Matty Matheson Cookbook

Matty Matheson goes back to his French foundation and Maritimes roots to deliver a tender debut cookbook.

'This book is the first step in showing I'm not the guy in the bathtub eating macaroni and cheese' "I'm not just some cool dude who is a tattooed chef who did a lot of cocaine," says Matty Matheson. "There's a lot more to everyone than what is perceived." Aaron Wynia/Quentin Bacon Our cookbook of the week is Matty Matheson: A Cookbook by the Toronto-based chef and Viceland star. To try a recipe from the book, check out: Grilled beef tongue, hot turkey sandwich, and venison tartare with warm bone marrow drippings. The final recipe in chef Matty Matheson’s striking debut cookbook bears a photo of his tattooed fist — knuckles inked with RAFF (on his other hand, RIFF) — driving a cheeseburger flush against the plate. If it weren’t for the sesame seed-studded bun, the burger would be unrecognizable; a splatter painting of pickle mayo and bacon-onion jam. It’s a fitting end to a beautiful book — personal, generous and open — filled with the comforting Acadian fare of Matheson’s childhood, homey Italian-Canadian cuisine of his in-laws and French bistro classics from his early days in Toronto restaurant kitchens. Following some of his favorite dishes, and the stories behind them, the P& L (a reference to Matheson’s now-shuttered restaurant, Parts & Labour) Burger evokes “mixed emotions.” From his childhood in the Maritimes to Toronto restaurant kitchens, Matty Matheson shares some of his favorite dishes in his debut cookbook. Abrams Books After winning a competition TV show, the cheeseburger became Matheson’s calling card. As someone who had “busted (his) ass” at some of the best French restaurants in the country, he writes, “there was something that ate away at my soul every time it left the kitchen.” Now, as a Vineland star, he’s become synonymous with “Munchies-type food” — e.g. his “guaranteed to get you laid” lasagna — but as he proves in Matty Matheson: A Cookbook (Abrams Books, 2018), he runs much deeper than his culinary claims to fame. Matheson takes a decidedly different tack in the book, one that he admits he was initially hesitant to reveal. The uninitiated may anticipate bravado in its pages. Instead, Matheson expresses honesty and tenderness, whether recounting the pleasure of eating lobster caught off the Northumberland Strait, his mom’s “cheesy things” made with her freshly baked bread (which, in turn, she made with freshly milled flour) or how, at 29, “after a three-day bender of no sleep, drinkin’ and druggin’,” he suffered a heart attack that ultimately led him to go into recovery. “I’m not just some cool dude who is a tattooed chef who did a lot of cocaine. There’s a lot more to everyone than what is perceived. And I think that’s scary,” says Matheson. “(I was afraid) that maybe people wouldn’t like this softer Matt. It would have been really easy for me to give them the loud ‘F–k you, f–k this. Here’s all this ooey-gooey food.’” On television, Matheson is larger-than-life, boisterous and affable. In his latest series, It’s Suppertime, he demonstrates the “meatballs you wish your grandma made,” deadpanning while smacking a mound of ground meat: “That’s how you know when your meatballs are done. It should sound like you’re slapping a butt.

 “Tongue is phenomenal,” says Matty Matheson. Quentin Bacon There’s unreserved joy and lightness in his cookbook, too, albeit of another kind. Matheson delights in a perfectly cooked beef tongue, which “is better than pot roast” when treated properly, and expresses pure nostalgia for a beloved hot turkey sandwich his grandfather once made at the Blue Goose Restaurant in DeSable, P.E.I. “People don’t know what I am, unfortunately. They don’t get that. And I think this book is the first step in showing I’m not the guy in the bathtub eating macaroni and cheese. That’s a bit. I’m an entertainer,” says Matheson. “It all just comes down to my true love of food and my family and my life.”

Matty Matheson in Dublin: 'I flew all the way here to eat cabbage!'

