The New York Times:
Men in lifting belts wheel hand trucks stacked high with food from across the globe: 80 pounds of ground beef, 700 pounds of top butt, 175 shoulder tenders, 1 case of New York strips, all from the Midwest; 5 pounds of chicken livers, 6 cases of chicken bones, 120 chicken breast cutlets; 30 pounds of bacon; 300 littleneck clams, 110 pounds of mussels from Prince Edward Island, another 20 pounds from New Zealand, 50 trout, 25 pounds of U10 shrimp (fewer than 10 pieces per pound), 55 whole dorade, 3 cases of escargot, 360 Little Skookum oysters from Washington State, 3 whole tunas, 45 skates, 18 black sea bass, 2 bags of 100 to 120 whelks, 45 lobster culls.
That’s just the fish and meat order.
Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes at a restaurant?
Awful scaffolding/awning aside, Balthazar is a place anyone in Manhattan should at least look in the window to get a gander at. It’s an enormously atmospheric place that looks like a previous-century movie set from a country I’ll likely never visit.
A previous decade’s boss of mine was very fond of this place. He loved having his late breakfast there. At the time, I found it pretentious to pay French bistro prices for poached eggs and attitude, but since then (thanks to a friend who insisted our design group lunch at Les Halles) I’ve learned a bit about how wonderful French food can be if you actually know what to order, at the right place.