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ANTHONY BOURDAIN: It takes a certain kind of crazy to open a restaurant in New York City, where such ventures are almost guaranteed to fail.

Yet Gabrielle Hamilton went ahead and, defying all logic, opened the tiny, intensely personal Prune.

And Prune from the beginning defied all conventional wisdom.

The menu was autobiographical.

GABRIELLE HAMILTON: Pretty much what I cook here is like what we ate growing up.

BOURDAIN: Relaxed, unpretentious, and at all times, her way.

16 years later, Prune is a beloved New York institution, unfailingly busy, unfailingly excellent and always personal.

Enter the Mind of a Chef.

HAMILTON: It's so good to be classic and not trendy.

Oh man, we are making some food here now.

♪ ♪ (sniffs) ♪ ♪ HAMILTON: I want the real deal.

I can't always go to the downtown MOMA and see the big sculpture made out of Clorox bottles.

I want to see some painting, technique.

I do actually think that I have some bend towards perfection.

It's just that I don't think that what most people think is perfect is perfect.

I like it perfectly bent.

(sizzling) ♪ ♪ Yeah, I like all the odd cuts, the chipped plate and queer... (laughs) Yeah, queer.

Tender.

True.

I like those things.

(man singing) Up until I was 11 or 12 I was called Prune, because that was my nickname.

I just wanted to open a restaurant that I wished existed and it didn't.

♪ ♪ The actual progression of a day, of a service just builds in this crescendo throughout the day.

In the very early morning it's just me and the porter, and it's very church.

That kind of optimistic moment when you're laying out your cutting board and it's all still possible.

♪ ♪ (horns honking) I can tell you how I experienced Prune the very first time.

It was a summer day.

It was hot out and I went in a side door.

Immediately I was bombarded by the aroma.

I had to take my T-shirt and put it up over my nose and mouth like a bandit.

My feet stuck to the floor as if you were walking on bubblegum that had been chewed.

To discover that it was rat (bleep) that had just melted in the hot sun over time.

There was sunshine coming in from the street upstairs, but downstairs it was like one flickering, very pale fluorescent tube overhead.

And then to open the walk-in refrigerator, which had no light whatsoever.

Oof, you know, that's when your own hair brushing your neck and you're jumpy and paranoid.

Because you think some small creature has landed on you.

The very significant thing I remember was opening a full box of apples and this cloud of black spores... came floating up just into my nostrils.

(laughs) I'm laughing.

In spite of its putrid state, it was the perfect place for me.

♪ ♪ You could really see what was begging to come out of that kitchen.

Pretty much what I cook here is like what we ate growing up.

My mother was an extraordinary and serious French home cook.

Eggplant and calves' brains and ratatouille.

♪ ♪ I make the eggplant very smokey just by putting it directly on the burner.

My mom put them on the burner, the red peppers went on the burner for roasted peppers, the... whoo, man, heat.

For me, the fun thing is to get closer to your opponent and start to dig the feeling.

I want to burn the crap out of it.

That's going to make the flavor smokey.

I'm trying to keep the skin as whole as possible so it has time to steam and completely cook inside.

It just went from nothing to... is something on fire?

♪ ♪ Eggplant has a luscious quality.

It's been ignited.

The flesh is boiling inside.

Steam is flying out.

That skin is like thin sheets of charcoal.

When I touch it, it's collapsing.

I want it to sit in its own steam and collapse even further.

Okay, so here's our flatbread dough.

See, it's quite spongy.

There's not much going on, it's just flour, yeast, water, salt.

♪ ♪ The three ingredients that we use here all the time: olive oil, lemon juice and garlic.

That's the challenge.

I have to work within the idiom of the restaurant.

Only these things from the Mediterranean.

So it's kind of like being faithful to your wife.

Okay, this is the part where you just have to not let it smell your fear.

(chuckles) Hello, baby!

(exhales) When I opened the restaurant it was a very intense time of global fusion.

You know, 15 years later I can really still get into radishes, butter and salt.

Whereas the ostrich carpaccio, sesame lime trend, I don't want to eat that ever again.

It's so good to be classic and not trendy.

My thing is now concave because the temperature's cooled.

(coughs) That is day-old campfire right there.

Maybe after the dewy morning even.

