HAMTRAMCK, MI - It's 4:30 p.m. on a rainy Hamtramck Friday night, and Grey Ghost Chef Josef Giacomino tries to get a list of ingredients going on a yellow legal pad while his kitchen partner Chef John Vermiglio chops veggies between bites of a sandwich.

They're serving dinner at their second pop-up on the Ghost Tour in less than two hours. Halfway through picking my first bundle of flat leaf parsley, I wonder if the chefs asked me to help pick herbs so I couldn't distract them.

It is hard to talk while trying to be sure tough twigs stay out of my pile of green leaves.

"We like a lot of herbs," Vermiglio told me before plopping a bag of green in front of me as I tried to tie an apron the right way, like how Anthony Bourdain sometimes does it on TV.

New staff members (official members of the Grey Ghost team) Moses Fishman, Daniel Coleman and Ozzie Diaz circle the big table in the middle of the kitchen, prepping on the fringes.

An Eminem Pandora station bumps through a speaker I can't find; Coleman, who just moved into a house in Ferndale after the Chefs pulled him from Chicago, asks if the music choice is a cliche.

Fishman cooks waffles and something like funnel cake, at one point Diaz sends a white sauce flying out of the blender onto himself and the floor, Coleman slices other herbs and Giacomino tells him he's going too slow.

Will Lee, the third partner and beverage director for Grey Ghost, pops in and out of the kitchen. He's out of his element, he says, because Revolver doesn't have a liquor license.

For the first pop-up, he whipped up three custom cocktails.

The first seating is at 6:00 p.m., Giacomino says as he slices thick hunks of chicken ballotine off something like an artisan meat tube. The sous-vided deboned chicken is stuffed with gruyere cheese and country ham -- he'll pan sear the rolled-up birds for the fifth course of the pop-up.

It's a take on Chicken Cordon Bleu, he says. Only a take, though. These chefs don't like to be too familiar.

It took 20 chickens and extra wings, feet and skin to make tonight's menu. Vermiglio says they're using "everything but the beaks."

From my spot at the prep table, I can't tell much about the menu. I start to ask questions, my picking slows. When I finish my first bunch, I'm given an almost patronizing nod from Vermiglio when I ask if he wants the other bunch picked, too.

(Left to right) Will Lee, John Vermiglio, Vermiglio's father and Josef Giacomino prep for the second Grey Ghost pop-up dinner in Hamtramck Jan. 8, 2016. (Ian Thibodeau)

Eventually I get a paper copy of the menu, which is still cryptic. I can only see parts of it in the kitchen.

The second course lists chicken noodle soup, but Giacomino keeps popping over to the stove to dump more sweet rice wine into a steaming pot of murky aromatic Tonkotsu chicken broth, which is a variety of ramen.

Waffle batter for the third course being dumped onto an almost constantly beeping iron is deep, deep yellow, and barely smells sweet; chicken wings are listed for the fourth course, but I can't find them anywhere.

Over the first hour, the chefs tell me about the menu, where their restaurant will be (which is still a secret) and load PBR and pop into the fridge. Giacomino jokingly precedes several statements with the phrase "off the record" as he finalizes the notes on his legal pad.

I try and fail to take stringent mental notes while little leaves cling to my cold, wet fingers. Vermiglio's dad arrives, and he's assigned to a separate bundle of greenery. When he bags the remainder of his bundle up and throws it in the fridge, I follow suit.

Giacomino and Vermiglio start to bark variations of the phrase "break it down," and I stand back.

The rush

Coleman compares a pop-up dinner to a restaurant's opening night.

The crew knows how many plates they need to put out (two seatings of 40 tonight), but no one has a clue what the heck they're doing until it happens, he says.

Vermiglio stands beside with his arms folded while the others begin to clear, clean and reset the table in the center of the kitchen. The music's off, and the kitchen becomes tense despite one half of the leadership keeping cool.

Giacomino has repeated a couple of times that it's time to "break it down."

"Hurry the (expletive) up," Giacomino says to Coleman as he chops an onion. Coleman shakes him off, dismisses the urgency.

A second later, Giacomino jokes with Coleman. No hard feelings.

"He's trying not to swear so much," Vermiglio jokes. Chef Joe wants to be nicer as part of a New Year's resolution, Vermiglio says.

But the cussing, the temper flares, those are part of a kitchen. Throughout the night, Giacomino barks a few times at everyone but me -- I reached across him while we plated the main course, and he calmly informed me that "I'll get them to you, Ian." -- and most of the time he's met with an equal parts snark and respect.

