9:30 A.M. Hearty Plates with an Egg on Top

It’s only 9:30 A.M. and we’re already starting to prep tomorrow’s brisket. We have to. It roasts for 6 hours and marinates overnight. But it’s worth it. I never get sick of seeing lovely West Los Angeles ladies taking down big hearty plates of brisket hash topped with eggs over-easy.

On any given week, we go through 200 lb/91 kg of brisket, 300 lb/136 kg of bacon, and 7,000 eggs. The line guys face the minute-to-minute pressure of getting orders out on time, but none of this is possible without our amazing team of prep cooks whose sole job is to do all the nitty-gritty—like cutting the right amount of fat off of a pork shoulder so it’ll braise correctly, or making soup, or forming hundreds of turkey meatballs in order to make the customers happy and make me and the line cooks look good. If the prep cooks do their job well, then 85 percent of the work on most dishes is done before it reaches the guys on the line. Well-cooked meat and properly roasted vegetables mean those line cooks don’t have to be so perfect all the time, although most often they are.