Chef Matt Migliore has won two Food Network competition shows and created special dining experiences for clients around the world, including celebrities like Matt Damon and Courtney Cox. He’ll soon visit central Pennsylvania, to cook for WPSU’s Connoisseur’s Dinner.
It was Migliore’s pandemic-era ingenuity led him to his new career path. He was chef de cuisine at a restaurant called “Madre” in Brooklyn when the pandemic hit, and the restaurant was closed.
“I basically took 3 or 4 days to sit on my couch and sulk,” Migliore said. “But luckily my amazing wife, Daniela, who is very, very motivating for me, was like, 'Dude, get your butt up. Do something. You’re a creative person. Let’s figure something out.'”
And he took her advice.
“What I started doing was a recipe consultation," Migliore said. ”You would send me what you had in the refrigerator, pantry or freezer and I would create recipes based upon what you had. Because we were all very apprehensive about going to the grocery store, Lysol-ing all our ingredients, you know what I mean?”
Those recipes proved pretty popular. And that led to virtual cooking classes online, with clients around the world. When the pandemic was over, Migliore went back to his restaurant job.
“And then, in the midst of that,” he says, “I had other clients ask me if I did in-home private dining experiences.”
Migliore decided doing those on top of a full-time job at a restaurant was too much. So he made a daring decision.
“I quit my job, and I started ‘The Chef Matt Experience.’ And I haven’t looked back since,” he said.
The Chef Matt Experience turned into a full-time gig for Migliore. And it even landed him some celebrity customers, like Neal Patrick Harris and Courtney Cox. He recently cooked the celebratory dinner for Matt Damon when his foundation, water.org, won an award.
“And it was just a really cool event to be at," Migliore said. "And being able to create food out of those – create gastronomy out of those countries that water.org has helped.”
Migliore will find himself here in Central Pennsylvania soon for one of his next projects: WPSU Connoisseur’s Dinner, where he’ll present his own take on his favorite cuisine - from Peru.
“I’m classically French trained, a little bit of Italian in there,” Migliore said. “But when I moved to New York, I wanted to do something that was completely alien to my knowledge of the culinary arts. So I completely went head-first into Peruvian cuisine. And I absolutely fell in love with the food, the culture – the Amazon, the coast, the jungle, the desert, the mountains – and all the different infusions between like Japanese, Chinese, Italian and criollo, which is the ancient African Peruvian cuisine.”
Migliore explained how he’s able to blend so many different influences into his work.
“Most of the dishes I create, it’s a compilation of all the different chefs I’ve learned under. All the different kinds of foods I’ve tried from traveling to like Peru, South America, around here in the United States," Migliore said. "When you work with an ingredient for so long, you understand how it tastes when it’s like caramelized, roasted, raw – so you can really start to manipulate flavors as a well-trained chef."
Migliore’s menu for the WPSU Connoisseur’s Dinner includes a bisque that incorporates ingredients like sweet potato, coconut, miso and…sarsaparilla!
“The idea behind that Winter Bisque for the amuse bouche was I want to do something where it is vegan, but it still has a very good texture, it’s very robust. And that’s where the miso comes in. So we have the miso, all these different root vegetables, and the sarsaparilla. As we know, that is the major ingredient to making root beer. So I was just like, "Let me throw a little sarsaparilla on it, let me try it.' And it was just absolutely incredible," Migliore said.
Migliore has a choice of entrees planned for WPSU’s Connoisseur’s Dinner, all with a Peruvian flair. One features fish, one is vegetarian, and, for the meat eaters, there’s short rib.
“So the short rib is actually something that I offer on my seasonal menus for the Chef Matt Experience. It’s a crowd-pleaser," Migliore said. "There’s an ingredient in there called 'cherimoya.' So the short rib itself, it’s almost like a deconstructed pot roast: a beautifully-cooked short rib. Now the cherimoya is a very, very sweet fruit. It’s an Amazonian fruit that tastes as if pineapple and coconut came together and had a little love child. So you have something that’s very meaty, very fatty, very rich. And then you want to cut it, and you want to have like a relief, so hence the cherimoya.”
Migliore’s short rib recipe also includes a Peruvian red pepper called “aji panca,” and heirloom carrots.
“Traditionally, aji panca marinade is used on beef heart skewers in Peru,” he said, “so why not just on regular beef? It’s very earthy. It’s spicy. It’s acidic, garlicky, a whole bunch of black pepper in it. So it’s really perfect for the beef.”
The vegetarian entrée, the eggplant dish, will be cooked over special charcoal, and incorporates pomegranate, tahini and herba buena.
“Herba buena is basically mint,” Migliore said. “It’s a not-so-spearminty mint, if you will. So the eggplant, that comes from the Japanese influence. The Japanese eggplant is cooked over Japanese charcoal. And then it’s peeled. And the tahini is just kind of a really nice sesame sauce. And then you have the pomegranates in their own molasses, so that adds some tartness and some acidity to the dish.”
Migliore has confidence in his creations. And his creativity has been put to the test on The Food Network, where he was the winner on two chef competition shows, “Beat Bobby Flay” and “Chopped.”
“'Chopped' was very intense. The clock does not stop for anybody,” Migliore said. “So we open the basket. And then you have, you know, 15 seconds to open it, look at all the ingredients, be very surprised, like 'Wow, what am I going to do with Spaghettios and chicken hearts, and all this other stuff?' The production assistants come in, they clear the baskets out, and then the clock starts. So within that time, I would say, you have about 90 seconds to think about what you’re going to do with those four ingredients. I was shaking when I was playing. I thought, 'Oh my gosh this is insane.'”
Migliore is happy with his career change, from restaurant chef, to purveyor of The Chef Matt Experience.
“It’s been really positive,” he said. “It has allowed me to understand what a social life was. I’ve been in the restaurant business since I was 14 years old. And working full time ever since I was 16 or 17. Being my own boss, making my own schedule, having time to go to the gym, eat healthy. You know at this point, I’m not looking back.”
