Meet The Americano Executive Chef Matthew Taylor 

Meet Matthew Taylor, the executive chef at both Mora Italian in Phoenix and The Americano in Scottsdale, Arizona. The Americano’s elevated menu features Niman Ranch pork and beef, house-made pasta and Mediterranean seafood. We were lucky enough to sit down with Chef Matt and ask a few questions about how he got where he is today and his plans for the future.

Q&A with Chef Matthew Taylor of The Americano

Q: Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Canada actually. I was born in Calgary, Alberta. My family farmed about 120 miles North of Calgary. They raised cattle, hogs, and chicken. Later on, they started growing canola and barley. So, I grew up with a little bit of a farming background which I think makes it a little easier to relate to all the farmers at Niman Ranch. It allows me to sympathize and appreciate a good product when it’s put forward. You can taste the difference and obviously understand the passion and the love that’s put forward by these folks.

Q: What inspired you to become a chef?

The only job I’ve ever had has been in the kitchen. I started working at the Canadian equivalent of TGI Fridays as a dishwasher at 14 or 15 years old. At that time, it wasn’t necessarily my intention to be a cook. Eventually, I got moved up through the ranks in the kitchen from dishwasher to salad to sauté and just kept progressing from there on out.

At 16 or 17, I got into a vocational culinary program. After high school, I was fortunate enough to get a scholarship to go to the Art Institute, where I did an 18 month culinary program. I loved the school and learned a lot, but I also worked during culinary school. I would encourage anybody that’s going to culinary school to also work if you’re able to. This allows you to practice what you’re learning and accelerate your career path. That way when you come out of school, you’re not quite so far behind and can hopefully start making up some of that debt that you’ve incurred. Other than culinary school, I was really fortunate to work underneath and be mentored by a lot of great chefs that took me under their wing. To this day, I’m still in contact with those people.

Q: How did you hear about Niman Ranch?

I think it was probably when I started working with chef Robert McGrath and was introduced to the Sterling Food Service sales rep, Ron Norman. I’ve actually built a great relationship with him for almost 15 years. Ron really was the first person to introduce me to Niman Ranch and it’s been a constant love affair and relationship ever since.

Q: Why do you use Niman Ranch?

The values as a company and the support that they give small independent family farmers. I really love how they treat the farmers and families that they work with. All of those things create an amazing product. If you took that away, it would still be a good product but it wouldn’t be quite as special. Besides the values of Niman Ranch, the product is amazing, it’s consistent, it’s sustainable and has solid ethics.

Q: What is the most memorable experience with Niman Ranch products?

Honestly, opening this restaurant [The Americano] would have to be the most memorable because this is the only steakhouse in Arizona that offers a full line of Niman Ranch products. Just having the full scope of what Niman has to offer. There’s only so much you can put on a menu sometimes, and you try to do as much as you can. So to have a dozen different products from different farms and having it in front of you every single day is really special. This might sound a little surprising but last night I was watching the meat being cooked and I was salivating because I was excited about the product and excited for the guest to try it. I think the fact that we get to expose so many people to Niman is really special.

Q: What inspired you to care about sustainability and supporting family farmers?

It’s the right thing to do. We’re only as good as the people that we purchased from and we support. So why not do business and support those that really have the same ethos that we do.

At the end of the day, It’s the customer that benefits from it. It’s doing the right thing and paying attention to all those little things that really add up to the final product, which will hopefully separate you from other establishments.

Having the servers and staff educated about the product allows them to sell something that they really believe in and are passionate about. This isn’t just some fluffy campaign about sustainability that we’re talking about. It’s about the way that the farmers live and the way that they’re treated by the company, it gives them a lot more ammunition when they’re coming to a table and trying to sell something.

Q: Do your customers care about where you source your ingredients?

Yes! Now more than ever. I think people have so much access to information and everybody’s under a microscope. Meaning, everyone is paying attention to what you are serving. You can’t lie to the customers. You can’t pretend and say you’re doing one thing when you’re doing another, because it’s easier than ever to have access to all of that.

When customers are sitting at the table and see Niman Ranch on the menu, they might not be familiar with the name. But after dinner, they might google Niman Ranch which hopefully makes them feel good about where they went to eat and what they paid for.

Q: Where do you see yourself in five or 10 years?