I'm going to use every drop of this brown, smokey liquid.

Very wet, soft, satiny.

I like the seeds.

Garlic.

Lemon juice.

Olive oil.

Smokey eggplant juice.

Mmm... And this is a very chefy technique.

You're not supposed to do this at all.

Juicy, smokey, plain, but kindhearted.

♪ ♪ You work all day just to get ready to work all night.

I don't even look at the clock.

I know how the day goes by who's in the building.

(bleep) And then you start to feel the realities of the day.

They're not eating dinner tonight, okay?

- Do you want the hard-boileds crumbled or wedges?

HAMILTON: I think little wedges.

There are four of us trying to go in and out of the walk-in.

Corner.

But still, it's talking time, maybe the radio's on.

Bodega.

(laughs) My home imploded and split when I was 11.

In some ways whatever I put into Prune was in fact a way of recuperating a kind of family that I can never fully inhabit because I'm the boss.

You have a natural tendency to go sideways, I wonder.

Can you see that?

- Yeah.

HAMILTON: I have a very strong jam.

With something this ugly it has to be placed in there as if you thought about it a little bit.

I'm very opinionated.

I'm creating something very opinionated and clear.

You're distracted and off your game, but can you come back because you're good at this and...

Discipline, boundary, rules, expectations, it's very important for you to know that I'm the mom and I've got this.

Why did we leave anything in the bottom of the bowl when we can eat it, sell it, use it, and not shove it down my drain?

I pay a lot of attention to, do I have enough money?

Have we paid our bills?

We can't afford foie gras.

We will have chicken livers at Prune.

We will have shiitake mushrooms and not truffles.

♪ ♪ Here's the story of the salad.

I have eaten every meal of my entire life here or, you know, in a catering kitchen.

But then you have babies.

Good?

And there needs to be some food in the house.

- I think so.

HAMILTON: Wahoo!

- Oh, you did it!

Yes!

HAMILTON: I don't have any money.

I shop at the grocery store.

This comes from scanning the produce aisle at the average grocery store and the crappy (bleep) that's for sale.

This is not fresh-from-the-farm, organic fennel.

Oof, very dry, bruised, aged.

But I know that I can cut down and get to the heart.

And I'm going to have some pretty licorice-y, bright, juicy... Well, I think I'm exhibiting some pretty awesome knife skills, don't you?

And finding the heart of the matter here, I'm getting down to the sweet, tender heart of the terrible grocery store product.

Same, celery.

I have now taken off all the rough, horrible outer husks.

I mean look.

That's tender, celadon interior.

I find that incredibly appealing and I want to eat that, even if it came from the supermarket.

The scallion's very woody, overgrown, hollow.

And I'll go as far up into the green as is viable.

And maybe I have an idea about what's useable.

This reaches the farther outer limits than most people.

And maybe that grocery store had sugar snap peas unseasonably, but I'm, like, okay, I'll take that.

And the cello radishes in the plastic bag.

My favorite thing of all time is the radish.

Mmm, gorgeous.

But I mean once you get really deep inside, you can find something stickier, livelier, firm.

You know how all the garlic is different not only from head to head, but from clove to clove.

The recipe that calls for two cloves of garlic, and man you can have two that knock your brains out or two that are just kind of like, hmm... what's going on here?

I like to start to weep out the veg before I dress it, and the salt does that.

Olive oil, lemon juice.

Oh, and the color, brand new.

Good, crispy.

My toast.

We're just going to butter wall to wall.

As we say, wall to wall.

Mmm... now I'm going to cut the cheese.

My favorite thing to say.

Cambozola, blue cheese.

It's creamy, it's not too sweet.

It's got a personality.

The best part about making this is all the leftover for the cook that can't fit a full slab.

I mean, who's going to eat that little quarter piece?

(chuckles) (whispering): That would be me.

You took the fluorescent tube right out of it and now it's all incandescent.

♪ ♪ Is it top knot day?

- It was down and then... HAMILTON: Uh-huh, it looks good.

Where's your top knot?

There's a little bit of a pause, right?

That very pleasant calm before the storm.

♪ ♪ - Has anyone talked to you about the food?

HAMILTON: The ticket machine starts to go.

- Branzino, pigeon, mushroom, no garlic.

