
Those onions look like
they've been sitting around for a little while.
Those onions just got here about a half hour ago.
I'm just kidding.
Everything here is fresh, brother.
Your number-one produce.
Do you want to know something?
There's not an unfresh thing
within a five-mile radius of this place
because it all comes in and comes out so quickly.
Deliveries arrive 24 hours a day
from 49 states and over 55 foreign countries.
The bulk of the fruit coming through here
is the usual suspects with some occasional rarities mixed in.
Scuppernongs are a variety of grape
native to the American south.
First I've seen in the market tonight.
The first ones that came in this season.
They're excellent. They're very good.
They're good. They get a little sweeter.
Little bit.
I think the people in the south
keep the sweetest ones for themselves.
That's exactly what they do.
But it's like I said, I mean, I love these things.
These are excellent.
99% of the people here don't even know
what the hell these things are.
Here's an even rarer fruit --
quenepas from the Dominican Republic.
It's got this creamy, soft, sweet and sour
little mushy flesh around that big seed.
That's delicious.
Fruit can be the best food in the whole world
and it can also be the worst.
This, however, falls into the awesome category.
It's like sweet and sour candy.
Mmm.
As cool as that is,
I wouldn't say it's my favorite thing
to experience at Hunts Point.
This is.
There is a sweetness in the air that is just --
it's incomparable.
It's one of my favorite smells.
I'm a carnivore. What can I say?
The Hunts Point cooperative meat market
is home to more than 50 different distributors,
each supplying restaurants, supermarkets, and butcher shops
all over the region.
This is more than just a clearing house.
A place like Master Purveyors
is processing the meat as it moves through.
We do everything on a daily basis.
Yep.
So, nothing's really prepped days before.
It's really as needed.
If they order today, we process tonight.
Mark Solasz grew up in the meat business.
He and his brother Scott
run the company their father founded 50 years ago.
Sam Solasz came to America after escaping the Nazis in Poland.
At age 85, he's still on the job.
Are you -- is this what you're doing right now?
Supervising these guys?
I love this.
How long -- can you take your eyes off that for a second?
Not for one, can you?
[ Laughs ]
It's a lot to keep an eye on.
The sheer volume of meat
moving through here every night is staggering.
MARK: About 3½ hours, we have to basically get
about 80,000 pounds of product packed, all done, strapped up --
You're joking. 80,000 pounds of product?
How many guys?
Well, we got about 35 guys doing this.
Amazing.
Even more amazing is the quality of these vast quantities.
Every cut of beef coming off the line
is sculpted to each customer's specifications.
You know, some people are gonna disagree with me,
but this is an art form.
And anyone can buy beef, right?
But when you're taking meat like this,
aging it, cutting it -- every restaurant has it different.
Some are doing on the bone, some are doing it off the bone,
so on and so forth.
It's a very, very specialized thing.
A few clients don't want it cut at all.
Master Purveyors is one of the only meat distributors
in America bringing in whole sides of beef,
and beef of the best possible quality.
That commitment to excellence
brings them top-of-the-line customers
willing to pay a high premium
so they can cut the beef themselves.
And they specifically want it as untouched as this.
Right.
They're like diamonds.
Yeah.
So, they want to get the diamond and inspect the diamond
and see it in its raw state,
so this way, they realize that they're gonna be the first ones
actually touching it.
It's a great metaphor.
These are beautiful uncut stones.
And this is your customer's stamp right there.
They happen to have their own.
Yes.
That's the Peter Luger's stamp.
Among the buyers for these uncut gems
is Peter Luger's in Brooklyn.
One of the world's greatest steakhouses,
Luger's not only cuts the meat themselves,
they're aging it, too.
For customers that don't have their own aging rooms,
Master Purveyors is happy to oblige.
They will dry age meat from two weeks to several months
under carefully controlled temperatures.
Fans circulate the air and maintain proper humidity,
allowing the meat to essentially decompose
softens the texture, removes moisture,
and intensifies flavor.
It also makes it very expensive.
Oh, you got to be kidding me.
Well, the room is four times bigger than I thought it was,
and I was impressed at its size before I learned that.
Big enough for aging 120,000 pounds of meat
at any given time.
Dry aging is time consuming and costly.
And when you cut away the darkened crust
and reveal the stunningly-tasty meat underneath,
it's worth every penny.
Now, this isn't my idea. This is your idea.
I never eat meat raw.
This is my idea.
And if I keel over stone-cold dead --
well, actually could be one of the best pieces of P.R.
you ever have.
