We are always up for a very flavorful plant-based meal and we're truly excited about this interview from a superstar chef that is known for elevating the vegan, raw vegan and plant-based space, Chef Matthew Kenney! We had the pleasure of being introduced to raw vegan at his restaurant Pure Food and Wine here in NYC which was a culinary experience. We also attended an editor event where he was in attendance at Ladurée Soho to launch the inclusion of their vegan menu back in 2019. It was a pleasure to hear him share his partnership with them and unveiling his vegan menu!
As someone who has used his fine dining, classical French training to elevate this cuisine, we couldn't wait to talk about how he got into culinary, his background, how he entered the plant-based space, his journey to creating restaurants that are all over the world and how Matthew Kenney Cuisine as a business model allows him to focus on his passion for staying engaged and creative! We also talk about one of his newest ventures, Ntidote and well as upcoming projects.
ATHLEISURE MAG: When did you first fall in love with food?
CHEF MATTHEW KENNEY: Well, my entire life, I’ve loved food. I grew up in Maine and it was all about seasonality and the ingredients. It was all about wild blueberries in the summer and wild strawberries that grew across the street in our garden. We made our own honey, maple syrup and apple cider. I always loved food and I didn’t realize that I had an affinity for cooking per se until probably after college when I moved to NYC. I just fell in love with the diversity of so many amazing restaurants, different cultures, and melting pots that you could see through food. So this was probably in 1989.
AM: That’s amazing!
It’s interesting that you decided later on that you wanted to be a chef. I’m based in NY as well, the first vegan restaurant I went to was your restaurant Pure Food & Wine.
CHEF MK: Oh wow!
AM: Yes, so it’s exciting to talk to you as your food was my first experience in that area. I'm not vegan myself, but when introduduced to it and getting to taste the flavor profile it was a great experience. Tell me about your culinary journey from where you went to school and kitchens that you started in.
CHEF MK: I basically moved to NYC right after college because I knew that I had friends there and I knew that that was where I wanted to be. I had planned to go to law school and instead, I took my first job at Christie’s when it was on 5th Ave. That was great and I realized that I wanted something social in my life. I was taken out to dinners and it was always so exciting going out to restaurants. I went to Hawaii for a little while and I did some hiking to decide on what I was most passionate about and I just had this idea that I wanted to open a restaurant in NYC. I had no skills or training whatsoever. So I enrolled in the French Culinary Institute (editor’s note: now called the International Culinary Center) and studied there and in the evening, I worked for about a year at a really amazing Southern Italian restaurant that was on 60th street I think called Malvasia and it was a chef from the island of Lipari and I just fell in love with the Mediterranean diet and flavors, the non use of butter for the most part, wild fennel and all of the exotic but clean flavors. That really resonated with me because that’s how I like to eat and live, but I had never seen it in that fashion. That had a really big impact on me, even though it wasn’t a 4 star restaurant or anything, it was really nice. The chef was kind of a known chef at that time. Gael Greene and all of the food critics from the NY Times, New York Magazine came through there so I got a real education at school, but also at this restaurant because I was there when it opened and I was able to see the whole thing come together and what was important in NY. I just got a massive education in one year.
When I graduated from the French Culinary Institute, some of my friends had gone to work at La Caravelle, which I think was a 3 star restaurant in those days. It was one of the top French restaurants like La Grenouille and so forth, but La Caravelle had a new American chef and he was hiring a new team and I went there and worked – it was very classic French. I then got a call from the manager of the Sicilian restaurant that I had worked at and I had only been out of cooking school for a year maybe. He said that he was hired to resurrect a restaurant that had been doing great, but the chef left and it had come apart. It was really struggling and it was a very high profile location and expensive restaurant. He said that he told the owners that he would only take the job if he could hire me to be the chef! I had no management experience, I had never been a chef, but I knew that I could do it. I took that job and I think that that was in 1991 and we got great reviews. Somehow, I worked around the clock and the owners were Brazilian and they asked me to open a second restaurant with them and then in 1993, a taxi cab went through the window of the first restaurant. Nobody was hurt, but it was full, but somehow, no one was hurt. It didn’t go through the dining room, but it smashed through the window and ruined the store front.
