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Enter the Church of Matty Matheson

“This is the purest version of what my dream restaurant is. All of the things on this menu are very connected to who I am.”

Aaron Wynia
Food
Enter the Church of Matty Matheson
Photo Assistant:
Colin Outridge

Matty Matheson is a master at mood-setting. The Canadian chef and food personality spent much of the early aughts touring in Canada’s hardcore music scene—he was never a bandmember per se, but he was essential to each show’s atmosphere. “I was definitely the vibe guy,” he tells Coveteur on a fall day at his sun-soaked Toronto restaurant Prime Seafood Palace.

Touring out of a van, he says, “I was the guy who was drunk, having fun, and making everyone laugh”. Two cookbooks, three children, five restaurants, several viral online cooking series, and nearly ten years of sobriety later, the 40-year-old restaurateur understands that impeccable energy is just as important as a stellar menu.

On former Vice shows like Keep It Canada and It’s Suppertime! and Youtube series like Just a Dash and Cookin’ Somethin’, he parts ways with the sterility that was once a non-negotiable for top chefs. Instead, he embraces a flamboyant irreverence, marked by his airhorn-esque on-camera voice, cartoonish adlibs (in a recent Cookin’ Somethin’ clip, he repeatedly screamed “YAGGA” as he butchered goat ribs), and his affinity for earnest, all-caps Instagram captions.

Booth tables at Prime Seafood Palace have discreet leather-lined drawers for steak knives.

The Queen West restaurant can seat 66 guests at a time.

Matheson wears Rosa Rugosa's Gwynne Long Sleeve Shirt and Pants with the Dunn Short Sleeve Shirt (and a Blue Goose Farm cap, of course).

At the corner of Queen St. W and Shaw, steps away from Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods Park (and a few doors down from what was once Oddfellows, where he scored his first head chef gig), the atmosphere inside of Prime Seafood Palace is surprisingly serene. Sun rays beam through the vaulted maple slats that span from the windows to the two-story ceilings, giving the illusion of incandescence. Nestled inside one of the cream leather banquettes, I feel as if I’m inside of a lightbulb.

He likens the design to a “catacomb,” a “shell,” or a “wooden cathedral”, but admits that the space wasn’t necessarily inspired by the Mormon churches he grew up attending. “I saw an image once of this brutalist concrete building [in South Korea],” he recalls. “The ceiling was just a skylight and when you walked in, there was this wooden, cathedral-like building inside of the brick or concrete building. It was just really beautiful.”

The sleek, Scandi design, which Matheson worked on with architect Omar Gandhi, is full of sentimental details—many of which Matheson drew from his grandfather’s Prince Edward Island restaurant, Blue Goose. Growing up, Matheson and his siblings would sleep in Blue Goose’s banquettes during visits from their hometown of Fort Erie, Ontario (where Matheson now lives with his own family). With Gandhi’s aesthetic influence and Blue Goose’s nostalgic nods, they’ve managed to create Matheson’s dream restaurant. The swivel stools and wooden canopy at the bar are reminiscent of Blue Goose’s ice cream counter. In the bathroom, concrete artist Brandon Gore designed the sink to mimic the shape of Lake Erie, with a pin to mark the location of Matheson’s Blue Goose Farm (another ode to his grandfather), which supplies fresh produce for all five of his restaurants.

Prime Seafood Palace's Dungeness Crab Cocktail.

Prime Seafood Palace's Côte de Boeuf.

As Matheson and his assistant toy with the lighting, chefs hurry toward the kitchen, clad in uniforms from Matheson’s new workwear line Rosa Rugosa. They carry bowls overflowing with crab and kale, sourced from Matheson’s farm. It’s peak farm-to-table: Matty’s farm to Matty’s table.

Strums of soft rock from the ‘60s and ‘70s hum overtop our conversation—another nod to his upbringing. When Matty was a child, mornings in the Matheson household were often scored by Joni Mitchell, Aretha Franklin, and the Allman Brothers Band. He keeps these artists in heavy rotation at PSP in tribute to his parents. “What am I gonna play at this restaurant? Drake? Pavement? Nirvana? I used to do that at Oddfellows. I could play that stuff at Matty’s Patties” he says, referencing his smashburger outpost mere blocks away from PSP. “Because a lot of the things in this space are sentimental to me, I needed music that was sentimental, too—and that’s sixties and seventies.”