Finally get taken down.
But yes, I am actually going to eat some of this.
It's against regulations to eat where the food is processed,
so I'm banished to the loading dock.
And you can see some of that breakdown in that muscle there
is what happens when the dry-age process takes place.
That meat was aged for about three to four weeks.
Gorgeous.
Hanging in the room about 35 degrees.
You can taste a little bit of the nuttiness.
Like great cheese, like great wine,
it has that little bit
of gorgeous, antique funk on the front,
then it's very, very sweet,
and it finishes with just a gorgeous, gorgeous
fully fat-flavored...
oomph.
Here at Hunts Point,
overnight is just another part of the work day.
It's the middle of the evening.
Streets are empty, but the restaurants are crowded.
Same thing is true for the neighborhood
recognized as the place to be
in the wee small hours of the morning.
You know it's fresh if it has the veins.
Well, a sack without veins isn't a sack at all.
That's next on the overnight itinerary.
ZIMMERN: Even in New York,
most of the city goes dark in the really wee small hours.
Now is when the party crowd starts looking
for sustenance and maybe a little comfort.
Employees Only is a neighborhood bar
where last call is 4:00 a.m.,
and if you thought New Yorkers were tough cookies
or that nothing in this city is free or easy,
consider this.
ROTHMAN: So, they bring out these cups of chicken soup
and they bring them along the bar.
Anybody who survived the evening at Employees Only gets a cup.
Right.
It's like a really wonderful way to be sent home
because chances are
if you've survived a night of Employees Only,
you're probably not sober,
so it's not a terrible thing
to get some food in your stomach.
Good thing people take cabs and walk around here, you know?
That's right.
It's very good chicken soup.
Jordana Rothman chronicles New York's food-and-drink scene.
She speaks for many New Yorkers
in love with the city's 24-hour lifestyle.
There's regions of Manhattan and Brooklyn
that are known for late-night fun.
Sure.
I mean, you know, have to kind of appreciate
that there's all of these places that you can go and get fed
or have a party or, you know, get a massage at,
you know, 6:00 in the morning.
Ask Jordana or any hard core New York night owl
where the party never stops, they'll probably direct you here
in the shadow of the Empire State Building.
Manhattan's Korea Town began in the '70s with a few storefronts.
It's become the best place in the borough
to eat in the middle of the night.
Now it's been discovered
as sort of like the go-to late-night place.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, in the last five years,
a lot of the old institutions got replaced
with a lot of modern, chic bars and restaurants.
Yeah.
They cater to the younger crowd now.
Right. And it's three stories high.
I mean, you can see the karaoke bars
and the lounges in full swing.
Yep.
Jae Oh is a second-generation Korean-American
who runs his Internet business on Korea time.
So, this is his lunch hour.
Even without taking time zones into account,
Koreans have a round-the-clock culture.
That's why these few blocks on West 32nd
offer both karaoke and authentic Korean cooking
at 4:00 in the morning.
Here at Kunjip, soup is a house specialty.
Let's get the ox bone with the ox blood.
Yep.
That's nice and spicy. I love that.
Definitely.
We'll do the Al Chigae and the Budae Chigae. We'll try them all.
Korean soup is one of the world's great treasures.
Created in a cold climate, it's the ultimate meal in a bowl.
All your essential food groups are included,
with many soups utilizing foods that would otherwise be wasted
like bones, blood, and fish eggs.
That one is the Al Chigae.
Al Chigae is a fish stew that begins with a spicy fish broth
layered with vegetables, tofu,
and bulging sacks of fresh codfish roe.
You know it's fresh if it has the veins.
Well, a sack without veins isn't a sack at all.
I mean, let's just be honest.
Wow.
The fish broth is spectacular.
Mm-hmm.
Look, you can see how clear.
This is a beauty.
Some of these soups include unnatural stuff, as well.
Budae Chigae is Korean for army-base stew.
In postwar Korea,
dishes were often scrounged from U.S. Army leftovers.
This version includes Korean supermarket hot dogs
and spam, all seasoned with kochujang and kimchi.
For Jae, it's comfort food.
For me, it's just a mistake.
And I love a hot dog.
Don't put it in my noodle soup.
I don't know. It's too hybridized.
I -- I can't explain it.
I get to not like a couple of things.
I get it.
Yeah, I can't do it.
Yeah, that's right.
I'm not -- I'm not even touching it.
But I am gonna have some blood cake.
Nothing wrong with that.
Congealed ox blood is the star of Haejang Guk --
a name that literally means "soup to chase a hangover."