Probably opening more restaurants. Hopefully, if all goes well, we’ll be opening more restaurants, maybe even sooner than that. But for right now, all I can think about is making this one, The Americano, as successful as possible.

Q: What would you choose for your last meal on earth?

Oh, man. That’s a hard one. I like sitting on the beach eating oysters. Or maybe Popeye’s fried chicken, as bad as that sounds. All kidding aside, I want to be surrounded by friends and family, sitting in nature, and the actual food doesn’t matter as long as it’s prepared with love and is shared with those that you love and enjoy being with.

Q: What person would you most like to cook for?

It would probably be for my grandma one last time. She never got to see some of the restaurants that I worked in. She was a great cook and would cook for everybody on the farm growing up. I learned a lot from her and I didn’t realize it at the time. She was the one who introduced me to gardening and being able to grow and care for my own food.

The women in my life, my mom and my grandmothers were all excellent cooks. My great grandfather was an excellent cook too. My dad said the family is from India and he was an excellent cook but never got to enjoy any of the restaurants that I worked in. If I had the opportunity to go back in time to cook for any of them, that would be a luxury.

Q: What did you have for dinner last night?

Do you really want to know? I had Jimmy John’s at about 2:30 in the morning after I left here. I’ve had some pretty late nights here at The Americano since we opened and not much is open after 2:00 AM. For the last like three or four weeks, we’ve had a lot of late-night pasta and pizza.

I tried to eat some of the scraps off the meat station throughout the dinner service. So I mean, I DO eat but I need a little something at two in the morning. Mainly for subsistence than anything else.

Q: What’s your favorite ingredient to work with?

Any protein from land or from the sea. I think having that connection to something that’s been living, without trying to sound morbid, makes you pay a little more attention and makes you think a little harder before you simply throw something in the pan or in the oven. Something that has given its life for us forces you to pay a little more respect. That’s one of the aspects that I really enjoy about cooking and growing up around livestock. It’s a respect thing.

Q: What’s your favorite kitchen equipment or gadget?

A good wooden spoon. I was just making lobster soup in the back with one of the guys and I used a long flat French style wooden spoon. There’s something very satisfying about stirring a pot of lobster soup or making gumbo and hearing the sound of a wooden spoon on a metal pan.

That and cooking over wood-fire like we do here. Any vessel that allows us to cook on an open flame creates a nice connection between you and the food. It makes you pay a little more attention. It’s not just flipping the switch, you’re a little more connected to what you’re doing.

Q: Are there any foods you don’t like?

I’m not a huge butternut squash fan because I’ve made so many butternut squash ravioli with brown butter and sage in my lifetime. That and short ribs. No disrespect to short ribs whatsoever, but I’ve prepared so many red wine, braised short ribs over the years that I tired myself on them. I don’t dislike them, but I can live without them. I’m also not a huge green bell pepper fan by themselves, but they have their place.

Q: What do you love most about your job as a chef?

The relationships that you make. I love cooking. It’s the only thing I’ve ever done, but the best part is the relationships that you make in the kitchen and make in the dining room including with the service staff. There’s something extra special about those bonds that are formed in a kitchen. I have so many really great friends and I would say 95% of them I met from being in the kitchen or even just connected through food somehow.

I always joke that I’ll never be homeless and that’s not because I’m independently wealthy or anything like that. It’s just because I’ve been so fortunate to make so many great bonds over the year and I know there’s always a couch to sleep on if everything hits the fan.

Q: If you weren’t a chef, what would you do for a living?

It would probably be a marine biologist. Something that involves science and lets me work outdoors and be around nature and animals. I definitely have a connection to the ocean. That may sound ridiculous because I live in Arizona, but we’re not that far from the ocean. The geographic diversity of Arizona is quite diverse once you get out of the Valley. We’ve got a beautiful wine country up North. We have pine trees and snowy peaks further North and of course the Grand Canyon, and there are prairies and plains down South. It’s a really beautiful state.

Q: We know you are going to open a new restaurant, so what style of food would you pick?

Probably something decidedly French—classical and timeless—with maybe a little bit of New Orleans influence in there. I only briefly lived in New Orleans but it really left an impression on me. So something decidedly French with a little bit of Louisiana influence in it.

Do you live or plan on visiting the Phoenix area? Make sure you stop by The Americano and support Niman Ranch family farmers.