For Matheson, the era’s acoustics lend themselves well to the natural textures around the space. “All the tables are wood. This room is very rudimentary. It's basic. It's simple. Some people don’t get why we’d play folk music in a space like this, but there are no computers [in that music]. It’s just people playing instruments and singing. It’s very human. Everything about what we’re doing here is us trying to do less.”

Prime Seafood Palace’s tour de force is its steak. Matheson walks me through memories of going to Costco with his dad to buy prime rib. “A rotisserie prime rib was kind of my family's signature dish,” he shares. “This is the purest version of what my dream restaurant is. All of the things on this menu are very connected to who I am.”

Tables, chairs, and bar stools were designed by Coolican & Company, Toronto's first small-batch design and fabrication studio.


Prime Seafood Palace is just blocks from three of Matheson's other Toronto restaurants: Cà Phê Rang, Fonda Balam, and Matty's Patty's Burger Club.

"With Rosa Rugosa, it's about the work. It's about the process. We're hand-cutting our fabric. Every pattern is hand-cut. We're doing it small—small and steady is what I'm attracted to."

Between shots, Matheson would occasionally mention lingering to-dos at his newly-opened Italian restaurant, Rizzo’s House of Parm. Like PSP, Rizzo’s is close to home—but this time more literally. “It's like five minutes from our farm,” he says. “I just wanted to have a little family restaurant where my family is.” Toronto is all business for him, who keeps his YouTube filming studio, restaurant headquarters, and Rosa Rugosa atelier (which he’s dubbed ‘the Factory of Roses’) in Parkdale, a neighborhood blocks away from PSP, where he lived for almost two decades.

To have a restaurant in his hometown was a milestone that struck a different chord. “It's one of those dreams. I grew up going to my grandfather's restaurant and I know how that made me feel,” he muses. “I see my kids like, two to three days a week, so it would be nice to have something I've created for them that they can go to when I'm not there.” Where elements of Prime stem from Matheson’s upbringing, Rizzo’s taps into his wife, Trish Matheson’s, family cookbook. Early on in their 22-year relationship, going to his then-girlfriend’s house for dinner gave him his first brush with authentic Italian cooking. “She's Italian, so going to her house was like, ‘Oh, this is a cuisine.’”

And his charisma is the common thread between each of his outposts. This year alone, he launched Rosa Rugosa, opened PSP, then Rizzo’s House of Parm, and landed a supporting role and producer credit on one of the most talked-about shows of the year, The Bear.

While he was on set for the FX series, he started having ‘kitchen dreams’ again, like the show’s protagonist. “It was a trip,” he says. “I haven't had them in forever, even though I have restaurants. But being on that set, being in that kitchen and working with the actors so intensely for two months was just incredible.”

Prime Seafood Palace's Sicilian Crudo.

Matheson and Ghandi opted for wood, brass, and leather throughout the space because of how the materials naturally age with time and wear.

He agrees that the experience was meta but ironically, Matheson’s character, Neil Fak, never handles food at all. Instead, he’s a handyman. When Matheson and his team learned that Fak would be outfitted with workwear, they pitched the then-unreleased Rosa Rugosa for his costume. He had been working on the line of size-inclusive, utilitarian separates since 2017 with New York designer Ray Natale after meeting through mutual friends.

“It’s been a six-year process and there have been so many ups and downs,” Natale shared with Coveteur in an email. “We had to change the name and completely rebrand at one point, the global pandemic shut us down, and we lost our first manufacturer. We had to create our own factory in the end, which has actually been one of the best parts. We get to do it all. It's very much our brand.” As a collaborator, Natale praised Matheson for his “endless energy, laser-focused vision,” and decisiveness. “He knows exactly what he wants,” Natale adds.

Matheson celebrated his fortieth birthday this year. During our interview, I note that it must be significant to have completed Prime Seafood Palace just after this milestone specifically, since the several year-long project spanned much of his thirties. The new decade feels like a new beginning, he explains.

“At the beginning of my thirties, I almost lost my entire career. I had just had a heart attack, I was still doing drugs and still drinking,” he reflects. “But within the last decade, I've created so much. I have a beautiful family and I have a beautiful career.” Forty is a new chapter, Matheson explains. “It's a really beautiful empowering thing to have built all this stuff and be able to maintain it. It's a whole new kind of world.”

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