Before he became the best-known American chef and entrepreneur of plant-based Italian food, Matthew Kenney was a kid growing up in a town of 1,500 people in Southern Maine. His bedroom window overlooked the misty shore of Penobscot Bay. He roamed the damp woods, foraging for curled green fiddleheads, harvested honey and canned vegetables from the family garden.
Kenney landed his first restaurant job at Malvasia, an Italian fine-dining establishment in New York City’s Upper East Side. There, he learned the fundamentals of Sicilian cooking from Executive Chef Gennaro Piccone.
“Piccone really focused on the flavors of the [Italian] South, very clean Mediterranean cooking and a lot of unique products. All these ingredients fascinated me, like using wild fennel in an authentic Pasta con Sarde,” he says. “I wanted to try everything on the menu.”
After that, Kenney enrolled in the French Culinary Institute, mastering the necessary techniques, but the cuisine that felt most natural could not be found there. He had already embraced the spirit of Italian, which has served as the foundation for his myriad culinary projects.
Always curious and open, Kenney’s deep respect for the traditions of Italian gastronomy compelled him to send his top chefs to study the aristocratic cuisine from the last Monsù chef at the Regaleali Estate in Sicily, and later to Naples, Italy, to learn the art of pizza-making. Today, his eye-popping roster of more than 40 plant-based restaurants and products—from the brand-new Los Angeles pasta bar Sestina to Plant Food + Wine and Double Zero Pizza in Venice and Baia in San Francisco, as well as a new vegan chocolate line called CASSE-COU chocolaterie—offer gorgeous renditions of Italian flavors without any animal products.
Here, Kenney tells La Cucina Italiana about the benefits of plant-based Mediterranean diets, dishes on his Italian influences and offers tips on adopting a plant-based lifestyle.
What are the benefits of the Mediterranean diet?
The emphasis on seasonality, on plants as well as the reliance on olive oil, herbs and citrus as opposed to cream, butter and heavier seasonings make for a clean way of eating. It tastes great and the flavors come through. Mediterranean cuisine is designed to bring out the core ingredients of a dish, and of course, the way your body reacts to it as well is far more pleasant. Because it’s so light and energy giving.
What regional Italian influences are you most fond of and what are your favorite winter dishes ?
Personally, I love the southern flavors. In the winter, polenta, buckwheat pappardelle with cabbage and potato, and really earthy things like that. I love risotto as well. I've done dozens of variations, [with ingredients like] really good black truffles and exotic mushrooms.
How and when did you switch to a plant-based diet?
I experimented, not even intentionally, by just following my own taste and food preferences. I started incorporating more and more vegetarian ingredients, and then I stopped eating meat and poultry. And so, by the time I considered being plant-based 100 percent, I was ready and just did it. That was 18 or 19 years ago.
How do you suggest switching to plant-based eating when people ask for your advice?
If people are experimenting, I usually recommend starting small if you want, otherwise just go for it. If you happen to be traveling and have easy access to plant-based food for a week or 10 days, try it and take note of it and see how your taste changes and your body reacts.
Other than those situations, I recommend that people do plant-based for one day a week to see how it feels and how you enjoy working with the food. It should be sufficient to give people the experience.
How do you approach creating dishes and menus? For example, do you think about a meal with animal products and then swap and substitute or do you start with the plants and build a dish from there?
It’s both. First of all, we don't try to copy the flavor of a dish that has meat or cheese. It’s more about emulating that experience. If we're preparing a lasagna, it's not that we’re trying to make people believe it has meat or even cheese in it. It's really like ‘what do you think about when you eat lasagna?’ You think about different textures, something warm and satisfying, and rich. There are some traditional things associated with it, whether it's béchamel or tomato or pesto and we want to give that sensory experience of eating it but in a new way.
Other times we will celebrate a dish, so that would be the case with something that’s baked or composed. But we may take a whole head of celery root, bake it with a salt crust, crack it open and shave truffles and some kind of sauce on it. Very, very simple.
What are 5 cooking tips or other things you recommend to enjoy a plant-based diet?
1. Connect with local ingredients or local suppliers for the best ingredients. With all cuisines, but especially with plant-based, the quality of ingredients and buying them in season is important. Obviously, they should be high quality and really fresh, because no amount of cooking and creativity can compensate for that.
2. At home, keep things simple. I have a lot of staples around. I love ferments. I have really good sauerkrauts, oil-cured olives, nut cheeses, and great snacks, like dates and almond butter. Having a pantry of go-to items makes eating this way so much easier.
3. Make liquids. One thing I got into a lot more when I went plant-based was liquids. Whether it be juices or smoothies, it’s an easy way to get a lot of nutrients, and it’s easy on the body.
4. One-pot and one-sauté-pan dishes. I love to cook that way at home, whether it's risotto or even pasta, or sautéed vegetables like a caponata, things that cook together and are easier at home and don't make such a mess.
5. Keep a food journal. Don’t write just about what’s being cooked. If you dine in a restaurant or see something on TV or in a magazine that inspires you, it's not always necessary to find a recipe and follow it exactly but to use it as inspiration, and later you can put the components together. It’s kinda how I play piano. I listen to a song that I like, pick up a few chords and it spins off into something else. A journal can be really good for that because all those ideas that come up can be practiced at your own pace and preference.
What are your feelings on cheese? Are you okay with putting cheese on your dishes and if so, what do you prefer?
We don’t use any dairy products at all. In our entire company, all 40-50 of our projects are 100 percent plant-based and with no animal products. We have dozens of recipes for [plant-based] cheeses. We make rinded cheeses, we’ve done burrata, cashew mozzarella and rice mozzarella. We do a few different variations on Parmesan. We don't have our dishes rely on cheese but they're certainly accentuated by it.
What would be your recommendations for people interested in incorporating CBD into a few Italian plant-based dishes?
I’d probably think about CBD being used in a liquid or a sauce. So, if you’re making pasta or gnocchi, maybe a chestnut cream sauce? I think of earthy flavors. Or things that are rich and indulgent all at the same time.
People love to predict food trends: In 2021, what are the trends you predict for plant-based eating?
The biggest thing that I'm seeing in plant-based is that we’re evolving and becoming more respectful of certain food cultures. When I got involved in plant-based, every vegan restaurant had a taco or a pasta or a flatbread and a mac 'n cheese. It was a cultural mishmash. Now, we’re getting very specific with Mexican, Mediterranean and Italian. I think that’s where plant-based is going to be very relevant.
Any examples?
In Brazil, I ate at D.O.M. by Alex Atala, one of the best plant-based restaurants in the country. He prepared a 12-course vegan menu with ingredients from the Amazon.
Looking back, what have you learned from cooking Italian food?
We’ve learned so much by having Italian restaurants. We do natural fermentation with our dough, and we handcraft all of our natural pasta, at least in California. It’s just so fun. It can be an afternoon, a family thing, something you do with friends. I don't know anybody who doesn't love pizza or pasta. I think it's a really fun food to work with. It’s not super complex, but it’s very specific. In terms of food preparation and having fun—especially in the winter—that’s something people can do in the pandemic: Cook Italian food!