Big Kitchens

Just north of Chicago, the heat is on at one of America’s biggest and busiest steak and seafood joints. Bob Chinn’s Crab House cooks up 900 king crabs and 1500 steaks every week, feeding over 12,000 guests. Since it opened in 1982, Bob Chinn’s has exploded into a 700-seat crab castle. But being 800 miles from the nearest ocean, this crack team of crab crackers must arrange a fresh seafood delivery from the airport every day! To make matters worse, it’s holiday season, and the 130 kitchen staff are bracing themselves for one of the busiest Saturdays of the year. As the crab-crazed crowds descend on the restaurant, the team battles to keep up with the orders of 32oz porterhouse steaks, giant king crabs, and the restaurant’s extraordinary purple paradise pie. With critical crustacean supplies running out fast, there’s a last minute dash to the airport to stock up on giant king crab–flown in from Alaska!

In San Antonio, just a few miles from The Alamo, Big Lou’s pizza and pasta restaurant proves everything really is bigger in Texas. Serving burgers fifteen times bigger than a Big Mac and a pizza five feet wide, demand for their super-sized food is just as BIG. Opened in 2000 by Brian Lujan, his five table business has grown to seat more than a thousand. Each night his kitchen staff cooks hundreds of pizzas in all shapes and sizes–going through nearly a ton of dough and mozzarella in the process. Each part of the Big Lou’s Big kitchen runs like a giant well-oiled machine. With enormous pizzas going out every 20 seconds there is no time to catch their breath.

Cheesecake fans head to Brooklyn by the thousands for the biggest Cheesecake player in town–the mighty Juniors Restaurant and Cheesecake Factory. Every month their immense kitchen churns out 150,000 cheesecakes and 25 tons of pastrami to feed over 90,000 customers! Opened in 1950 by Harry Rosen, it’s fallen to his grandson, Alan, to keep Junior’s massive operation running. The secret Junior’s cheesecake recipe has been handed down the generations and now each week, Alan needs enough cream cheese to fill 20 swimming pools! As well as cheesecake, Junior’s has over 250 other classic New York dishes on their menu–from their famous Matzah Ball Soup, to their Cheese Blintzes. Today is the busiest day of the week–Alan’s team must juggle hundreds of hungry guests and the constant flow of delivery trucks needed to keep them fed. Will this cheesecake castle survive the onslaught, or will it collapse under the weight of the invading hoards?

The Royal Nawaab in Manchester, UK is one of the biggest curry houses in Britain. In 2002, owner Mahboob Hussain converted an art deco cinema into two banquet halls and a massive 45 ft. long buffet. In a town where people spend on average $48,000 in their lifetime on curry, the team at the Nawaab must never slip up to maintain its’ reputation as the king of spice. Today is their busiest day of the year. Two huge events are booked in the banquet halls and the buffet is maxed out all day and all night. The Nawaab’s supersize kitchens must run like a well oiled machine. With 10 ovens, a toaster that turns out 400 nan breads an hour and a grill that can cook up to 2000 kebabs a day, hopefully the team will be able to keep up. After the first banquet and buffet, the situation is not looking good. Food stocks are running low and Mahboob makes a last minute dash across town for more supplies.

The spiciest and biggest New Mexican restaurant in America, El Pinto is all about the chili. Based in Albuquerque, El Pinto’s massive kitchen can feed up to three thousand people a night. Originally opened in 1962, “Chile Twins” John and Jim Thomas took over the family business in 1990 and have spent decades perfecting their family restaurant to create chili-infused dishes that continue to draw millions in from across the country. Extremely busy every Saturday night, El Pinto is also hosting a pig roast with a 150lb seasoned pig cooked to perfection in their Native-American clay oven. But with hundreds of additional customers coming in just to taste a perfectly-roasted pig, the pressure is on! Although El Pinto starts out each night with three tons of food, the team struggles to keep up with the volume of orders without running out. When they do fall short on fresh green chili sauce, Jim roasts more in their fire-roasted chili tumbler.

One of the biggest restaurants in Las Vegas, Brooklyn Bowl, cooks up three thousand plates a night. Bowling alley, music venue and king-sized restaurant rolled into one, it creates award-winning recipes, attracting customers from all across the world. From oyster egg shooters and potato knishes to their now legendary fried chicken, Brooklyn Bowl’s customers enjoy fine dining cuisine in a party-atmosphere. Their massive 10,000 foot kitchen keeps up with demand by using cutting edge state of the art technology. With the computer system they’ve installed, hundreds of orders an hour are delivered with total precision. But on a Saturday night, all bets are off as a big name band is playing in their concert venue. Not until the doors open will the Brooklyn Bowl Team know whether the crowd will order above and beyond what they are capable of handling. It’s fancy American bar food on a massive scale–but will they score a strike on the night or a gutter ball?