I said to them that this was a good time to change the concept. I wanted to do something North African inspired, Mediterranean, but not strictly Italian and they said that they would do it if I put my name on it. So, I did, we opened a Matthew’s in 1993 and that was my first restaurant. It was really an intense, well my whole career has been intense! It was very fast moving. My life was all about food and whatever exercise that I could get in. I would go home after 10 or 12 hour days and I would cook for my wife at that time. It was really a love affair with food.
AM: That is an amazing story of how you know, you got to have your name on the restaurant and opening it! Did you think at that time that you would be who you are now in terms of writing 12 cookbooks and all of these restaurants, concepts, and partnerships that you have?
CHEF MK: Well, that was before it was common for chefs to be able to do that. Daniel Boulud at that time was the chef at Le Cirque and Jean-Georges Vongerichten was the chef at Lafayette and then he opened JoJo his first restaurant right around the corner from me at the same time that I opened. So it was something hard to visualize in those days because it wasn’t very common for restaurant owners. There was a guy called Tony May who had a bunch of Italian restaurants – he had 3 or 4 places, he was like the king, but it just wasn't common in it just wasn't common in those days for chefs to be licensing and franchising. Wolfgang Puck did it a little bit, but that was mostly relegated to California, Vegas, and San Francisco. But there weren’t any chefs that were doing it on a global scale at that time. There may have been 1 or 2, but it wasn’t a thing like it is now.
AM: You are known as a super star chef who focuses on vegan and plant-based. Why did you want to go into this area? For those readers and listeners who may not be familiar, what is the difference between raw, vegan and plant-based?
CHEF MK: Sure! Well first, I’ll answer the last question first if that’s ok. Raw vegan which is what I got into first, it’s an entirely plant-based diet where nothing is heated over 110˚ F/120˚ F which is where enzymes are more active below that threshold and so you have to get creative with raw vegan because a lot of things aren’t good raw. It prohibits certain things that aren’t great for you. So it’s a really good diet for the digestion and great for so many things – elasticity of skin, hydration, but it’s tough to do it all year around.
Whereas, vegan, you can make anything – pizza, muffins, scones, anything! Raw vegan is more limited, but at the same time, that limitation encourages creativity. So they’re quite different although we create raw components to our non-raw food restaurants all the time.
AM: Very interesting and tell me about Matthew Kenney Cuisine which seems to be the umbrella that houses your restaurants, partnerships, products, innovations and concepts.
CHEF MK: Well as time evolved, even after Matthew’s, we had a really successful place and then the neighboring restaurant that was a block away wasn’t doing well so he said to me, “you’re always full and I have this great space and it’s not working, why don’t we do something together?” So I opened a second place, a casual place a block away. It did really well, but the partnership didn’t do so well and I left that. Matthew’s was just a really hot place for the first few years and I had a lot of offers and I couldn’t help but say yes too many times. I opened Mezze in Midtown next to the offices of Conde Nast at that time. Then, I opened a restaurant in Soho across from the Mercer Hotel and another one on 22nd street and one in Atlanta and in Maine. These were pre vegan days. That kind of got in my blood not just creating menus, but creating experiences through design. Whether it’s through music or uniforms, I just really fell in love with the idea of building restaurants. Running them is a different kind of challenge! Up until 1999 and 2001, I was running this decent sized company from my late 20’s to my mid 30’s.
