-This is by far one of the
biggest ovens I've ever seen.
This is where all the cold
smoking is going down,
so this is "A Frank Experience."
And today I'm learning how
to take beautiful whole salmon
and turn it
into the smoked fish
that we've all grown to love
here in New York City.
♪♪
We're at Acme Smoked Fish
here in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
I'm kind of new at this.
I don't have much experience
with raw fish.
So I guess you could say I'm
a fish out of water on this one.
[ Rimshot ]
Alright. We're about
to go into the factory.
They have very strict
sanitation rules.
I mean, these Yeezys are fresh,
but I think I'm feeling these
yellow boots a little more.
-We're going in to the raw
production area.
We bring in fish from all over
the world,
and it all comes here.
We do about 15 million pounds
of fish per year.
That's encompassing everything
from salmon to whitefish,
herring, smoked trout,
a little something for everyone.
We have been around
for over 100 years.
-How many employees
do you guys employ here?
-So we have about 170 here
in Brooklyn at our HQ.
Brooklyn is the smoked-fish
capital of the world.
-When you come to New York,
you get a hot dog or a pretzel,
you get a slice of pizza
and you get a bagel and lox.
-That's it.
-If you miss one of those,
why even come?
-Why even come? Exactly.
We ship all over the country.
Or wherever people are looking
for smoked salmon,
they can certainly find
our products there.
-Well, this is the salmon
processing section
of the factory.
This is sort of what
Acme is known for.
Luckily not only do I have
the best guy in the business
to show me,
but he's also an old friend
and one of our first regulars
at Best Pizza.
-What's up?
-What's up, Vince?
Good to see you, brother.
-Good to see you.
-Thank you
for having us here today.
-Thanks for finally coming in.
-So I would imagine
fileting a fish like this
is a very specific technique
and probably something that
takes some time to learn.
-Yeah. These guys behind us
have been doing it
for at least 15, 20 years.
They make it look easy.
-Yeah.
-But we'll get you up to speed.
The first thing they do
is they cut off a couple
of skin patches...
-Okay.
-...which allows the brine
to penetrate evenly
as it sits for a week
in the salt water.
-Interesting.
-And they cut off the head.
Goes right down the rack.
-Okay.
-And then he's trimming off
some of the fat
and some more of the bones.
What do you think? You ready
to give one a try?
-Yeah, I would love to.
Do a little...
-A little more, a little more.
-Ooh, got to get deeper
than I thought, huh?
That's a little too deep.
-A little more confidence.
-That's it.
-That's it.
-Alright.
Flip it now?
-No, no, no. The other way.
-And now you follow
the bone the other way.
But a little pressure up.
-Gotcha.
Oh, I left a little meat
on the bone over here.
-I'm gonna feed my family
with that bone.
-Yeah. [ Laughs ]
Don't let the boss
see that, Rich.
You peel a little bit
of that stomach fat off, huh?
What am I hitting, a bone there?
-[ Speaks indistinctly ]
-One chop.
There you go.
-Clean it up a little bit.
I butchered that one, man.
I'm not feeling
so good right now.
-Well, you got to do
another 700 of them...
-Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I want to stay here now
all day and work on these
until I get it right.
I was better
at rolling dumplings.
How did I do on my first try?
-Okay.
-Yeah? From 1 to 10,
what would you say?
[ Laughs ]
Yo, they're tougher here
in Brooklyn
than they are in Manhattan,
I'm telling you.
Do I get another shot?
One more fish?
Let's do it.
Alright?
Okay. Okay.
That was a little bit better
right?
Yeah. [ Laughs ]
You got to come
make pizza with me.
He's getting ready for me
to slice my finger off.
-It's not as easy as it looks.
-Not as easy as it looks at all.
On my second chance,
how did I do?
-Oh!
-1 to 5.
-Alright. 1 to 5.
Thank you, my brother.
So we're gonna throw
these filets into the brine.
And, Richie, where we going
from here?
-We're gonna take these
into the brining cooler.
So you can just get on that
and push it on this way.
-Alright.
Beep, beep.
-So now these will be in here
for about a week.
After a week,
they're gonna drain the brine
and rinse it
with fresh, clean water.
And they're gonna go on to
trolleys and roll into the oven.
