Table Talk: Restaurant kitchen playlists
April 14 — Happy Tuesday! Welcome to the table.
For this edition of “Family Meal,” I spoke with chefs Max Hines and Jarrett Stieber about the importance of music in the kitchen before, during, and after service. Each chef also provided you with a mini kitchen playlist based on what they’re listening to at their restaurants.
For my “Editor’s Pick” this week, I’m taking you to Sylvan Road to indulge in Hawaiian-style barbecue from Pele’s Pit, backed by Hapa Kitchen. The Hawaiian comfort food truck pops up with Pele’s Pit at La Bodega weekly now.
Speaking of barbecue, Yava Kitchen and Brewhouse in Cumming shared a recipe for its barbecue pork belly burnt ends. You can make these burnt ends on the grill or on the stovetop at home.
Cheers!
🍸 Beth
🥂 Taste of Atlanta is celebrating its 25th Anniversary with an epic night of two dozen chef-driven tastings, craft cocktails, wine and beer tastings, live music, and electric energy! April 16 from 6 to 10 p.m. at The Works. Tickets are on sale here. SPONSOR MESSAGE
Heard: Restaurant Kitchen Playlist
This story kicks off a series on restaurant kitchen and back-of-house playlists, featuring music selections from local chefs and bartenders.
🎵 Did you know that what you’re listening to in a restaurant dining room is likely not what the chefs are listening to in the kitchen? The dining room playlist is often carefully curated to set the mood, sometimes even choreographed to follow the normal peaks and valleys of service.
But music in a restaurant kitchen plays an equally important role.
Starting hours before the doors open, music keeps the kitchen energized as staff prep ingredients, accept deliveries, and take inventory. When service begins, music provides the rhythm for chefs to keep pace while cooking and expediting umpteen dishes. At closing, music soundtracks cleaning and powering down kitchen equipment for the day.
I asked Atlanta chefs Max Hines and Jarrett Stieber about the importance of music in the kitchen before, during, and after service, along with the types of songs you’ll hear playing in the back of house at their restaurants.
🎛️ Chef Max Hines of Breaker Breaker
Reynoldstown
Dining on the patio or open-air bar at Breaker Breaker along the Beltline in Reynoldstown, you’ll likely be listening to a medley of 1980s rock, light hip hop, and country music songs. But in the kitchen, it’s all rhythm and beats.
“Most of the music you want playing in the dining room is going to be a happy medium for the guests. The music you hear in the back of the house is typically going to be reflective of the staff,” Hines said of the difference between music in the dining room versus the kitchen. “I have worked in kitchens with trap music, R&B, oldies, 80s punk rock, reggaeton, mariachi and norteño playlists.”
Hines tries to democratize choosing the music for the kitchen, sometimes using it as a reward for the best cook or the person working the hardest station. Other times it’s the kitchen manager choosing the music, or the person deemed to have the best taste in music. Hines usually has the final say on the playlist for the kitchen.
🎺 When Hines selects music for brunch service, he leans into 1990s R&B, oldies, and uptempo tunes for the kitchen playlist.
“It’s probably nostalgia for me, but we listened to a lot of Anita Baker when cleaning on the weekends or making breakfast, so that kind of vibe still lives on in the Breaker Breaker kitchen during brunch.”
On high-volume days like Fridays and Saturdays, however, Hines leans into hardcore hip hop and trap music, since much of the Breaker Breaker kitchen staff hails from Atlanta.
“Music is so important in the kitchen because a lot of the work is muscle memory. If you are in a good flow and setting a good pace, you can cook more off instinct than having to stop and think too much,” Hines explained, comparing the experience to listening to music while exercising.
“I am pretty sure it’s been scientifically proven that music helps you get that last rep in or cut down on time in a mile run. I feel like the pace of cooking in a professional kitchen has a lot of parallels to sports,” he added.
🥁The Breaker Breaker kitchen playlist
1. Prep for service: “God is Perfect” by Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist
2. Kicking off service: “Euphoria” by Kendrick Lamar
3. In the weeds: “Gangsta Music” by Young Jeezy
4. Winding down service: “Mr T” by Westside Gunn
5. Post-service: “Check” by Young Thug
6. Kitchen theme song: “Steady Mobbin” by Young Money and Gucci Mane
🪩 Jarrett Stieber of Little Bear
Summerhill
Unlike Breaker Breaker, the kitchen at Little Bear in Summerhill shares its playlist with the dining room. The kitchen at Little Bear opens onto the dining room, making it difficult to separate the music between the two spaces. Chef and owner Jarrett Stieber tries to strike a good musical balance at Little Bear to keep staff and guests happy throughout service.