You also asked me about vegan! I had gotten more and more into longevity and I have always been interested in fitness and exercise. In college, I made my own meals that were really healthy. They weren’t vegan because it wasn’t a thing then. It was in NY when I started to get more into yoga and more aware of how I felt and I started talking out loud to friends saying that I thought that I could be a vegetarian. In Maine, I grew up hunting by the way and fishing. But I just felt drawn to it – I liked foods that were clean, less stimulating, earthy and balanced cuisine. I felt that, but I didn’t know how to translate that into my career. I was also at a point where I was doing food that was more comfortable American like Truffle Mac & Cheese – these things that were trendy then. I didn’t really enjoy that because it wasn’t creative enough and it also wasn’t what I wanted in my body. I was disconnected a little bit, there wasn’t an alignment between my profession and my personal life. So, my old girlfriend at that time, made a reservation to go to a trendy restaurant at that time in Tribeca with a friend of ours. He called us after we made the reservation and said, that he had only been eating raw food which I had never heard of as a type of cuisine and he wanted to take us to a place called Quintessence which happened to be a block from our home – we didn’t know about it. We went there and the food was kind of weird and it wasn’t particularly exciting and it had strange names, there was no music, no wine, but everyone in there was so passionate about their diet and their lifestyle. They were just glowing with health! I had not seen people like that and it was full! It was just a lightbulb moment where I thought, that if somebody could actually make plant-based cuisine or raw cuisine sexy and fashionble and contemporary by applying classical culinary training to it, that could really change the way that we eat. So that was the moment where I pretty much went vegan right away!
AM: Wow!
You have a number of restaurants around the world. What goes into your thought process when it comes to deciding where you want to locate next, a partner that you want to have, the kind of concept and aesthetic that you want to bring forward?
CHEF MK: Well, we’re changing that model a lot. Basically, I always felt that focusing on the brand, the mission, the narrative and forming a team that can enhance that vision and keep creating. Just keep innovating because this space has so much runway and so much opportunity to make a difference by adding new styles, new recipes, formulas and new science. I really wanted to create a brand that would be attractive to the outside world that was looking for solutions and was looking to transform their business or their real estate property or to bring plant-based into their schools. So really, it’s all about the innovation aspect and the content and it stems from there. We’ve been fortunate to have opportunities that approached us for the last 5 years constantly from all over the world. But I’m making a shift.
I’ve been opening a lot of restaurants and have sold or closed a few restaurants over the pandemic because I want to be able to reach a larger audience and really expedite the shift in the global food dynamic and having plant-based be the center of the plate. That’s why we launched education during COVID, we had over 4,000 students in over 80 countries online at the Food Future Institute. It’s why we’re doing media projects and a bunch of partnerships with different brands and companies that serve food or products in different ways and experiences. Lastly, with restaurants we’re shifting towards more of a licensing model because it’s very hard to run restaurants in multiple states much less other countries and so pretty much at this point, we’re partnering with larger groups, developers, hotels, and brands that we think can grow a relationship at scale.
For example, we work with Kushner International, they’re based in Duabi. They have 15 or 20 properties and we work with them, we have a full service restaurant at one of them and we’re opening a second and then we’re working with them on 8 or 10 of their properties to do enterprise training by providing their chefs with tools and content to add plant-based to their existing menu. So those are the kinds of situations where we develop relationships where we can grow with them and we don’t have to do things that we’re not good at such as dealing with construction and all of that. So we’re really shifting to be entirely of that model within the next year.
AM: Which I think is really smart. Like you said, it allows you to focus on the things that you’re good at and that you want to be able to spend more time on.
CHEF MK: Yeah, it’s not our skill set. I grew up and my dad was a contractor, but I can’t be on a construction site and running a company doing a lot of things. The people that are really best at culinary for example, they don’t have experience with this type of thing. It’s just not practical for us and when we have the opportunity to do it through the licensing platform, that’s best.
AM: I actually met you back in 2019 in the fall at Ladurée’s event here in NY when they released their vegan menu at an editor event at their Soho restaurant. It was a fun event and it was inspiring to hear you talk about that at the luncheon. What does it mean to you when you are instituting plant-based menus in restaurants that still have non-plant-based dishes on the menu? People such as myself who eat plant-based half of the week or certain meals are able to be exposed to these innovations.