The broth is made with ox tail and beef shins.
Flavorful and cheap.
Oh, I love it. Grew up on that stuff.
My mom used to cook it all the time
'cause we couldn't afford the good stuff.
Oh, that blood cake is great.
Super clean.
Not metallic...
...in the least.
Not at all.
Just earthy, almost like a mush-- like a delicate mushroom.
The same family operating Kunjip
is offering another cornerstone of Korean cuisine
just a few doors away.
New Wonjo is a late-night Korean-barbecue restaurant.
It's a specialty place with honest, authentic food
and real wood charcoal grills.
Oh.
Gorgeous. Thank you.
That's the game changer right there.
While the coals are heating up,
we're starting with something cold.
Raw marinated crab.
Two ways.
Two ways.
So, this is with the soy sauce and this is with the chili.
Soy-sauce marinated.
ZIMMERN: Raw crab is wonderfully slimy.
The legs are even slimier
after marinating in soy sauce and sesame oil.
There's something so unique
with shellfish eaten raw just marinated.
I don't know.
Out of control good.
Here's something you almost never find outside of Korea --
the top shell turned into a little bowl
with the roe and innards still inside.
Stir in some hot rice,
and you have one of my favorite tastes,
bold with oceanic brine and an organy sweetness.
With the varieties of flavors and textures
and chilies and fats and acid, I mean, it's insane.
And so is this --
pork belly teamed with squid marinated in chilli sauce.
The textures of the squid and pork belly are what I love.
It's a texture thing.
With the squid, it's just -- and that chili garlic paste.
Oh, yeah.
You having a moment?
Do you want to know something?
I'm so food drunk, I might just karaoke right here.
Korean culture is all about
honoring your country's and your parents' traditions.
Everyone who is able to grow food in Korea
is a kitchen gardener, even if it's just a window pot.
Christina Kim's mother still grows vegetables
for both restaurants in her backyard.
You can taste the difference in the sesame leaves
wrapped around the barbecued meat.
It's so herbal.
That sesame leaf is just so profoundly delicious.
It's so aromatic --
a little bit like shiso but then not like shiso.
People would walk in here and never expect, you know,
the owner's mom --
That's from her garden.
With dawn just a few hours away,
across the river in Queens, people are working hard
to create the food New Yorkers expect to wake up to.
FINTZ: A machine can't do this.
Well, a machine can, but it doesn't work as well.
While next door in Brooklyn,
night-owl entrepreneurs are working to build new business
by inventing better food.
Oh, God.
...and I'm allergic to strawberries,
and I still want to eat this.
[ Laughter ]
ZIMMERN: While most of New York City sleeps,
there's feverish work happening in some out-of-the-way places.
Across the East River on a dark Brooklyn street
in what looks like an empty building
sits the future model for food entrepreneurship
that will change our food lives for the better.
Take this 100-year-old elevator up four floors
and you'll find Hana Kitchens.
It's a culinary time share
where visionaries with an idea for launching a food business
can rent kitchen space day or night.
Nicole Bermansolo is one of the tenants
and one of the landlords.
So, we have about 20 different tenants.
Right.
One of whom is your business.
The largest of whom is mine.
Right.
And you can take literally one shift of four hours
and make whatever it is you want to make,
or you can be here 24 hours a day.
Nicole developed a passion for Japanese cooking
as a business student in Tokyo.
A few years ago, she chucked her white-collar business career
and launched Kyotofu, giving familiar deserts
a surprising twist with Japanese ingredients.
Chocolate-chip cookies made with roasted soy flour.
Muffins made with green tea.
I love these flavors.
It's vegetal, there's a smokiness to it.
Brownies seasoned with the earthy, fermented,
salty tang of miso.
Oh, it's awesome.
In sweets.
And it's not, like, super -- it's kind of subtle,
and it's just meant to, like, balance out
the sweetness of the chocolate.
Mm-hmm. But chocolate needs that.
Yeah.
Chocolate needs partners like miso.
Absolutely.
Wow.
It's kind of a cool brownie, huh?
[ Chuckles ]
Nicole's business idea
was in danger of stalling out in its infancy.
Slim margins and the high cost of space and equipment
in New York can be lethal.
Hana Kitchen was her solution for making her own product.
It's also how she finances some of the growth,
renting to other food entrepreneurs.
They're here working day or night
whenever space or equipment is available,
or as their personal schedules dictate.
Tonight, Scott Bridi is here stuffing the sausages
he sells at area farmer's markets.
This is awesome.