-Richie just brought me
over here to the oven.
What's going on in the oven?
-The fish is rinsed
and it's on a rack.
You have high-powered fans
which are gonna be drying
the fish constantly over
this 17-hour period.
-Mm-hmm.
-And intermittently.
you're gonna be burning wood
and it's gonna generate smoke
in the smoke generator
and it's gonna get
pumped into the oven.
-You really smell it
in the air.
-It's the heart
and soul right here.
Hands on the inside.
-Hands on the inside.
There must be 20 fans in
here blowing,
drying off all this fish
that's been brined.
Right now, the smoker is off.
We just turned the fans off.
This will dry in here
for 17 hours and then smoke.
The color and the fat is just
kind of perfect.
72 degrees is the average
temperature in here.
It's the perfect temperature
for a piece of salmon like this
to soak in all the smoke
and flavor from the wood chips.
My old buddy Gary.
-How you doing?
-These two guys have been
regulars at Best Pizza
for 10 years now?
-Yeah.
-At least...
-Since you opened.
-Since we opened. They were some
of our first customers.
-It's a good thing
you make good pizza.
You weren't gonna come back.
This is very popular
for the diners.
It's sliced in this style.
-It's a little different
than your traditional,
like, meat slicer.
It's almost more like
a table slicer.
-Turn it around.
-Turn this one around.
-Flip it over.
-Got to push that in.
-Oh, I see what you're saying
by coaxing it through.
I got some ways
for that blade, right?
I don't got to worry
about my fingers.
This is this
is real factory work.
This is a place that employs
tons of people
in this neighborhood.
When you're able to sustain
a company for this long
and give people jobs
for that many years,
I think
it's an impressive thing.
And it's what we all want
as business owners.
Yes. We're gonna switch.
This slicing machine
is incredible.
It's slicing it perfectly,
ready to eat.
You could see that it'd probably
be easy for it to be packaged.
And then we put this
on the line.
Okay.
Right on the conveyor belt.
Next tray.
So once these get on to that
conveyor belt,
they'll go be made
into a 30-pound tray
to be packed away and sent out.
Now it's my job
to pack this up.
Here we go.
-So you would put that
on the conveyor belt.
-This goes back
to the conveyor belt.
Put it right in.
Goes right into a Cryovac.
-Yeah.
Right on the roll stock.
-Beautiful.
So the facility is huge.
There's a lot of fish
being moved around.
We have some beautiful --
Is that whitefish?
-We bring fresh whitefish
from the Great Lakes
about twice a week.
The first thing we got to do
is get those fish clean.
So when I started here,
this was my first job,
scraping out all the bloodline
in the fish.
Near and dear to my heart.
-What's the technique?
-Take this spoon
and just kind of scoop out
any last bit of bloodline.
-Got you.
-This is a high-velocity scaler.
It's got these angled blades
that basically scrape the scales
off of the whitefish
so that when they smoke,
they get to be nice and shiny.
-I've never seen anything
like this before in my life.
-Pretty cool feat
of engineering.
-The scaler I know
is, like, the little...
-Back of a spoon, right?
-Yeah, back of a spoon.
We're seeing the transformation
now going from a whole fish
to what's gonna be
a delicious whitefish salad.
So the next step now is salt it.
-We got to get salt in the fish.
So the first thing is
we're gonna fill up this tank
with some fresh
New York City water.
We're gonna mix it with some
100% salt solution.
-Wow.
-We're gonna mix it
to the optimal salt percentage
for smoked whitefish,
which is about 20%.
-You know, this is definitely
a little bit of a workout.
I could imagine doing this
every day. You probably --
You don't have to go to
the gym and build up those lats,
if you know what I mean.
-Last step is to check
our brine here,
make sure we got the right...
20 on the button.
-Wow.
-Let's keep it going.
-This guy's good.
This guy's good.
-So these are the whitefish
in here.
And then there's smoke
in the hot smoker.
-Gotcha.
-Here you have
an additional step --
drying, cooking, and smoking.
-Yep.
Whoo.
Eyes are burning.
So this is the finished product
of the whitefish.
They were brought over here into
the smoker -- the hot smoker.
Golden brown and delicious.
Ready to rock 'n' roll.
So now that the whitefish
has been smoked,
it's time to pack it up
and send it out to the customer.