HAMILTON: And then it's just, "New ticket," and you can hear the... (imitates buzz) "Order fire," "okay, fire."

- New ticket, order fire: a wings, a shrimp toast.

- Wings, shrimp toast.

HAMILTON: And I love that chorus of echo.

- Two squid, pigeon, gumbo.

- Two squid, pigeon, gumbo.

HAMILTON: When it's good, you are just on the court driving that damn ball down.

It is just pass, pass, pass, pass, pass.

And she's like, "Two?

"Yeah, one?

Okay, 30?"

You can see the plate and you can say, "Okay, I know the flip of that fish, and that gives me two more minutes."

(imitates whoosh) - Oh wait, new ticket ordered, fire sweet.

- Sweet.

HAMILTON: You've done this before already?

You made this sauce already?

- I haven't made this particular sauce.

HAMILTON: Are you sliced?

- I thought that you said you were bringing the sauce and I'd slice.

HAMILTON: Who said we're bringing the sauce?

♪ ♪ It's not carrot cake.

(chuckles) This alien blob creature is the thymus gland of a calf.

And these beauties have been in the 24-hour brine.

Things are floating around like something in formaldehyde in the museum of human anomalies.

I can tell that it has done its job.

Poach.

Shock them.

There's a thin kind of unpleasant, fatty membrane that I'm going to pull off kind of like when you go to the beach and you've sunburned yourself and you peel.

In the house in which I grew up there was no Hamburger Helper or Wonderbread.

We ate a lot of marrow bone, calves' brains or liver.

At the time, felt like a kind of sadism.

But those are the things I grew to love.

Mm-hmm.

Mmm... mmm...

Okay.

It is rich and creamy and buttery and somehow clean for me.

It has no powerful connective tissue like muscle.

You could gum it to death if you had no teeth.

That was a beautiful way to say it.

Okay, so I'm going to dredge in flour.

It's become practically a Chicken McNugget.

What was once a very alien, fatty, intimidating gland has now become something that even my seven-year-old wants to chow down on, and I think you do, too.

Cross your fingers.

What I want is a bacony, smokey, brown butter base.

It's going to go from beurre noisette to beurre noir.

(chuckles) Way too fast if I don't stop it.

♪ ♪ Brown, brown, brown, brown.

And...

I completely stop the cooking by adding capers and a little bit of water.

Mm-hmm.

Now I have literally oil and water.

I'm going to leave it here until the water evaporates and it's not yet-- not yet, I can still see it's, like, so watery, watery, watery.

I don't want to break this.

We're going to get this on one take.

A lot of line cooks have broken down in tears, as have I, as you've broken your fourth sauce in a row.

So cold, cold, cold butter.

One, two, three, four, and now stir like a (bleep).

♪ Go, go, go, go, go.

♪ Okay, a little slower.

Can you swirl a little slower?

Are you right-handed?

- Yeah.

HAMILTON: Will you turn the bowl of your spoon down?

Yeah.

And it's not going to happen, I can tell already.

Okay, start again.

Go in.

(sighs) ♪ I'm going to move like hell 'cause I don't want the butter ♪ ♪ To break.

♪ I want there to be enough acid motion.

I want it to be like a soft, summer-weight blanket.

And...

I think you're going to like me a lot when you eat this.

♪ ♪ Oh, half for you, one and a half for me.

Oh... And the only thing we ever garnish with are lemons and parsley.

Otherwise you would never know where you were.

Capital P, Prune.

Mmm... mmm... mmm... mmm... (indistinct chatter) - So the fried sweetbreads.

♪ ♪ Good.

(laughter) HAMILTON: Do you live in New York City?

(indistinct chatter) You just keep going.

Finally, it's over.

And now you get to clean and put everything back in order and turn off the hood.

(sighs) Salting of the boards at the end of the night.

I have leisure for that because I want to come in here tomorrow and I want to start all over again.

And I want it to just be the sweeping of the porter, in the clean church.

(laughter) It's not like loving a child, which is effortless.

It's very adult love, which has rage and venom and grit and anger.

(laughter) And ecstasy.

I've had that family, if you will, and that place longer than I had my own originating family.

(laughter) I really feel like I made my vows to this place.

(indistinct chatter) I'm going to be here till the end.

(sniffs) ♪ ♪