"There used to be a time when it was 'Yes, Chef. No, Chef...'" Vermiglio says later during the service, smiling after Coleman issues some retort from the fryer.

As Lee lays out plates for the first course, BBQ Chicken Skin, Verminglio's family rolls in through the back door. After quick hello's and hugs, they're ushered into the dining room where a friend of the chefs who goes simply by "Dudie" greets and seats other guests while popping into the back to keep the chefs on time.

Before they start to plate, the crew gathers in a corner of the kitchen to shotgun beers. The chefs finish theirs first.

Vermiglio and Giacomino change from black shirts to button downs beneath their aprons, and Vermiglio starts to hustle around the center table, organizing containers full of herbs, spices, sauces and things to sprinkle on certain dishes by course.

"Settle down, John. It's not time to panic!" Giacomino half-shouts as he whips from the stove to another prep area, smirking. To me, shrugging: "It might be time to panic."

Dinner time

The crew pulls pans of chicken skins from the oven as they ready to plate the first course.

Some of the skins aren't crispy enough, and they bend as Giacomino picks them from the pan.

Quick decision: pop them in the fryer for a minute.

The skins pop as they're dropped into hot oil, some of which spatters and lands on Diaz's arms and hand. No sympathy from Giacomino.

"Why are you still holding it, then?" Giacomino says, grabbing tongs out of his hand as Diaz yelps.

Vermiglio works to assemble the first plate so everyone can see what he wants.

Chef Josef Giacomino, second from left, and Will Lee, second from right, assemble the BBQ Chicken Skin dish at the second Grey Ghost pop-up dinner Jan. 8, 2016. (Ian Thibodeau)

The crispy skins seasoned like a Better Made Sweet BBQ chip are plated with small scoops of baked beans, pickle slices, slaw and a white BBQ sauce on top. Vermiglio says the iteration, listed without a description on the menu, allowed for experimentation or damage control.

In testing, the seasoning didn't turn out how the chefs were expecting, so they improvised.

"It's important that these (dishes) are fluid," he says.

What he and his partner created instead was a backyard barbecue in two bites. A bit of delicate heat and tang from the seasoning and sauce, creamy cool from the beans and slaw, it's a good start. Fun, too.

The first course goes out quickly, and Dudie comes back in no time to tell the chefs there's "nothing left on the plates."

Extras are quickly gobbled up by the back of the house as plating begins on the second course.

It's chicken noodle soup, but not.

Where the first course was a number of things few would object to (crunchy, sweet, salty, briney and, oddly, fresh) presented in a way that's a guilty pleasure for some (you mean I can eat just the chicken skin?), the chefs show off their culinary resume in the second.

Giacomino worked somewhere at some point that made ramen (chefs tend to move around a lot. Other than A10 in Chicago, it's tough to keep the Grey Ghost minds straight when it comes to history.) There, he picked up the technique behind a Tonkotsu broth. They threw chicken feet in the broth, and boiled it to pull out all the collagen, something only done to a Tonkotsu broth.

The result is an immensely flavorful, silky, satisfying broth for what's listed only as "Chicken Noodle Soup" on the menu.

"It's a fun play on chicken noodle," Giacomino says. It's not technically ramen, which is why he and Vermiglio didn't call it ramen on the menu.

Combined with an egg that had been poached in its shell, spicy kimchi and a chili oil Giacomino made with chicken fat, the soup had a ton of delicate chicken flavor and plenty of slow-burning heat that nestled in the back of the throat.

They made a killer bowl of not-ramen.

That's part of what Grey Ghost will become, Giacomino says. He and Vermiglio are pulling from backgrounds in Asian, French, South American and other kitchens they've worked in to create their Detroit restaurant.

Chef John Vermiglio plates the Chicken Noodle Soup dish at the Jan. 8, 2016 Grey Ghost pop-up in Hamtramck. (Ian Thibodeau)

"When we can pull from those things, we will," he says. "(But) I would never use a (proper) name for something like" the soup.

The next three courses are slightly more complex. Vermiglio calls for an assembly line to plate the third, Fried Chicken Liver with a mustard waffle, pickled raisins, honey and mustard seeds.

Diaz works the livers in the fryer.

"How long?" Vermiglio asks.

"A minute."

"One or five?" Vermiglio asks

"Five."

"You have four."