“Is everything today going to be a surprise?” asks Matty Matheson as we begin our eating tour of lesser-known Dublin eateries. The plan, I reply, is to take in four restaurants and get a smattering of signature dishes from each, with a few treats thrown in. “I just want cabbage,” he deadpans, in the tone of one who is deathly sincere about his love of cabbage. “I want cabbage, like, five times.” Canadian chef Matty Matheson in Fish Shop, 76 Benburb St, Smithfield, Dublin 7. Photograph: Tom Honan for The Irish Times. At 37, Matty Matheson is among the most famous food personalities on Earth. A working chef since his early 20s, he’s now known best for his TV and online work, comprising two series for Vice and Munchies, and a slavishly adored Instagram account, all of which center on his magnetic and irrepressible personality. Which is not to understate his cooking itself. Matheson’s style might best be described as maximalist. He has an attitude to carbs and fat that makes Nigella Lawson seem positively Presbyterian. His “Guaranteed To Get You Laid” lasagna – which has 4.8 million views on YouTube and a roughly equivalent number of calories – is an orgy of cheese, oil and infectious charisma, and a particularly good primer for the man’s appeal, and appetites. We’re sitting in Assassination Custard, an unassuming spot opposite Kevin Street Garda station with a couple of tables and a counter behind which proprietors Ken and Gwen are hastily cooking us a special menu. I venture that, if everyone sucked in their tummies and baby oil was liberally applied, you might fit 15 people in here. “Well,” Gwen corrects me, “we had a comedy night here recently, and had 40.” Seamus O’Reilly and Matty Matheson at Assassination Custard, Kevin Street Lower, Dublin 8. Photograph: Tom Honan Matty Matheson, Ken Doherty and Gwen McGrath of Assassination Custard. Photograph: Tom Honan We laugh, but are soon knocked silent by the first course of the day, piccalilli, pickled beetroot, Knockalara cheese, and smoked anchovy. Then come the smoked salt and buttered cabbage – “See, I flew all the way here to get cabbage!” Matheson shouts with delight as it’s presented – and the knockout dish of the visit, an exquisite small plate of goat kidney served with curry leaf and lemon mayo. “Wow,” says Matheson as it reduces our table to the funereal hush of mumbled joy. “That is proper. “You know,” he says, “what’s crazy is there are so many restaurants trying to do this kind of thing but they don’t have the maturity to make something this simple – actual home-cooking but so good.” I ask if fame has made it difficult to get normal treatment in restaurants. “Hmm, I don’t know if I get treated well, but I must do,” he says. I venture the old Billy Connolly line about the queen thinking the entire world smells like fresh paint. “Well, my wife hates eating out with me,” he laughs. “If I walk in and the chef knows who I am, they’ll start sending us tonnes of food. It turns from dinner into them turning it on for us. I might just want to spend some time with a person.” True to form, over the course of our day he is stopped several times by people with the delighted exclamation of “Matty!” before posing for photos and Instagram vids, with the infectious grace which has become his trademark. Matty is a lot of fun to be around and evinces an un-faked enthusiasm that puts his more staid contemporaries very much in the ha’penny place. People don’t just like Matty, they love him. Matty Matheson started cooking professionally at 22, having dropped out of cookery school with a few weeks left in his last year – “I just said f**k it and went on tour across Canada with my buddy’s band.” From there, he worked in high-class French eateries throughout Toronto, ending up at Parts & Labour, where he served as an executive chef until two years ago. Now, his time is taken up with Matty Matheson: A Cookbook, the book he’s in town to promote, which later culminated in a packed-out signing at Hen’s Teeth on Fade Street, as hundreds of people queued in sideways rain to have their book signed, and meet the People’s Champ himself. The story here is about my love of food, my family. It’s not about my love of getting fucked up A Cookbook is a deep and meditative trip through his personal history. Part recipe collection, part autobiography, it’s filled with tender remembrances of the food and people who have meant the most to him in his life. “I wrote it in about a month,” he tells me. “Everyone gave me grief because I was writing it on my phone. Then I went and bought a computer so I could type it and I continued to write it in Notes. My editor was like, can you please just download Microsoft Word? I’d been writing it with no capital letters – they loved me.” 

Matty Matheson and Seamus O’Reilly travel in style. Photograph: Tom Honan In a fit of exuberance, we travel to our next stop by horse and buggy. Famed for my canny business sense, I forget to agree on a fee with our driver beforehand and fork out an eye-watering amount for our A 10-minute trip through the Liberties and across the Liffey.

 I arrive at Fish Shop on Benburb Street making an itinerary in my head of lesser organs I might sell to get myself back in the black, and we sit down to a forward-thinking menu of incredible seafood. Our favorites are the squid sliders and the beer battered John Dory with chips. “It’s so good,” says Matheson of the chip held reverently in his paw. “I don’t know why nowhere in North America do you get chips this good.” He seems surprised when I tell him to fish isn’t held in the same exalted state in Ireland as it should be, considering the quality of its produce. “Blame the Catholic Church,” offers our server, Nicky before we leave. “People have a hang-up about fish being a Friday thing. It’s not a treat; it’s penance.” It’s standing room only once we reach Loose Canon in George’s Street Arcade, and we start with a spectacular confit Skeaghanore duck, with wholegrain mustard. Matheson is particularly taken with the pork belly rillettes with confit lemon and pickled chanterelles. “This is so good,” he purrs. “Most times you make rillettes, the next day it tastes like cat food.” We are served a ginger beer that has an unmistakable bang off it. “It’s definitely on the funky side,” says owner Kevin Powell, before stressing it’s non-alcoholic. Matheson has been sober for more than five years, following a heart attack at 29 caused by the exertions of his hard-drinking, cocaine-fuelled life as a young chef. Although thoroughly autobiographical, A Cookbook doesn’t dwell on that aspect of his life. “I’d put in some war stories in there, wilder stuff, of drug use and all that,” he tells me, as we sit down for our last stop, Clanbrassil House, “but they were edited out. “My publishers were like, are you trying to write Kitchen Confidential?” “My story is pretty wild,” he concedes, “but I wanted to focus on the food. Chefs need to stop putting on a persona. I think a lot of chefs are starting to clean their acts up and that’s great because I was definitely one of those chefs; I’ll party harder than you, cook harder than you, sleep less than you. I didn’t want to tell that story here, it’s about my love of food, my family. It’s not about my love of getting f**ked up.

 Matty Matheson and Grainne O'Keefe at Clanbrassil House. Photograph: Tom Honan I didn’t spend 15 years cooking to be the funny guy. That’s nice and easy, but cooking is what I actually do “This is beautiful,” he says, as we eat chopped egg, roasted leeks, and chicken skin, although the true showstopper is the 80-day whiskey aged rib of beef, grilled onion, and chimichurri. Before we leave, Matheson heads into the kitchen to praise the chefs. We wonder what’s taking him so long, before realizing he’s been cornered by fellow diners for one last obligatory selfie. Having left the Parts & Labour group two years ago, Matheson no longer has a kitchen job, which I suppose gives him time to go on all-day eating sprees with grateful, if slowly expanding, journalists.

 Matty Matheson and Ken Doherty at Assassination Custard, Dublin 8. Photograph: Tom Honan Soon, however, he intends to get back to it. “I’m building a restaurant right now,” he tells me. “It’s going to be a high-end expensive restaurant, a real f-you to a lot of people and a lot of my fans. Full chef whites. “I didn’t spend 15 years cooking to be the funny guy,” he says. “That’s nice and easy, but cooking is what I actually do – maybe I do still want to prove something.”