CHEF MK: Well, that’s where I see it going. That’s why I use the term “shift the global food paradigm,” because really what I’m looking at realistically is that the whole world will not go vegan. But I do believe that there will be a major shift to plant-based being 70-80% of what we consume. Therefore, we’re in a world where we’re all connected one way or another. So, I don’t have a problem with that as long as we’re not promoting or serving the non-plant-based. I’m not an activist per se. I'm not an activist per se. I'm an activist through art and that’s how I do it.
“I want to be able to reach a larger audience and really expedite the shift in the global food dynamic and having plant-based be the center of the plate.”
AM: We’ve been enjoying some of the new items from your brand, Ntidote which you launched at Expo West. The Pizzalmonds are amazing. Why did you want to launch this company which focuses on nutrient dense, functional foods, and supplement powders?
CHEF MK: Well, I just like Dr. Amir Marashi. He’s passionate, we have the same taste and he’s wonderful to work with! I know that whatever we do is going to be aesthetically pleasing, he’s committed to quality and I like where he is coming from as a doctor. He’s a very passionate person and that’s a big part of it. That’s the thing about Ntidote, I had the Trail Mix for breakfast and they’re very functional foods and also foods that really help us eliminate toxins that go into our bodies. It’s a big market segment and I felt that we had a perspective on where to get the best ingredients and how to activate them through the sprouting process and it’s really quite straight forward, but it’s meant to be very high quality, straight forward, non challenging for people to understand and I think that it can grow in a lot of different ways. I love the brand itself. It started off as an idea in doing a bar.
AM: Oh!
CHEF MK: We did a Ntidote Bar. It had ingredients that no other bar had like pine pollen and some really cool things and it was hard to produce them for a reasonable cost. So then it was higher to sell them at the right cost. We pivoted and then this is where we are now. I’m really happy with it and we did a nice job I feel. I love the branding and I’m just really pleased that it’s simple.
AM: I like that you were talking about that. I love the packaging. I’m a huge fan of almonds myself, so having these different flavors was really great to enjoy. I also received Golden Magic Powder, and I have found that to be lovely as well.
What’s your process like in terms of onboarding the different assortments that you'll eventually have and are there new things that you’re looking to add later in the year?
CHEF MK: We’re launching with a pretty large portfolio of products, so I think that a lot went into that and the branding and now, a lot will go into developing relationships with retail outlets or whoever will be carrying it. We want to nurture those relationships first and then once that part is stable, we’ll certainly look at other ideas as I have too many ideas and I have to learn to shut them down a bit because I really want to be able to do it right. So I want to be able to do this first phase in the right way.
AM: That’s exciting and I will definitely keep my eye out for it. I like how clean it tastes and then you begin to think about how you can incorporate it into things like my salads and other dishes. I think you guys did an amazing job with that.
How did the two of you come together to decide to do this? Had you worked together previously?
CHEF MK: No, I had a restaurant at the 1 Hotel in Miami and Amir came to a talk that I was doing. It was just a sunny weekend day and I gave a talk and maybe there was a demo. He approached me after and we just started talking and he asked me if I wanted to do something. We talked about what we wanted to do and he mentioned that we could do a bar because he’s a doctor and he really wanted to add value to his patients health by focusing on food. We decided to collaborate to do it together.
AM: Are there upcoming projects outside of this brand specifically or anything that’s coming up that we should keep an eye out for?
CHEF MK: Yes, we have a lot. We’re involved in a new company called Mates Brands and Jamison Ernest is the founder and he’s a very talented entrepreneur, he has a great eye and a really great style a great way of bringing people together. Mates is a company that will take experts in their fields and celebrities and pair them with a producer of a certain kind of product or service that they co-develop that will fall under that umbrella. The initial group is Venus Williams, Kate Hudson, Vanessa Hudgens and somehow, I got in there.
