Interview by David Litwak

David Litwak: Matt, you're probably in first place for the number of times you've worked at Maxwell when it comes to existing chefs. I think that's fairly certain, just by the amount of times I've run into you in our spot. So it's fair to say you're one of our top preferred vendors.

I know that you starting your business is almost as recent—if not slightly earlier—than Maxwell. And I have a sense that we have similar origin stories. So I'd love to hear the origin story. What were you doing before you started your business? How did it get started?

Matt Migliore: I would say I've been cooking—and cooking professionally in restaurants—for the greater portion of my life, both my teen life and adult life. I've worked as a chef in New York City at multiple restaurants like Lama Inn, Madre, and Morimoto.

Up until the pandemic in 2020, when everything shut down, I felt this urge—just this kind of burnout sensation—where it was very difficult for me to just call a restaurant a home. So I decided, okay, since I can't work in a restaurant... you know, idle hands are the devil's tools, right? I have to stay busy, I have to do something, I have to pivot.

So I started with recipe consultation—basically taking whatever you had in your refrigerator or pantry and making you a recipe based upon it. We were all very apprehensive about going to the grocery store, Cloroxing and sanitizing all of our ingredients, and stuff like that. So I wanted to work with what you had.

That later turned into virtual cooking classes, which garnered the attention of different influencers and celebrities. I kind of want to say Joelle [a Maxwell Co-founder], to be honest. I think that's kind of where I met her—through one of NYC’s top fashion influencers or a couple of the other influencers I worked with.

David Litwak: What exactly were you doing with those influencers at the time? Were you cooking for them? Were you cooking with them?

Matt Migliore: It was virtual—like, “Let me show you how to make a mushroom pasta,” or a brunch avocado toast, or something like that. And it was all via Zoom.

David Litwak: So you would do a joint livestream with a fashion influencer or someone like that?

Matt Migliore: Kind of. It wasn’t a livestream, but we would record it on our laptops, or she would record it on her page and then post it on Stories. Most of them were private sessions—I would charge a certain amount, and we’d do a private Zoom class. If a family wanted to do something like, “Oh, it’s my son’s birthday, but we’re in New York and he’s in Los Angeles and we’re in lockdown,” we could combine multiple screens on the Zoom link. Then I’d show everyone how to make a pasta dish or a beef tenderloin or something like that.

So that did garner the attention of different influencers, and I reached out to celebrities and other influencers, like, “Hey, do you guys want to do this?” Trying to create some buzz, get good content, and just keep that noise going.

David Litwak: Do you think it was like a uniquely COVID thing where celebs would be like, “Yeah, let’s do it”?

Matt Migliore: 100%. Everybody was looking for the next pivot—not just me doing a virtual cooking class because I love teaching. I'm a chef, and that’s what we do—we teach. But other influencers and celebrities were also looking for a different avenue. “What’s good content? What can I do with my family? How do I stay busy?” So it kind of went hand in hand.

I’d say the turning point was late 2020, when the world kind of turned back on again. I went back to my job as Chef de Cuisine at Madre in Greenpoint. I was doing that—70 to 80 hours a week. And then I had a couple of people from my virtual cooking classes reach out and ask, “Hey, do you ever do anything private? Do you do dinner parties or events?” And I thought, you know what—yeah, I do. Because you’ve got to stay busy. No days off kind of thing. So I said yes.

At first, it felt like a little extra cash—probably wouldn’t turn into anything. But I started getting more and more inquiries. I was working five or six days a week, then taking an event on my day off. And I just thought to myself, “This is not sustainable.” Working non-stop, task after task after task. Either I’m going to do it 100% or I’m not going to do it at all.

So I ended up leaving my restaurant job at Madre and taking on the Chef Matt experience full-time. It started with small, intimate, five-course menus, family-style hors d'oeuvres, bartending—stuff like that, which I still do to this day. But now it's grown. Now it’s about creating a vibe, building something much larger, and scaling so we can handle bigger events.

Private chefs and personal chefs have always been seen as something for the 1%—like, only the very wealthy could afford that kind of thing. But I think it's starting to shift.

