Food
Meeting Matty Matheson
The Emmy Award winning chef on his small town kitchens to the big time.
“I’m home for, like, 48 hours,” says Matty Matheson as he speaks to me from his farm in Ridgeway, Southern Ontario. You could argue that the larger than life chef now outstrips Canada Dry and maple syrup as Canada’s most prominent culinary export. For some, in part thanks to his role on multi-Emmy winning breakout The Bear, he’s an overnight success and a new addition to their culinary landscape.
But Matheson has been in the trenches for decades – his career more of a slow burn. The 42-year-old, a chef since he was 19, has been on screens for over a decade; part of a moment when well-produced web series started to unseat the stale formats of traditional TV for a generation of viewers. Vice shows like Keep It Canada, Dead Set on Life and It’s Suppertime! offered something fresh, funny, and expletive-heavy (albeit not directed to demean, like some of the older guard of chef). There’s a veritable canon of work to dive into for the Matheson uninitiated.
Much of his persona, that of the anarchic, hard living chef who has lived the best and the worst of the restaurant industry, is perhaps the Matheson of old. Hardworking would be a better description. It’s well known that he had a voracious appetite for drink and drugs, a contributing factor to having a heart attack at 29 years old.
Now, he’s a sober, seemingly grounded, creative, and entrepreneurial chef. A man who revels in family life, often referring to his wife Trish (who he’s known since high school) and the next generation of Mathesons – his children Macarthur, Rizzo, and Ozzy.
As he talks, there’s a perceptible shift in his tone, a palpable pride in what he’s built (albeit he always comes back to the team), perhaps even a little awe. His house, he tells me, is currently decorated for his daughter’s birthday, who wants a Tooth Fairy-themed party. “The whole house is very fairy like right now,” he says with a hint of that pride.
Holidays at the Matheson house is a traditional affair, he says. “It’ll be very decorated. Trish loves stringing up lights over the trees outside, wreaths, and very animated decorations for all seasons. In our house we have three Christmas trees: one in the front foyer where you walk in, there’ll be one in the nook in our kitchen, and then we have the main one that’ll be in the living room.” Matheson takes a moment, and laughing, says “it’s definitely over the top, but beautiful you know. You can’t escape it.”
As a child Matheson grew up, until the age of 11, in Nova Scotia, one of three Maritime provinces on Canada’s east coast. It’s part of his “culinary lineage,” he says. Moving to Fort Erie in Ontario, close to where he now lives, Matheson paints the picture of a normal working class upbringing. “I have two brothers and a sister and our family loves Christmas,” he says. “The house was always decorated; it was a very typical North American-style Christmas.”
The holidays are a time to revisit well-worn family and regional dishes. On Christmas Eve they make rappie pie, a traditional Acadian dish which ties back to his roots in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Made with potatoes, meat, and stock it’s more of a humble casserole than a pie. “Christmas Day, we always have prime rib and then either a roasted duck or a roasted goose,” says Matheson. Thanksgiving is the time for turkey, naturally.
I've always been pretty good at filling up the plate, so to speak.
Matheson’s grandfather, a former officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, owned The Blue Goose, a diner-come-restaurant in DeSable, Prince Edward Island, on the Trans-Canada Highway. Summers were formative. “I think having a love for diner culture and the simplicity of a clubhouse sandwich, a broccoli cream soup, chicken noodle soup, or just a simple grilled cheese with a tomato soup [comes from there],” he says.
“I think growing up, my grandfather’s restaurant was a very special place, and I think it was part of falling in love with homestyle cooking; food for working class people, people that are in transit. A hot turkey dinner, a hot hamburger sandwich or a milkshake; there’s always something for everybody, and I think I’m very attracted to that kind of thinking, that type of cooking for sure.”
Going to culinary school at Humber College in Toronto was a lightbulb moment for a young Matheson, as someone who by his own admission hadn’t excelled at school. “I got good grades, and I was like ‘oh this is something I’m good at.’ I really sunk my teeth into the thing, my hands and my mind. I wasn’t ever good at sports; I wasn’t really good at a lot of things.
But once I got into culinary school, I was like, I can do this. And that seems to have provided a very amazing career thus far.” There are more than a few parallels in Matheson’s formative experiences to his new book, the does-what.it-says-on-the-tin, Soups, Salads, Sandwiches. “I think there’s a place for having a book like this where you can just flip a page and be like, I want a soup and a salad, there you go, just flip the page. I want a salad and a sandwich, flip a page. I want a soup and a sandwich, flip a page,” says Matheson, hammering home the book’s mode of use.