So that’s really exciting and we’re working on a few TV projects and I’m excited about both of them at production studios here in California. We just recently opened our restaurant in Doha it’s beautiful! They created this gorgeous green restaurant for us and that just opened. The next opening is in Palm Beach and then in the fall in Monaco. These are all licensing and strategic partnerships and we’re working on a sort of bespoke alcohol line where we just partnered with an influencer Sean Wotherspoon and then Matt Fontana my friend that owns BESTIES, the best vegan convenient store in the country and we opened Vegan Coffee, but it’s actually a curated sneaker shop in East Hollywood. We’re partnering with a group that has a yacht it’s solar and electric sustainable beautiful yacht that will have charters with high end plant-based cuisine. We’re actually training the chefs here today that have been with us here all week and we’ll be on the boat. So, we do a lot of different things probably involving 70 or 80 different types of projects!
AM: That’s great! I was literally going to ask you if there was anything that you would want to do that’s on your list of things to do and in just hearing you, you’re covering so many different verticals. How do you take time for yourself because I’m sure you’re traveling a lot and you’re checking on projects. But what do you do to kind of center yourself and to get back to self-care?
CHEF MK: Good question! Well we look at the entire spectrum from food growing to when it’s served and actually beyond that. My partner Charlotte, she is also my Creative Director, she has 5 towers and some of them are in the ground and she grows more food then what wecan eat here at home and she starts everything from seed. So we look at that and we partner with different groups that are going to be sustainable growing methods and we get involved with them. But on the back end, we work with Lomi which is a really cool composting machine for the home and they’re developing one for the business. It’s really cool because you put all your waste in there, press 1 button and 12 hours later, you have your compost which goes back into the garden. So we look at the whole spectrum, anything that is sustainable and promoting longevity not just for humans, but for the planet that is pleasurable, well designed, and stylish, that’s when we really get engaged into that whole entire process.
It used to be strictly food and I used to stay in my lane on that, but then I realized that sometimes that’s not enough because a lot of people are environmentalist and other people only care about their health whether it’s vegan or they’re not. Some care about animals. So we really have to embrace the whole thing and that’s why we leaned out our model to the point where we’re not physically going to be running business because instead of us being 70% operational and 30% innovation – it’s going to be 90% innovation and maybe 10% supportive of the various partnerships. That’s why I made that change because the other way of doing it which is what I have been doing for the last many many years, it wasn’t sustainable for me. I’m 59 this summer, I’m healthy, but I don’t sleep enough and I don’t feel like I give or work to the best of my potential when I’m not rested and taking time for yoga and meditation and so forth. That’s why I’m taking this model so that we will remove the majority of that operational aspect and I feel like we’ll be much better and we’ll add more value to society that way. I can also take care of myself better!
“That’s why I use the term ‘shift the global paradigm,’ because really what I’m looking at realistically is that the whole world will not go vegan. But I do believe that there will be a major shift to plant-based being 70-80% of what we consume.”
AM: You touched a little on TV projects that you’re working on. Do you envision doing a TV series or there are so many interesting culinary shows beyond the competition ones that are a travel meets cooking experience. Do you forsee or do you have plans for that?
CHEF MK: We do! I’ve been approached many times over the years for competitions and reality shows and it wasn’t really my thing. I’m more reserved. I’m comfortable on camera, but I don’t have the desire to be on camera. If I can tell a story and make a difference then I’m happy to do it and it’s also good for our company and for exposure. So, I get excited for that reason and the reason that we can make an impact, change habits, and inspire people hopefully. We’re working on 2 shows. 1 is more of a 1-on-1 type of solutions based talk show almost with celebrities and athletes that are looking to become plant-based. I don’t want to drop names, but I have names but I have had experiences with quite a few in the past and we want to do a show like that, because we believe that will be entertaining and the known figures will draw an audience, and people are interested in them, and also they will be influential in changing habits because watchers, viewers will see that and see them taking that initiative and then we’ll support it. I have a really large global network and one of my really good friends is an expert in hydration. It’s simple, but it’s not. So we have a lot of contacts like that that we will bring into the show.