I’d say probably within the past year, maybe a little more, people are realizing: when I go to a restaurant, my turn time is an hour, maybe an hour and a half. You're just another table being turned. You go in, pay the check, have some food, hopefully a good experience, and you're out.

But people want something more intimate now. They want comfort—something that feels more personal. You don’t even have to put your shoes on. You're in your own home, you're being taken care of. We handle all the food, all the backend stuff. You don't even have to lift a finger.

David Litwak: Yeah, I mean, you kind of answered the question—yes, there have been private chefs since the beginning of time. But you could also say newsletters have existed since people started writing, right? What changed with Substack was accessibility.

Sure, you could always pay enough money to get a private chef, but now it’s different. I think anyone paying attention to the restaurant scene has seen some version of this—articles about how restaurants and chefs are working harder and harder for less and less profit. It just doesn’t seem like a sustainable lifestyle. And it sounds like you’ve figured something out.

Matt Migliore: Yeah. Talking about operating a restaurant—or owning one, or even just working in one—you know this as well as anyone. You have this beautiful event space, and overhead is extreme, especially now.

Back then, my dream was to own a restaurant. That’s still something I’d love to do—that’s my kindergarten dream. But now more than ever, the cost of doing business is massive. The cost of goods, the rent, dealing with the FDNY, all the red tape, staffing, turnover—it just becomes too much and too expensive.

I don’t really see how this profession, in the traditional sense, can stay sustainable for much longer.

David Litwak: Do you mean sustainable for the profession overall, or personally sustainable for you?

Matt Migliore: Personally, yeah—sorry, I meant for myself.

David Litwak: Well, yeah—I think a lot of people would agree with you on a macro level. That’s why I asked. Not to go off on a tangent, but we’ve talked about this a lot—how full food service, twelve hours a day at a standard restaurant, involves massive overhead. So many things can go wrong. It’s a perilous business with tight margins and very little room for error.

That’s why we’ve chosen to build a completely different type of business—one based around key moments. We can do full food service for those events, but we don’t need to maintain it as a constant, baseline operation.

Matt Migliore: Right. When you have those special events, it makes sense.

David Litwak: Exactly. I’m curious if there’s a breaking point coming in our society. I ordered Indian food the other day and was shocked—it was a $35 chicken tikka masala. I thought, “What the hell?” How do you even get away with that?

But the reality is, it all adds up. People don’t realize the insurance costs we pay, the unemployment insurance, all the little things that compound. A cocktail might look like it has a 90% margin—until you factor in everything else behind it.

Matt Migliore: Exactly. And as a consumer, you’re left wondering, “Why is this so expensive?” But they don’t see the things you just listed—disability insurance, general liability, all the behind-the-scenes costs. That’s how you end up with a $22 cocktail. It has to be.

David Litwak: That’s a reasonable price—you might not realize it at first.

Okay, I’m going to ask this question even though I don’t really like it. I’m curious where you’ll take it: What is your signature style? What do you think makes up a “Chef Matt” experience?

Just to preface—I don’t like the question because there are a bunch of cliché answers, right? People say things like “attention to detail,” which I’m sure is true for a lot of chefs. But I’m curious if there’s something deeper—how you really approach your gigs.

Matt Migliore: I think my vibe is very relaxed. The amount of energy and time I’ve put into this industry—I’ve learned a lot from working with really great GMs, executive chefs, and even cooks and dishwashers. It was a very stressful time. It’s a very stressful industry.

The places I worked shaped me, but my style now is: I just want to be relaxed. You have this idea in your head for an event you want to do? I’m going to cover all those bases. But let’s take it in stride—no need to get too caught up in the stress.

Honestly, attention to detail—100%—is important. But my style of cooking isn’t limited to one thing. It’s not just American, not just Italian or Mediterranean. I love Peruvian food.

When I moved to the city, I started in a Peruvian restaurant. I fell in love with the culture of South America—Peru, especially. I love incorporating traditional American techniques and styles but blending them with Peruvian ingredients.

And I also think food should be fun. It should be interactive. It should be sexy. And it should really just match the type of vibe you want.