“I think it’s just like the holy trinity of cooking... It’s for everybody, because everybody wants to eat a soup, a salad, a sandwich, no matter what kind of means they have. The way that I cook, and the way that I think about our food is what will make it different and what will make it special.”
Matheson says that when he’s cooking at home he’s not “doing extravagant things” and that he doesn’t think the majority of people are either, “unless they’re making it for content.” There are enough cookbooks out there he says, and that recipes “are just a spark.” Matheson looks at cookbooks for inspiration, but he doesn’t want to follow a recipe, unless he absolutely must. “I just see shit.
I can look at a photo and be like, I know how to make that,” he says. In his own book his intention is that recipes work if you want to follow them or if you want to choose your own adventure, substituting a herb here or a spice there. “My wife Trish, she follows the recipes to a tee, but cookbooks aren’t the law, cooking is alchemy,” he says.
MATTY MATHESON ON HIS RESTAURANTS, THE BEAR, AND KEEPING IT REAL
“I’ve always been pretty good at filling up the plate, so to speak,” says Matheson when asked about navigating a schedule bursting at the seams. When I mention Matheson, a mutual friend comments about what they see as a formidable work ethic, with “fingers in so many pies.” In fact, if there isn’t a pie company in the Matheson mix there must surely be a place for it. His interests include restaurants and media commitments, workwear brand Rosa Rugosa, and pantry staples through his Matheson Food Company. Again, while the chef admits that The Bear – on which he doesn’t just star as handyman-not-chef Neil Fak but also works as an Executive Producer has “definitely changed things,” it is purely a continuation of what he’s been doing for years.
“I’ve always been busy,” he says. “It’s just added to the amazing things that we’ve all been working for, me and my team, for years. We’re not new to doing what we’re doing. Even with The Bear, it’s like we have all these things in place, and I still do my cookbooks, my cooking shows, I’m still doing all those things.” Matheson seems to have a real sense of loyalty to both the fans who have followed him from the outset and the people around him. “I want to always be thinking of them,” he says of the process of “creating and doing things” that will “make people happy and laugh and have fun with cooking.”
That’s his “actual priority”. The Bear has opened more doors, but in true hospitality style he comes back to being a part of the team that creates it.“We're all just happy that we get to make it.”
Restaurant life for real isn’t in the rear-view mirror, or ornamental, having founded Our House Hospitality Company. A growing portfolio of venues mostly in Toronto includes six locations under Maker Pizza, Prime Seafood Palace, Rizzos House of Parm, and Cà Phê Rang which he opened with Rang Nguyen, who as head chef of Toronto institution Le Sélect Bistro, became a mentor to the young Matheson. Matheson says “I’m talking to my partners every day. I’m talking to my chefs every day. I talk to our Director of Ops every day. I’m still heavily involved mentally, and I still do all the ideation for concepts and working on how our businesses are run.”
What will the success of The Bear and the ever-more-oiled Matheson machine mean for his future? “It’s not that with the success of the show I like, shipped up, and moved to Hollywood,” he laughs. “I try to keep it as cool and level as I can. I definitely like to go to New York and to LA and all these places and make all these things, but then come home.” Matheson’s 12-acres, named Blue Goose Farm after his grandfather’s diner, is in Ridgeway, the hometown where he grew up, went to school, and met his wife Trish. “It’s one of those things,” he says. “Our kids are going to probably end up going to the high school that me and my wife went to.” Small town life is a great leveller.
Ultimately, Matheson’s outlook is one that could be a great lesson to any young chef: in fact, anyone at danger of letting ego cloud their view of life. There’s “a lot of gratitude” for everything that he does, and he says that he looks at things “very simply,” in that “it’s a job.” Reading between the lines, he attaches much more meaning to family life than how people see him. It’s perhaps a mantra that helps him stay grounded as the many and ever-increasing plates of his life spin in front of him. In attaining his goal of “a pretty normal life,” chasing fame, he says, isn’t something he’s interested in. “I do a lot of things, and the work speaks for itself. I’m able to keep working, I make people happy by cooking, I make people laugh. And isn’t making people laugh and making people want to cook an amazing thing?”