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Q&A: Chef Matt Levin talks Adsum, Square Peg, kitchen podiatry
Levin has been busy this week playing with his brand-new fryer, taste-testing spiked-up milkshakes and getting his feet wrapped. You'll find out below what that means after the jump.
Q&A: Chef Matt Levin talks Adsum, Square Peg, kitchen podiatry
On Monday we got the drop on putting up menus for Square Peg — chef Matt Levin's high-end comfort food salon with Barry Gutin and Larry Cohen (Cuba Libre, 32 Degrees) at the one-time home of Marathon Grill at 10th and Walnut. The menus read like a delight, with all-day breakfasts, meatball sandwiches and meatloaf with smashed potatoes (both with Levin's own beef mix) and a daily plate selection including items Levin brought from Adsum, such as homemade pierogies fried chicken.
Now, we snagged Levin, who'll launch Square Peg with a series of soft-open dinners on March 21 (soft-opening lunch starts in April), for a Q&A. He's been busy this week playing with his brand-new fryer, taste-testing spiked-up milkshakes and getting his feet wrapped. You'll find out below what that means after the jump.
Meal Ticket: I have a couple of quick questions that have nothing to do with Square Peg. What were you doing tweeting Angelo Sosa to come visit you? [Sosa is the Top Chef contestant who worked as Jean-Georges Vongerichten's exec sous chef at Spice Market and currently owns Social Eatz in NYC]
Matt Levin: I can't discuss that at all.
MT: Are you looking forward to shining shoes at Hop Sing Laundromat? [He and chef Kevin Sbraga lost a Super Bowl bet to Hop Sing owner Lêe]
ML: Totally. I love that place. I've been in there like six times during his build-out and made the soft opening night like midnight after I had dinner at Pumpkin.
MT: Adsum. You wanted your own place. You got your own place. It was a success. Then you left. Why?
ML: I wasn't able to make enough money to live. Honest. It's something I'll do again, but just under different circumstances.
MT: From the look of Square Peg's menus, you're continuing much of what you started at Adsum, the whole comfort food thing.
ML: It's definitely food I would eat and having fun cooking. It's actually a joy doing something more casual — not to be taken so seriously — as the high-end food I've done. It is refined, don't get me wrong. It's just a little more everyday.
MT: What are you doing here that you couldn’t do at Adsum?
ML: Well, I've got my proprietary burger blend, domestic grain-fed cows from Maine. The bulk of the cut is brisket. Nobody in the city does poutine [the Canadian fries, curds and gravy dish] the way I do as a breakfast dish. The fried chicken will be totally different than what I did at Adsum because now I'm brining it in pickle juice. Mostly, though, it's the way that I can do things here. There are a lot of differences. My kitchen here is four times the size. I have a prep team. The cooks will be more focused on turning out food rather than spending so much time worrying about their mise en place. Everything here is recipe-d out. If I wanted to write a cookbook, all we'd have to do is hit "print."
MT: So it's about space, access and organization.
ML: Yes. Look how great the menus came out. We have actual menus. I was able to develop an actual physical menu, from artwork, fonts to design. The help I get is amazing, from the front office to the line cooks. No more home printer, where I'd write the day's menu on a yellow legal pad, someone typed it into a Word document and that'd be it. Square Peg is a lot different and advanced from Adsum.
MT: Funny that for a place that isn't yours, you have more freedom to be yourself.
ML: Exactly. That's mostly because Barry and Larry give a shit. They have my back, Larry in particular. Case in point: One of my chefs and I — we're a little overweight — and we were complaining that our feet hurt. I mean to ourselves. Just talking. But Larry overheard us. He says hold on a second. Within 15 minutes, his podiatrist was here in the restaurant to tape our feet up and support our arches. That doesn't happen. That's crazy — a podiatrist making house calls at a restaurant to make sure a cook's feet are OK. Only Larry Cohen would have that sort of moxie. My sous chef is getting his feet wrapped as I speak, then it's my turn.
MT: If you had to eat your own Square Peg menu today, what would you have?
ML: The fried chicken. Not only did I change the recipe, but those guys were nice enough to buy me a pressure fryer, a brand-new Henny Penny fryer that cost well into the five digits. I have yet to fire it up — the guy had to show me so I don’t blow myself up — so I'm champing at the bit to try it. It will taste even better than usual fried chicken, I can assure you of that.
Photos: Jason Varney
everything wrong with Levin can be summed up in the fact that his favorite dish on his menu is one he hasn't even been able to try yet.— alexr
Comment removed.
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