The other one will be more travel. I always loved No Reservations.
AM: Same!
CHEF MK: It would be around food travel and food technology. The innovations in the food space globally. We might go to Finland where someone is creating an alternative protein with air or whatever! But it’s not about running into a laboratory it’s more about another person, what inspires them, what their background is, their local culture and the team that they built. So it will be great. I could drink a bottle of wine with them and who knows. So that will be the 2 shows that I’ll be working on.
It's not out of a desire to be on television. When I was young, Bobby Flay and I used to share a summer home in the Hamptons for 2 or 3 years in a row. He really wanted to be on TV and I really wanted to be behind the scenes. But now that I’m closer to 60, I feel like that I have a story to tell about longevity. It’s not just about people who are older, it’s about preparing for longevity when you’re young. So I think that there is something to tell in this show and to share. There will be cooking involved, but it’s not just that.
AM: I think that is awesome and I would definitely watch something like that.
When you’re cooking for yourself, what are 3 ingredients that you tend to have on hand and feel is so versatile to the dishes that you cook?
CHEF MK: Lemons, good olive oil, and sea salt. It’s not just that, I love Fuji apples, broccoli and greens but Charlotte grows them here so they’re always here. I love having a nice pantry. I love oils and seasoning. I love yuzu. I could give you a really long list but the first things that come to mind is great sea salt, lemons, and olive oil.
AM: As someone who has done so much in this space, have received a number of accolades and you have such a passion for it, what do you want your legacy to be seen as when people look back to the work that you have done?
CHEF MK: It’s not really about me. I don’t care about the legacy of me. But, I do want the work that I have done for so many years, because there are much easier things that I could have done, and I really want that to be able to carry on and to see plant-based to where it should end up. Having it at the center of the plate. I want people to be able to understand it and hopefully, it’s part of our education to kids. We learn the capitals of states, names of countries, algebra, and so forth, but we don’t understand our own bodies where food comes from and I don’t want to see a society that’s ill unnecessarily. I want people to be able to enjoy their lives much longer into their later years and to feel better while they’re young to have more of a productive society and hopefully one that’s also more emotionally balanced because of what foods can do for our well-being. So, I want to do everything that I can to put that momentum out there and to be part of it. That’s my goal. I don’t have any personal aspirations.
AM: As a personal question and one that we have talked about throughout our issues - so many people are talking about gut health and some eat gummies, take supplements, drink tonics etc. From your point of view, what are ingredients or items that people should be eating for their positive gut health.
CHEF MK: I think that most people are dehydrated, including myself because water can get boring and even when we do drink enough water, it’s not always assimilated in the right way – certain types of water, certain types of pH balances. Supplements we can do to kind of cover that. I think that's probably #1. I would say that #2 is chewing food because our digestive system doesn’t have teeth and it’s really critical. Those 2 things, can make such a difference to our digestive system. But then also, some things digest more quickly. We’re not animals so that’s why plants are so valuable. But understanding food combining, and what to layer and not to layer, eating watermelon on top of a big meal for example is not a good idea. Digestion is everything. Removing toxins and potential toxins from our body is everything and it’s critically important. I never thought about it. As young people, we don’t think about it. But when I got into plant-based, I did a cleanse with this really quirky doctor and it just changed my entire digestive system. I felt like I was flying! Ever since then, I have been acutely aware of how my digestion is, what I eat and how it will impact my digestive system. I love sweets, I love ice cream and I indulge. I eat whatever I want. But I’ve trained myself to eat what’s good for me without much effort, because I already like these foods anyway. I’m always excited to walk into a health foods store, but I think that it’s a big subject and it’s definitely everything. Because you can be on the most beautiful place on the planet, gorgeous sunny day, and be on vacation and if you’re digestion is not working properly, you cannot enjoy it!
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Read the MAY ISSUE #89 of Athleisure Mag and see AT THE CENTER OF THE PLATE | Chef Matthew Kenney in mag.