David Litwak: I was about to say—what you mentioned about keeping things relaxed is probably exactly why you jive so well with what we’re doing here.

Matt Migliore: I think it’s stressful enough already.

David Litwak: Exactly. And the entire ethos of what we’re building is that this should feel like your home. Even though it’s a commercial space and we’re providing service, we always straddle that line between what we’re offering and where we stay relaxed.

But overall, the feeling we aim for is one of home. Sure, we can absolutely flex up into a five-course meal with ballet service and a garçon behind every chair. We’re capable of it. But that’s generally not what people come to us for. If they want that kind of experience, they’ll go to a place like Daniel Boulud.

What they come to us for is something different. They want that relaxed style. They want family-style meals. They want a certain comfort.

Matt Migliore: They want to break bread with each other.

David Litwak: Exactly. And they want to do it in a lovely environment.

We used to have this saying: when you’re staying in a French chateau and cooking your own breakfast and you booked the chateau on Airbnb no one thinks you’re slumming it. It’s still luxury—it’s just a different kind of luxury. It’s about freedom, access, and experience, as opposed to service. That’s what we try to lean into here.

Speaking of which—your company. I know your wife is an essential part of the equation.

Matt Migliore: So, what you see here—I handle the food—but Daniela, my wife, is the beating heart and the brain of the Chef Matt experience. She’s really the one who lit the fire under me, for lack of a better term.

She said, “Let’s do something with this. You have a marketable skill.” I wasn’t exactly dying out in restaurants, but there’s only so far you can go. She came up with the idea: let’s actually turn this into a business.

Daniela cultivated all these relationships. She’s done everything from PR—cold calling celebrities, managers, influencers—to writing up contracts and invoices and handling all the client interactions.

She’s been a very important part of the back end of the Chef Matt experience.

David Litwak: Yeah, I was reflecting on this—every good entrepreneur wants to keep building. But you’ve got to remember you also have to sell, and you’ve got to take care of the infrastructure that allows you to scale once you’ve built something that people want.

And in this case, you are the product. But we'd definitely be remiss not to acknowledge our business better halves.

What’s the most insane (in a good way) client experience you’ve had? Not someone difficult—but one of the coolest gigs you’ve done in the past few years? Doesn’t have to be at Maxwell, this is not a leading question!

Matt Migliore: I know it was at Maxwell – the YouTube Creators event for the 25th Anniversary of The Sims—that was a very, very cool one. It was really well orchestrated and super interactive. The food was fun and bold. I did this whole tiradito station—a Japanese-Peruvian sashimi-style setup.

It was just really cool to see people enjoying it, trying something different they’d never had before, and giving great feedback.

Another one that stands out was the Amazon Books event we did together. That one pushed me creatively, because I had to create dishes I’d never even thought of before.

The challenge Amazon gave me was to create hors d'oeuvres based on different genres of books. I was like—what? Who comes up with that? But once I sat down with it, I realized how cool it actually was.

It felt like doing Beat Bobby Flay or Chopped—one of those kinds of challenges. Honestly, it was probably the biggest creative challenge of my career so far: to make something edible that captured the feeling of a genre of literature. That was really cool.

David Litwak: Yeah, it’s funny—“experiential” is a word brands throw around all the time, but in this case it actually fit.

For context for our readers – we hosted the 25th Anniversary event for The Sims, and people literally showed up with little green diamonds above their heads (which is what the characters in the video game had). It was a full-on uber-nerdathon—in the best way possible. And yeah, that event definitely belonged in that “coolest gig” category.

Thanks for doing this, Matt. It’s always great working with you—and even better getting to hear the full story behind what you’re building.

Matt Migliore: Appreciate it, man. Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure.

The Chef Matt experience brings restaurant-quality cuisine to your most intimate moments. Because sometimes the most luxurious thing you can do is gather your people, kick off your shoes, and let someone else worry about dinner while you focus on what really matters — the conversations that stretch late into the night and the memories that become part of your lore.

Find Matt and Daniela at their website or catch them in action at Maxwell, where they're helping our members turn ordinary evenings into extraordinary experiences, one perfectly crafted dish at a time.