back to his roots
Chef and TV personality Matheson offering up down-home maritime goodness with a twist
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 favourite dishes, and the stories behind them, the P& L( a reference to Matheson’s now shuttered restaurant, Parts & Labour) burger evokes “mixed emotions.”
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 Viceland star, he’s become synonymous with “munchies-type food.” But as he proves in Matty Matheson: A Cookbook (Abrams Books, 2018) that 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 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 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. 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.”