Yeah, so is this
a premium product?
-On the retail side,
you're usually --
Something like this --
they're about two
and a half pounds each --
you're probably about between
15 and 18 bucks a pound.
-40, 45 bucks a fish.
So I mean, you know, it's not
the most expensive thing
in the world,
but it's definitely not cheap.
A lot of work has gone into it,
and it's been done
the old-fashioned way,
which, in my opinion, adds a lot
of value to the product itself.
So packed and ready to go.
This is finished up.
From here, it's gonna be
weighed and tagged.
Is that right?
-Yes, weighed, labeled up,
and palletized.
And ready to go out tonight
on the trucks.
-I can't wait to get
my hands on this.
We're up in Acme's corporate
office upstairs.
I'm here with Richie
and the word is,
is that he's the best
salmon slicer in the game.
-So this is a freshly smoked
side of Chilean salmon.
You want a pretty stiff
yet flexible knife.
So you want a good backbone
to it
but still a nice flex
in the midpoint.
What you want to do is you want
to establish your angle.
The tail of the fish
is almost always gonna
be used for something else.
They're gonna make their
cream cheese,
their lox cream cheese with it.
They're gonna put it in omelets
for Leo's.
So instead of going
after that,
I'm just gonna...start
with my angle.
You want to make these nice,
thin slices,
nice, even strokes coming down
and keep it nice and thin.
You'll see there's
that dark meat.
What I like to do is I fold
and I get rid of it.
-Is there a degree
of transparency
you want with the actual slice?
-You want it as thin as possible
without it falling apart.
-Gotcha.
-And the old standard was always
you want it to be so thin,
you could read "The New York
Times" through it.
So you've been watching
this all day.
You ready for a bite?
-I can't wait.
It's so tender.
It literally -- you don't have
to chew it much.
Kind of like break it apart
with your tongue.
It's just what you want,
you know, an amazing piece
of smoked salmon to taste like.
-Alright, you ready
to give this a try?
-Yeah, I think so.
Fileting the salmon
was a little bit difficult,
but, you know,
I think I got this one.
-Gonna get you a weekend job
on the Upper West Side.
-There we go.
I like the sound of that.
-There you go.
-It's all about
those long strokes.
-it's not bad right there.
-Alright.
This slice right here,
it's so thin,
you can read "The New York
Times" through it.
Forget about it.
You were probably
one of the first customers
that came in to Best Pizza.
2014, shortly after that,
I got approached
by a mutual friend
that comes here every Friday
and came up to me and said,
"Hey, would you ever want to do
something with ACME,
maybe, you know, do some pizza
and smoked fish?"
And sure enough,
we kind of thought up this idea.
And me and you got on the horn.
We talked about what
different fish we could use.
I invited all these old-timers
from Brooklyn,
all of my family, to come out,
and then you guys invited
a bunch of old-timers
from here,
from the neighborhood.
So it was a bunch
of old Sicilians,
a bunch of neighborhood Jews
that come here for years
and years,
and we packed the place out.
It was really cool to be kind
of accepted by you guys.
And it made me feel part
the neighborhood, for sure.
-Yeah, absolutely.
And you've always
done the same for me
and my family coming through.
-Yeah. I love it.
-My boys since they were I don't
know 4 or 5 years old...
-Yeah.
-...been coming to your place.
-Yeah. Yeah.
-Now they're starting
high school.
-I can't believe it, man.
-Thank you. Thanks for coming.
-No, I can't say
thank you enough.
This is the whitefish
that we worked on
earlier today.
This has been smoked to the
point where it is just perfect.
Look at this meat.
You know, even the meat
is just golden.
I mean, come on.
I'm a scooper,
if you haven't noticed.
I like that.
I like that.
You know I'm coming over
for those delicious-looking
summertime tomatoes.
I got to see the transformation
from a whole fish
to what we have here
laying in front of us.
Now I'm about to dig in
and eat.
-The best part
of a labor of love.
-It's obvious now why you guys
have been around for so long.
Your grandfather would be proud.
♪♪
-You know what this knife
is called?
10-inch Wide Stiff boner.
-F. Dick makes the 10-inch...
-Wide Stiff boner.
-I guess you got
to get creative.
