How did you start on the road to being a chef?
I started purely by accident. I was working in a food warehouse at the time, packing bags of pasta – I thought that was as far as my future in the food industry would go! Then one Friday night, an old friend of mine who was a professional chef called me up and said that his kitchen hand – in this country it’s called a kitchen porter, essentially a dishwasher – had accidentally cut himself, so could I come in and cover his shift that evening? That night changed my life.
What was it you found there?
I’d left school early and I was getting into a lot of trouble with the law. I was this weird-looking kid with dreadlocks who listened to alternative music; I didn’t really know who I was and where I fitted in. The first night I walked into that kitchen, I was like: “Oh, this is where you all are! This is where the individuals are, where the strange people are!” It was such an incredible environment for me to walk into. Growing up an only child, I always yearned to be part of a larger family, and here they were. I didn’t know what I was doing, and that first service was hell, but afterwards we had a few beers and the head chef said: “Why don’t you come and work with me for a few years, we’ll get your skills up, we’ll put you through school, we’ll get you set on the right path.” And that was that.
In 1998, you came to London to work at the newly opened Soho House. What inspired the move?
It was a very brilliant turn of events. I’d grown up very poor – we were always scrimping and saving. When I started in the restaurant, my mum had recently been made redundant and was struggling. I was sending money to help her live day to day. It was kind of heart breaking. Then, when I was coming up to my eighth year there, my mum went to the shop to pick up some cigarettes, a bottle of sherry and a scratch card – and she won $100,000! True story. She called me at home and said: “I’m going to give you half of it. I want you to get the hell out of New Zealand and never come back, because there are no opportunities here. I want you to go overseas and grow and be you.” She helped my dreams come alive. That’s really where it started.
Along with the likes of Peter Gordon, Anna Hansen and Miles Kirby, you were part of a wave of New Zealand chefs whose adventurous approach to flavour helped shake up the London food scene. Where does that love of experimentation come from?
New Zealand’s food culture has no boundaries. A lot of food cultures around the world have very, very big boundaries – and quite rightly so, because they have thousands of years of history. We don’t. We have a couple of hundred years of Westernised food history and within that we always struggled to find our identity. We were known for lamb and apples and the infamous kiwi fruit, but that’s kind of where it finished. That gave us a freedom: chefs like us could go around the world and be like magpies – take these little snippets of these wonderful cultures that we were exposed to and bring them back to our nest.
You were part of the DJ BBQ crew that took the festival circuit by storm with a blend of music and fire cooking. How did that come about?
It was 2012, and I was working for Jamie Oliver at the time. He was having his 15-Minute Meals book launch and I was doing all the food. One of the DJs Jamie got in for the event was Christian Stevenson. We got on really well. About a week later, I had a phone call from Jamie saying: “I want you have a chat with Christian, he has an idea and he wants you to help him out. It’ll be a favour to me.” That was the start of DJ BBQ. We did our first festival at Grillstock. We were cooking on these Lang smokers, and I knew nothing about them. I knew nothing about fire boxes, I had no idea about reverse flow. But after cooking at festivals for so many years and being around so many live-fire cooks, it became a case of defining my style and using my chef’s talent for getting flavour into food. It was soon after that, around 2017, that I got my first EGG.
As a seasoned fire cook, what did you think of the EGG the first time you used it?
It’s like you’ve spent your whole life watching black and white TV – and then all of a sudden you’re given an OLED screen. That’s how it was for me. It was like: “Oh my God.” It was the complete package. You’ve got everything there for slow cooking, for roasting, for flavour, for smoke, for managing heat. I became obsessed with it. I’ve really pushed it. I’ve done stuff on there that most people couldn’t imagine cooking on a barbecue. Part of my style is that I never think of the meat or fish as being the hero of the dish; it’s just one part of the flavour I’m trying to create – an ingredient among all the other ingredients. And what the EGG does is push every single flavour. It can be a Dover sole or it can be a turnip – it’ll be outstanding.
We’re now selling your Blak Fire chilli sauce. How did you end up producing your own condiment?
It’s a bizarre thing that started during lockdown. When the pandemic hit, my industry was decimated in a day – and it was terrifying. In my back yard I had a massive barbecue based on a Maori ‘hāngī’, plus the Big Green Egg. The weather was great, and all that summer I was cooking on them and posting on social media. Some suppliers started going: “Can we send you some stuff to put on the barbecue for a bit of a shout-out?” It got a bit ridiculous: people sending me half a sheep, a whole goat, a 10-kilo crab. I had all this leftover food and didn’t want to throw it away, so I posted in the neighbourhood group offering meal boxes for £20. I sold 10 meals and everyone was like: “Man, this is amazing.” The week after that we did 30. The week after that we got 100 orders and it all went a bit pear-shaped! We turned our home into a commercial kitchen and we were doing 500, 600 orders a week. It went crazy. One of the dishes I did was my take on jerk chicken, and I made a sauce to go with it. That was the very first rendition of Blak Fire, and people really loved it. It’s into its fourth phase now, but that mad summer was where it started.
What would you suggest using it with?
It’s really good for a white-meat barbecue – pork or chicken. My wonderful followers have tried it on monkfish, on salmon and they tell me it’s absolutely incredible on thick flaked fish. It’s very lightly spiced. It’s got scotch bonnets in it, so it gives you an initial kick, but the heat turns off quite quickly and allows the spices – cinnamon, allspice, pimento – to really come through. It’s not a jerk spice or a jerk sauce seasoning, and I don’t claim it to be, but it is based on the flavours of Jamaica.
We’re celebrating Big Green Egg’s 50th birthday this year. What’s the most memorable birthday party you’ve had?
I would say it was my 30th. A friend of mine was general manager of a restaurant in Notting Hill, and he invited me there for my birthday dinner. He wanted me to come at a very specific time – at 6 o’clock – and he was like: “Do not be late!” We started the evening off with some shots, and then he goes: “I’m just going to pop to the toilet, back in a second.” I was scrolling on my phone and looking at the menu, and I hadn’t really noticed the couple sitting next to us. Then they turned around and smiled at me, and it was Kylie Minogue and her boyfriend. She goes: “Are you Matt? It’s your birthday, right? Happy birthday.” I couldn’t believe it. Apparently, it was one of her favourite restaurants and my friend knew she was coming in, so he’d set it up. We ended up sitting with her for two hours, enjoying the most insane birthday. She was lovely. That was my most memorable birthday, for sure!
