Chris Santos wanted to be a rock star before he ever wanted to be a chef, and as far as he’s concerned, the professions have a lot in common. Initially drawn to the kitchen life by the chaotic environment, crazy hours and the “piratelike” swagger of his first chef and mentor, Santos today maintains his rock-and-roll lifestyle as executive chef and co-owner of The Stanton Social in New York’s Lower East Side neighborhood.
Did you always want to be a chef?
My first restaurant job was when I was 13 years old. I was a dishwasher, and my first night was a disaster. The chef quit in the middle of service. It was chaos. I got burned.… I should have learned my lesson and walked away right then and there, but I showed up the next day for work.
I worked in restaurants through high school, and I loved the hours. I just gravitated towards the lifestyle of it at first, but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I was really into music and I wanted to be a rock star drummer. I wanted to be the next Tommy Lee. And then I graduated high school, and my mom was like: “You’ve been working in restaurants, and you do well with it. Why don’t you go to culinary school?”
You like the hours?
I love the hours. I think there’s something about working hard in this business and just being in this dysfunctional kind of career. There’s a camaraderie to the staff because you’re all in it together, and you all could be doing something different. You all could be pursuing something where you had weekends off, nights off. But you’re not. You know, on those big holidays where everyone is on the other side of that big wall celebrating, like New Year’s Eve or Valentine’s Day, you’re all in it together, and I really gravitated toward that even at a very young age.
From that very first job, that crazy night when the chef left and they brought in this new chef and he was in his mid-20s and Irish. He was the new kid in town and people loved the food, and I’m sitting there scrubbing pots and pans and watching people come into the kitchen to tell him how great the food is. And I’m watching all the waitresses flirt with him, he’s sneaking me a beer at the end of the night, and I was like: “This guy’s a rock star. This is who I want to be.” It was a formative experience for, well, not the right reasons. But over time the right reasons came through.
How would you describe what you’re doing at The Stanton Social?
BIOGRAPHY Title: executive chef and co-owner, The Stanton Social, New YorkBirth date: March 26, 1971Hometown: Bristol, R.I.Education: Johnson & Wales University, Providence, R.I.Career highlights: being named a Rising Star Chef by
We’re sort of a shared-plate restaurant. I think what makes us truly unique is that we have a really large menu for starters. On any given night, depending on what’s happening, we have around 40-50 items. Everything from caviar service and foie gras and a full raw bar to little Kobe burger sliders and spring rolls and wood-grilled pizzas. It’s a little something for everybody. And pretty much every item on the menu starts out as appetizer sized. So it’s bigger than tapas, but it’s around appetizer size.
We encourage people to not order just one or two things, but the bigger tables, tables of eight, tables of 10, we encourage people to order eight, nine, 10, 11 items, and we send out just enough for everybody to get a taste. So these big really beautiful platters get put down on the table, and everyone just takes one and passes it on. It’s kind of a social way to dine. It brings everyone together around the table as opposed to everyone just getting one thing placed in front of them. It encourages people to share and be social and talk about the food.
Do you play music in the kitchen?
We have the house system [set up] so during service we have whatever is playing in the dining room piped into the kitchen. That’s intentional so at the height of service when it’s loudest and busiest and the energy is really high in the dining room, I want the energy really high in the kitchen. But then during prep we’ll put on some Latin stuff for the guys, and then I’ll shake it up. I’ve got some old-school sous chefs who want to hear some ‘80s hair metal. And then there’s me, and I want to listen to Black Sabbath and Metallica, stuff like that. It’s mostly high-energy stuff.
You serve American caviar. How is that different from the imported varieties?
CHEF’S TIPS To make your own flavored bacon, buy a good quality double-smoked bacon and apply a dry rub and let it sit overnight, then cook it normally. Scrambled eggs make great taco fillings.
It’s definitely got a nice nutty, buttery kind of thing going on, and a good salt. I think it’s milder. It’s a good caviar to feature in this restaurant because we have a young, good-looking clientele, and it’s a good caviar to start out with. It’s not so overwhelming to the palate. It’s a nice size where you get that pop from the caviar, but it’s not like when you get into the larger beads [and] it can be a bit intimidating. I just think it fits what we’re doing here and our clientele, and people dig it.
What are your specialties?
The signature dish is probably the French onion soup dumplings. We have two guys and they work 60 hours a week, and all they do is make the soup dumplings because we sell so many of them. Every table gets them. And what we do is we take the soup and magically turn it into dumplings. And we basically very quickly sauté them to crisp up the outside, and they go into an escargot dish. Then the escargot dish is covered with Gruyère cheese, and then they’re browned under a salamander and the entire dumpling is skewered on a garlic crouton.
The thing that people like most about French onion soup is those first few bites where you get the melted cheese and the crouton and the soup. Once you’re done with the cheese and the crouton, the soup’s not that interesting anymore. So what we do is we have a dumpling and you pop the whole thing in your mouth, and then you get that crunch from the crouton and the cheese and you bite on the dumpling and that soup explodes in your mouth. People have been freaking out about them for three years.