“While it’s important to have good music that we all enjoy and think is cool playing in the dining room for guests, it also has to be palatable,” Stieber said. “I love everything from Philip Glass’s ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ soundtrack to Paul Chain’s ‘In the Darkness’ to Miles Davis’s heroin years, but all of that is God-awful music to play in a dining room.”
Curating the playlist at Little Bear comes down to whomever gets to the restaurant first. Sometimes the prep team arriving early in the morning chooses the music for the day. On non-prep shift days, the kitchen manager picks the pre-dinner service playlist. Once dinner service begins, the host for the night selects the music heard in the dining room at Little Bear.
🎷 Stieber compiled several playlists for Little Bear, which they rotate each week and add songs to based on what’s working well during service. Songs tend to be upbeat, starting off lighter in the morning with folk, outlaw country, or tropicalia/samba/bossa nova. Music tends to get faster and dancier in the early afternoon when most of the staff arrive for work. It gets everyone energized.
“A lot of our staff love to play 2000s booty pop and butt rock, and sometimes that hits when it’s a weekend during the middle of the night when we’re full and on a wait for bar seats and the crowd is younger,” Stieber explained. “But 5:45 p.m. on a Tuesday when there’s fewer people in the dining room, maybe older and more subdued, that music will flop so hard.”
Stieber said it comes down to feeling the vibe in the dining room and pairing that vibe with the right music.
🎸 The Little Bear kitchen playlist
1. Prep for service: “Rosalie” by Thin Lizzy
2. Kicking off service: “Tell It to My Heart” by Taylor Dayne
3. In the weeds: “Forever My Queen” by Pentagram
4. Winding down service: “Mainstreet” by Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band
5. Post-service: “Wildlife” by Nuovo Testamento
6. Kitchen theme song: “Booty Man” by Tim Wilson
25 Years of Flavor: Taste of Atlanta Returns
SPONSORED BY TASTE OF ATLANTA
🥂 Taste of Atlanta is celebrating its 25th Anniversary with an epic night of two dozen chef-driven tastings, craft cocktails, wine and beer tastings, live music, and electric energy!
Join us at The Works for a one-night-only party highlighting the best of Atlanta’s food and drink scene.
➞ April 16 from 6 to 10 p.m. at The Works. Tickets are on sale here.
Editor’s Pick
🌺 I ventured over to Sylvan Road last weekend to check out La Bodega’s new location and grab some Hawaiian barbecue from Pele’s Pit, run by Hapa Kitchen. The Hawaiian comfort food truck operates Pele’s Pit from La Bodega on Sunday and Monday afternoons, smoking and grilling meats on site.
Hawaiian barbecue incorporates ingredients like tropical fruits, coconut, soy sauce, and five spice into the rubs and marinades for meats and seafood, paired with sides of rice and creamy macaroni or potato salad.
🥭 A $20 smokehouse sampler plate at Pele’s Pit comes with two proteins, fluffy garlic rice, and two sides. I opted for the sweet and smoky huli-huli chicken (think spit-roasted teriyaki chicken glazed with pineapple juice to provide a nice char) and beautifully aromatic five-spice pork belly.
Since the plate already comes with steamed garlic rice, I ordered sides of lightly steamed ginger green beans and a fresh mango salad. To add a little more heat to the meat, ask for the gochujang fire sauce.
🍪 I’ll be back again to try the char siu tofu “burnt ends” and the scallion pancake. Hapa Kitchen will start serving Hawaiian-style macaroni and potato salads soon. Don’t leave without ordering a cranberry oatmeal cookie ($5) from Deep Space, which bakes out of Prep Kitchen across the street from La Bodega.
Recipe: Barbecue Pork Belly Burnt Ends From Yava Kitchen and Brewhouse
🐖 This week, we’re sharing the recipe for the barbecue pork belly burnt ends from Yava Kitchen and Brewhouse, which recently opened in Cumming.
Both the restaurant and brewery at Yava unite in this dish, with the recipe adapted for the grill or stovetop. Yava’s Joyrider IPA is a key ingredient in the barbecue sauce, while cooking the pork belly mimics the wood-fire methods used in the Yava kitchen.
🥂 Taste of Atlanta is celebrating its 25th Anniversary with an epic night of two dozen chef-driven tastings, craft cocktails, wine and beer tastings, live music, and electric energy! April 16 from 6 to 10 p.m. at The Works. Tickets are on sale here. SPONSOR MESSAGE
➡️ Get double the Atlanta food and dining coverage with “Family Meal,” edited by Beth McKibben, on Tuesdays at 5 p.m., and “Side Dish,” edited by Sarra Sedghi, on Thursdays at noon. Subscribe to both here.
