Bottle service and a good cry
ARI BOKOVZA, Dagon & Acadia
WORK • Tuesday Routine
ARI BOKOVZA • chef/partner • Dagon & Acadia
Neighborhood you work in: Upper West Side/Midtown
It’s Tuesday morning, where are you working?
From 6am-7am, my first job is to hit the gym. This sets the tone: If I don’t do it, I end up feeling like a lazy piece of garbage for the rest of the day. Just like work, you have to show up every day regardless of how you’re feeling — no excuses.
At 7am, my phone rings. No need to look at the caller ID. It’s my wife calling to tell me that Ayla (our 10-month-old) is up and ready to eat. I heat her bottle, throw on some Netflix or the news and chow time with my little mama is on. After play time, and a diaper change, it’s off to work.
I’ll get to Acadia, our new Midtown restaurant that opened a couple months ago, by about 10am. I do a quick line check as we recently opened for lunch, making a point to say hello to the entire staff with a fist bump. (Every chef that I’ve both worked for and respect has always made a point of this — showing respect to the staff.) Then I’m in the office checking emails and looking at the numbers from the weekend.
What’s the Tuesday morning scene at your workplace?
Heavy prep day happening downstairs, especially if we had a busy weekend and got cleaned out of everything. My sous chef Victor is usually in full panic mode as either a cook didn’t show or a purveyor is running late. I try to ease his tension, but he’d probably say I just add to his stress!
What’s on the agenda for today?
This is literally copy/pasted from my phone:
Consolidate prep/work load. (Anytime you open a new restaurant, there are always kinks that need to be tweaked, or recipes that can be simplified for mass production. You want to cook within your means. If a recipe is too time consuming or labor intensive — as many of mine are — we end up falling behind.)
Check with butcher Chuck about a new dish. (It’s sort of a riff on a pasta bolognese, with a North African flair.)
Check payroll. Check food cost. Cry. (With any opening, payroll and food cost are always extremely high.)
Spring veg planning. (We have a section of our menu dedicated to rotisserie roasted vegetables. Right now, it's beets, cauliflower, squash, and carrots. But spring always creeps up.)
What’s for lunch?
Last week, I took a trip to Astoria and hit my favorite street meat spot, King Souvlaki. Two skewers with lemon, hot sauce, salt and pepper, and fries — the only fries on the planet that are not served crispy, yet are still addictive. I also love lunch at Great NY Noodletown, a Chinatown classic, and Leibman’s Deli in the Bronx (we serve their pastrami for lunch — in my humble opinion, it's the best in New York).
Any plans tonight?
If I'm taking my wife out, Sake Bar Hagi on West 51st is always at the top of my list. Raw octopus with mountain yam is a textural mindfuck — when you take the first bite, you’re not sure if you want to spit it out or savor it, then after a couple minutes, you realize it’s genius and you end up taking smaller bites just to make it last. If I’m in the mood for a good steak and we're across the river, we will go to the iconic River Palm Terrace in Edgewater, NJ. The service is top notch, the vibe is like walking into a time warp. Finally, Marea holds a special place in my heart for the fusilli with octopus and bone marrow.