Interview Offcuts and Matty Matheson's Croque Madame
From his new book Soups, Salads, Sandwiches
There are a few interviews that I’ve done over the years that seem to have earned me equal respect from chefs and home cooks alike. Often, it’s very much that it falls into one camp but not both. Ottolenghi was one, Maynard James Keenan of Tool fame (albeit I was interviewing him as a winemaker) another, and strangely British actor Martin Clunes (everyone loves Doc Martin it seems).
And then several weeks ago I interviewed Matty Matheson, and the response was slightly overwhelming. There were chefs who revere him for his actual restaurant work, others who know him personally, and those who don’t really know him as a chef but asked whether he was giving Fak-vibes (he plays handyman Neil Fak on The Bear). There were others who commented that their kids love to watch his YouTube videos. It’s all a sign of how he’s connected with an audience across everything he’s done, and perhaps that he’s not easy to put in a box.
In case you’ve not noticed (which rock have you been under?) he’s currently selling truckloads of his new book Soups, Salads, Sandwiches. Now a New York Times bestseller and deservedly so. It’s lived on my desk for the last few weeks and I’ve given up putting page markers on the recipes I want to cook because, well, I’d be marking every page.
I haven’t yet cooked a recipe start to finish, using it more as an inspiration. Tuna melt has been on heavy rotation (and when I say heavy, I’ve eaten four just this week). There is the Matty and Trishy Tuna Melt in there that’s a little more involved than my basic fare, described as “our love language.” The Matheson-approved version will get a run out before the year ends (pinky swear).
The recipe below is for Matty’s own Croque Madame, and again this will get a run out. The day of the interview I ate a Croque Madame at Lawson Flats in Perth, chatting to the club’s general manager Nick Caton (a veteran of the London hospitality scene, including Soho House) about him wanting to add the Croque Madame to the menu as a nod to good menus, and also its superiority to the Monsieur (I couldn’t agree more). And so, it felt only fitting to add that below with Matty’s own commentary.
What follows also is a few interview offcuts - zero waste journalism if you will - that didn’t make the edit for the Selector feature (out now in Australia) that I was writing.
Refreshingly we went old school with an audio not video call. I was in a hotel room in Perth at close to midnight with Matty calling from his home in Ontario. I had just 30 minutes. The vibe straight off with his representative dialing in from New York (I think) was that this was going to be to the second. Sometimes you get the feeling that you’ll be able to push your allotted time by a little or a lot which gives wriggle room for a few tangents here and there but other times you know that you need to be on your game to get exactly what’s needed, gauging where you are within your interview plan, whether you need to drop sections, speed things up, slow things down, or think on your feet. A polite “that’s our time” came as my timer ticked over onto 30 minutes. I looked down and all my primary questions were crossed through. A sigh of relief.
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