Giacomino tells Coleman he's "herbin'."

"Not like you live in the city," Giacomino says before Coleman can reply. "Like you're putting the herbs on the plate."

The livers used for the dish are beautiful, Giacomino says. They're big, deep red and clean. Hardly any of the unpleasant metallic flavor that can come out in a chicken liver is there, and once they're fried up fork tender and served atop a warm, crispy waffle, it's not an organ anymore.

In December, the chefs served beef tongue and tendon on their first pop-up menu in Metro Detroit. They gave the tendon a facelift, the tongue was served cold and sliced thin; the livers were the equivalent of the tongue in presentation, nothing fancy, but they're a phenomenal example of the chefs allowing the ingredients to speak for themselves when applicable.

So, I ate chicken liver, something I've been squeamish about since my mother let me try a boiled gray bit of the meat when I was a kid, and I liked it this time.

I snuck several leftovers that were deemed too ugly to plate -- they still tasted fine.

These chefs could probably pan sear a banana peel and I'd still try it.

The Grey Ghost home run comes again in the middle of the menu with their General Tso's Chicken Wing. It was the only dish I heard Vermiglio and Giacomino say much about while plating and taste testing, and the only one Coleman insisted others in the kitchen try.

Plates came back clean again.

The chefs cooked the wings low and slow in an oven for about 12 hours. They then pulled the bones out of the wings, keeping the meat intact, and stuffed the cavity with a chicken sausage and sambal mix.

General Tso's Chicken Wing, served at Grey Ghost's second Ghost Tour pop-up, Jan. 8, 2016. (Ian Thibodeau)

They fry it, toss it in sauce and serve it on a hump of sushi rice to make it look like nigiri.

"I love chicken wings, but I hate getting my fingers dirty when I eat them," Vermiglio says, as plating starts.

And it's with the tender, salty, juicy chicken wing that their future menu starts to coagulate. In November, the chefs were apologetically vague about what might be on their menu.

Giacomino hesitated to call Grey Ghost a steakhouse. Vermiglio said there'd be aspects of Midwestern home cooking. They'd also add their own twists, they said.

But as for what would be on the menu, they couldn't or wouldn't say. At the Jan. 8 pop-up, they still wouldn't tell me. For now, the pop-up dinners let the chefs have a little fun and tell people what they're going to eat.

A guess, though: the menu will be a lot of stuff like the chicken wing, or their braised beef short rib and french onion agnolotti from the first pop-up. Dishes where the chefs take something a lot of restaurants serve, something comfortable, turn it on its head, stuff it full of something good, and present the food in a familiar, non-intimidating way that's also totally new in order to get you to take a bite of something great.

Grey Ghost is becoming increasingly hard to describe.

For the chefs, it's not difficult.

"It sort of comes easy to us, because that's how I think about food," Giacomino says between courses.

The final two courses, Chicken Ballotine and Egg Custard, both see last-minute tweaks. The ballotine has to be heated in the oven, because the cheese oozes out when it's seared, and the funnel cakes to go with the custard have to be sauteed because they're too soft.

Giacomino's ballotine is extremely juicy, but lacks the crisp a the pan fry would have delivered. Broccoli spaetzle served on the side is a big hit in the kitchen.

Dudie tells the chefs the custard had the perfect consistency. It also carries unexpected cinnamon and cayenne notes, drawing from South American cooking, and deep chocolate flavor coats the tongue without being too sweet.

There's a brief breather as the crew again breaks down the kitchen to reset for the second seating at 9 p.m. They're cutting it close, as some of the 6 p.m. diners linger, and the chefs don't want to be rude.

They pop into the dining room to talk with guests, and Lee slips into the alley for a breather. Fishman and Vermiglio's brother-in-law go with him.

The first service was successful, Lee says. Inside, Giacomino says there are always things he would tweak, which the second seating allows him to do.

As new diners file into the front, Lee and company go back inside.

"Guess it's back at it," Lee says.

Legs sore, feet aching, I say goodbye, thank the chefs for allowing me inside the kitchen and apologize if I got in the way, and exit out the front door before anyone can ask me to pick apart herbs again.

This is the second in a series of stories chronicling Chefs John Vermiglio and Josef Giacomino leading up to the opening of their restaurant, Grey Ghost, in Detroit.

Ian Thibodeau is the business and development reporter for MLive Media Group in Detroit. He can be reached at ithibode@mlive.com, or follow him on Twitter.