Well, no because for entrepreneurs,
I mean, this is what you need.
Right.
Comfortable enough to work in, a little bit of stainless steel.
We actually have a smoker here.
Yeah.
How fantastic is that?
Great. [ Chuckles ]
The foods being created by night
in a rabbit warren of kitchen offices like this
are the success stories of tomorrow.
ALOE: Well, our place is called the Elbow Room.
We do mac and cheese.
Goodness.
Lou Aloe makes mac and cheese with Jamaican jerk chicken,
as a Canadian poutine with gravy and fries,
or as an American cheeseburger.
There's meat. It's ground beef.
You kind of get that mustard, you get the pickle,
you get the ketchup.
Bermansolo: That's cool.
Way to go, dude.
Lou's mac and cheese is catching on,
finding customers at four city locations,
including Brooklyn's new sports arena.
Success is great, but there's more to this place
than people hustling to make a buck.
It's about people fired up by the idea of what food can be.
Ron and Katie Cunningham have two kids and a day job,
but they're here pulling regular all nighters
hand-crafting 100% organic ice cream.
Mm-hmm.
And egg yolks. That's our base.
So, you're saying that ice cream can be made
without artificial ingredients?
Can you believe it?
The [bleep] is wrong with you?
[ Laughter ]
From that base,
they create flavors like white black lava caramel.
That's caramel ice cream
seasoned with black Hawaiian sea salt.
It's got that real burnt-caramel flavor
that only comes with small-batch quality,
and maybe that's the secret to it is that
everything here is small batch.
But I'm just curious,
how does all this stuff get to be so...good?
Well, I'll tell you what.
In today's day and age,
I think people that don't make a good quality product
fall off the grid very quickly.
Oh, that's true.
But the good products build a following,
add shifts and, you know, and keep rolling.
It's almost like self selection.
A natural s--
It's Darwinist theory at its most rudimentary form.
Speaking of survival,
this Simply Strawberry is so good it just might kill me.
Look at how gorgeous that is.
My doctor told me not to eat any more ice cream
because I was putting on too much weight.
I'm lactose intolerant...
Oh, God.
...and I'm allergic to strawberries,
and I still want to eat this.
[ Laughter ]
This is a huge compliment.
[ Laughter ]
I'm just kidding. That's delicious.
While these guerilla warriors are working through the night
making small batches in Brooklyn,
in Queens, people are working through the night
creating vast armies of food New Yorkers love to wake up to.
When you think of New York City, you think of a couple of things.
You think of the Empire State Building.
Mm-hmm.
Central Park.
...the New York Yankees, you think of Central,
and you think of New York City bagels.
Without a doubt.
Davidovich Bakery in Queens
is the only place in New York, maybe the world,
still making bagels by hand for wholesale buyers.
It's almost difficult to see.
Shakir's doing such a great job.
It's almost impossible with the swirl
to pick up where the bagel's actually joined.
Right.
Plus you got a great mustache.
[ Both laugh ]
The bagel has been around for a long time,
coming to Europe in the 1300s by way of the silk road.
That chewy, hard exterior made it an ideal traveling food.
It came to New York
with Jewish immigrants from Poland and conquered the city.
Marc Fintz is development director
of the company that owns Davidovich.
The idea here was to make something that was scaleable --
to take the old-world way of doing things,
because with bagels, unlike a lot of other things,
when you change the process, you change the product.
So, you take the same process and you just do more of it.
You do three mixers instead of one.
You do six ovens instead of one, instead of two.
Here is the only way to keep the integrity of the product
is to keep the process the same and just do more of it.
It's incredible.
Once the bagels have proofed, they go into a hot-water bath.
Boiling helps set the crust,
creating that one-of-a-kind chewy, dense interior
and allowing for a defined, polished crust once it's baked.
From the boiler, the bagels go onto long burlap-lined planks,
making them easier to seed and flip
and for repeating the process over and over.
Knowing just when each batch is ready is an art.
This baker cannot be replaced by a machine.
A machine can't do this.
Well, a machine can, but it doesn't work as well.
It's never done right, but he'll know.
He'll be able to sense better than anybody else.
The result -- every bagel is excellent,
but no two are exactly alike.
They're scorched and there's less scorch
and there's brown crusty on one level
and chewier and less crusty over here.
It's just -- that's the taste of a culture and a place.
Welcome to New York, kids.
Every New Yorker knows where there's a bagel,
there needs to be smoked fish.
Down in Brooklyn, they're making it in ways
that can be a revelation,
even to a hard core bagel and lox man.
