Stanton Social chef to haters: good day!
Salty words of wisdom from Chris Santos
Clarissa Roudabush
Chris Santos, ready for action
Article Tools
The Stanton Social, one of the Lower East Side’s most bombastic and successful restaurants, is the kind of place given over to black dresses, bronzed faces, and groups that may or may not have taken a bridge or a tunnel to get there. In other words, it’s not the subtlest establishment, but it does what it does very well, especially considering the restaurant’s volume and emphasis on small plates. A weekend night might see 600 covers—that’s restaurant-speak for diners—and 2,500 plates served. Decider chatted with Chris Santos, The Stanton Social’s gregarious, tattooed chef/owner, about all the different ways he keeps the place packed. Here are four of them.
Get the orders out on time
The Stanton Social specializes in “global street food” served as small plates, which means that a table of six might order 10 or more dishes. “We typically try to send out portions in 10-minute increments,” Santos says. “It’s really an eight-to-12-minute window. Sooner than eight minutes I bark at the cooks, and later than 12 minutes I really bark at the cooks. Eight to 12 minutes is acceptable, 10 is ideal.” That moment when the entire table realizes it’s been too long since the last course—or when another course arrives far too early, and everyone has to move their half-eaten plates to the side to accommodate the new ones—must be avoided at all costs.
Clarissa Roudabush
Make life easier for the kitchen
Because his restaurant requires military efficiency to get dishes out on time, Santos designs menu items with an eye toward the kitchen’s capacity. “Out of the 50 dishes on the menu,” he says, “not all of them are going to be home runs. There are going to be greatest hits, and also-rans, and things that aren’t going to sell no matter how hard we try. The trick is to get the bulk of the menu as greatest hits, and then distribute them throughout the kitchen stations so specific stations aren’t crushed. We have to make sure all the greatest hits aren’t coming off of the grill, or out of the deep fryer.”
Clarissa Roudabush
Tell other people what to do
“If the executive chef has his head down in his cooking,” asks Santos, “how is he watching what the other eight cooks are doing? He has no control! It’s ridiculous to presume that the food would be better if the head chef were cooking it. The restaurant is better served if the chef is watching everyone.” Nowadays when Santos heads to the kitchen, he expedites orders rather than jumping behind the line. “I miss cooking every night, but in some ways I don’t,” he says. “At 10 o’clock, when the first rush is over, I can leave and go hang out with my wife. I don’t need to stick around until 2 a.m.”
Clarissa Roudabush
Stay spry
In addition to his current role as The Stanton Social’s executive chef, Santos is writing a cookbook, planning a new restaurant down the street, and serving as a guest judge on Food Network’s Chopped. At one point he even had a contract with Al Roker to produce a TV pilot, though that fell through. Just don’t tell him that he’s sold out, or is somehow detached from the kitchen. “I worked very hard and paid my dues for a long time,” he says. “I didn’t have a life for most of my 20s when I was in the kitchen. Fuck the haters.”