SCHIFF: Oh, yes.
That's incredible.
It's where to learn the secrets
of transforming a million pounds of salmon into lox.
It's like the Fort Knox of fish.
Fort Lox.
[ Laughs ]
ZIMMERN: When New York City wakes up, by the hundreds of thousands,
people will be waking up to this --
bagels with cream cheese and lox.
Lox is Yiddish for cured salmon,
derived from the Indo-European word for salmon itself.
The best in New York comes fresh, in season,
frozen the rest of the year from the northern Pacific,
to an icy-cold locker in Brooklyn.
ZIMMERN: So, what is it in here -- about 10 below zero?
I think it's 14 below zero, actually.
Who's counting? It's fantastic.
We're actually the largest smoked --
single smoked-salmon factory in the United States,
'cause there's millions of pounds going through every year.
You would never know that
walking down this quiet little street in Brooklyn
in the middle of the night.
You would never know.
Acme smoked fish has been here since 1954.
For 20 years, Richard Schiff's been handling the smoked fish,
feeding not just New York, but much of the entire country.
Before they're smoked,
whole fish and large filets are wet cured in brining tanks.
Some filets get tossed in a house-made blend of salt.
So, this is basically just hand applied.
Right.
The guys who work here,
they call it feeding the chickens 'cause they...
Right. Right.
That's exactly how they sprinkle sesame seeds
on the boards at Davidovich for the good bagels.
So, it's no coincidence.
[ Chuckling ] No coincidence.
Oddly enough, they don't make cream cheese that way,
but maybe they should.
After they're cured,
the fish will either go into a hot smoker,
or ideally, into one of several cold smokers.
There, the temperature stays below 85 degrees Fahrenheit.
Making edible art is an elegant, slow process.
Cold smoking takes moisture out
and leaves fatty deliciousness in
without creating a flaky, cooked-fish mouthfeel.
Smoked salmon is as much about texture as it is about flavor.
It's like the Fort Knox of fish.
Fort Lox.
[ Laughs ]
These salmon sides are hand-selected, custom-brined,
and smoked for the best fish shops in Manhattan.
You name them, they all buy from Acme.
These are troll red kings from Alaska.
Right.
Which means that they're caught one fish, one line.
Right.
These are the primo of primo king salmon.
And you've brined and smoked them with bone.
Yeah.
Yeah, this is, you know,
I always say it's like the chicken-on-the-bone theory.
Absolutely.
Cold-smoked fish spends time in a cooling room
that brings them down to almost freezing.
This makes for easier slicing.
For the best houses,
the fish stay whole for hand slicing to order.
For commercial sales, that's not practical,
so Acme uses the Rolls-Royce of slicing machines
for their vast selection of pre-cut products.
This actually scans the contour of the fish
as it goes through and makes measurements
to adjust the slicing angle as it goes through the machine.
It does not.
Oh, yes.
I always wondered
how it actually got on to the gold cardboard.
Now I know.
Secret's out.
When high-quality fish is handled this skillfully,
you can really appreciate the distinct flavors and textures
coming from different parts of the same animal.
Slices from the tail of the salmon and whitefish
are leaner and smokier
than those taken from the fatty belly.
It's why -- my grandmother always bought a whole fish
and put it out 'cause it's like a chicken.
Different muscle groups on the fish
are gonna taste different.
And you are right.
I love the spiky, smokey saltiness of the rib meat.
And this just presents completely differently.
It's just very unctuous and it has that oiliness
from the sea is really how I like to think about it.
It's just exquisite.
Of all the hundreds of places
selling Acme lox on Davidovich bagels,
none is more famous than Zabar's,
a Manhattan institution since 1934,
open 365 days a year.
Would you like the center taken out?
You are an artisan. Yes, that would be delightful.
I had the feeling that you --
I watching my carbs.
That's the whole thing. That's the whole thing.
[ Laughs ]
The city is shaking itself awake.
Day-shift cabbies have been on the streets since 5:00 a.m.
Shops and restaurants are opening up,
getting ready to sell the food shipped in overnight.
It's been a long, long, long night.
But the payoff is worth it.
Mmm.
A perfectly chewy, dense, and toasty
New York City sesame bagel, scallion cream cheese,
smokey cut from the top and tail, no belly on my sandwich.
Doesn't get any better.
New York can go about its business
thanks to the people who worked all night to set the stage.
They'll be back tonight working, playing, and eating
while the rest of the city sleeps.
Doesn't matter what time of day or night.
If it looks good, eat it.