Matt Basile, Toronto's food truck, street food, and pop-up king, was recently in town as part of his Kitchen Revolution tour this September. Fresh from his Singapore leg of the Asia tour, he popped up in Manila over the weekend to showcase his cooking through a dinner and public demos, promoting his Asian Food Channel (AFC) show, Rebel Without a Kitchen.
In his show the 'rebel' in Matt shares action-packed food adventures all around Toronto, Canada, as he explores foodie destinations from underground food markets to fancy chef events. Known for his Toronto Cuban-styled sandwiches called 'Extremo Sandwiches,' Matt makes food, eating, and cooking always fun with his delicious and creative takes on street food.
Last Saturday, I sat down with Matt before he served us a special five-course dinner at Chef Jessie Rockwell Club. Knowing he loves having off-the-wall takes on many kinds of street food, I ask he has an adventurous palate. 'I will try anything once. Someone told me about the egg with the duck embryo? I haven't tried it yet,' he says. 'I haven't seen it yet, but if someone were to bring it to me, I would try it. So if you have in your purse right now, now's the time!'
Little did he know, we happened to be prepared, and I whipped out a handful of balut from my bag mid-way our dinner. Half terrified and half amused, he laughs as he accepts the eggs ('I'm a man of my word!'), then later on was assisted by Chef Jessie Sincioco herself in eating his very first balut. 'First impressions–not looking good here!' he exclaims as Chef Jessie cracks open the egg to reveal the inside of the balut. But true to his word of trying anything at least once, he ate the entire thing–with some salt, of course!–to the loud cheers of the dinner guests.
Photo from Fidel Gastros Instagram
Learn more about Matte Basile in this Q&A, like his favorite eats, what he cannot live without, his favorite Asian ingredients, and what he ate on his first day in the Philippines. As a bonus, he shares a tweaked recipe of Elvis in a Jar, a favorite dessert at Lisa Marie, his restaurant in Toronto, so you can have a taste of his cooking right at your own homes.
Question: Can you share to us how you got into the food business?
Matte Basile: Well, the company is not even three years old yet. So we're about 2 and a half years old. I used to work in advertising as a writer, and food was always a big part of my life but never a career choice. I kinda just worked food jobs here and there to make money to help pay for school so that I could leave the food world to go into other industries. And then one day I really decided that I wanted to be my own boss, and the only thing I really cared about was food. And then a lot of my friends felt the same way. So that's when I kind of came up with this Fidel Gastro's concept. I decided to kind of make a business plan out of it.
Who were your early influences when it comes to food and cooking?
There's a couple. The most important influence was obviously my grandfather, he was a huge part of my life. He taught me everything, not just about food but just about how to grow up and how to have work ethic and take part in everything that you do. His teachings and values and principles have formed into every part of my life. He is definitely the biggest influence of my life. Chef Mark McEwan, also another major influence of mine back in Toronto. He's really one of Canada's biggest food brands and personalities, and I had the honor of working for him for a few months. And we're still very good friends. I'm just blown away how he was able to take cooking and turn it into so much more. I think we try to emulate or at least try to pay respect to that.
How about growing up? What kind of food would you eat? What was your palate before?
I'm Italian Canadian, so growing up most of my food was Italian. And it was funny because I'd go to school and I'd realize I was the only one eating sausage and peppers for lunch. Everyone else was eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, macaroni and cheese. I was the first generation born in Canada, everyone else moved from Italy. So Italian was a huge part of my cooking. And then, because I'd always work in butcher shops too, barbecue was a big part. All different kinds of barbecued meats. And most recently, I'd say I've been into a lot of Korean food and Vietnamese and Chinese–just a whole eclectic of Asian cuisine has found its way into more mainstream restaurants and foodtrucks back home.
What fascinates you with Asian cuisine? What do you think makes it distinct?
First of all I love seafood, and it's amazing that seafood is such a big part of the cuisine. But more importantly, I think it's great to not lump it all into one category, like say this is Asian cuisine. You can really get more specific and say Singaporean food, Malay food, Chinese cuisine, Japanese cuisine. They're all similar, but still very unique and very different . I love spicy food, and that works really well across the board. And I think it's an excllent vessel for bringing in other cultures. For example, I love integrating Latin American and Italian cooking with Vietnamese and Korean cooking. I think there's a lot of similarity in ingredients–garlic, chilies, coriander, basil–but then there's other ingredients that are kind of their spin-offs, so you're able to kind of bring them together. I think it's a great palate and it happened by accident. What happened is, before we opened our restaurant, I was renting a kitchen north of Toronto, and it was in a very densely populated Asian community.So the grocery stores aroud there, all the ingredients that we were buying, just happened to be skewed more Asian. Because of the ingredients I was buying, the food I was cooking happened to take that on, so it was kind of a natural progression. It wasn't just one day that I was like, oh you know what? I'm gonna take my Italian cuisine and my Mexican flavors and just mesh them. It just eventually happened.
So when you first encountered these new and different Asian ingredients, was there any product that really intrigued you?
I remember daikon. I was like, I like daikon a lot! Not a lot of people like daikon. I thought it was great because you can really do a lot with it. On its own, it's really stinky and bland, but if you pickle it the right way, season it the right way, marinate it the right way, if you stew it, grill it… You can do a lot you know? If it's really thinly shaved, or if it's done in shoestring… I don't know, it's very different. I think I started putting it on sandwiches, started putting it in soups, different salads. That, and ginger. I think those two ingredients have incredible impact.
What inspires you when you're coming up with new dishes?
I think it's two things. It has to be different, and it has to be kind of fun. You know, if it's boring and something you've seen before, not that it's not good–it could be a very good dish–but it might not be necessarily something that you would cook. We always try to be different, and have a lot of fun with our food.
When you were just starting out, were there any memorable kitchen disasters?
Yeah! I remember when I was two months into the business, I was still very new and I was doing a catering for a company for Christmas. It was a small catering, the last day of work before everyone was on break, and they ordered a bunch of sandwiches from me. I've never done a drop-off catering before, most of my caterings before that were on-site. So it was the first time I had to package everything and deliver it. I remember I was cleaning a deli slicer, and you can still see the scar–the blade just nicked my finger and it was hanging off, just dangling,and it was bleeding like crazy! And I was freaking out because I didn't care about my finger, I was like, how am I gonna deliver this food?! [laughs] So my friend who owned the butcher shop where I was preparing at, he took a towel and he wrapped it around my finger, then he duct taped it, then he put a bag over my hand, and he duct taped that, and then we made all the sandwiches, wrapped them up. I delivered them, had a beer with the people, and then I went to the hospital. [laughs] There's a window of opportunity to get stitches done within a number of hours, so this was six hours later. So it took them an hour to stitch me up, and it was a mess! And now I'm very hypersensitive to deli slicers [laughs]. I burn myself all the time, I've cut myself also, it doesn't even matter sometimes, you know… You do what you gotta do, you figure out how to feel better afterwards.
Lately we've been witnessing a lot of food trends, even more than before because of social media, people are quick to adapt to and absorb these things. How about for you, what do you think people should focus on, what would be the next thing?
I think it's probably safe to say that the next big food trend hasn't even really been thought of yet. I think it depends where you are, right? Toronto is a very competitive food market, very hungry for trends. It's always about how do you stay trendy? I noticed with us, we constantly have to put new menus out, put out new events in our restaurant just to remind people of us.I think the biggest trend for now will be transparency. Since we've been on the road, we've been posting photos and videos, really showing people our creative process, painting a whole story before we go home and come up with a menu. Before, I think chefs like to keep things secret. I think now, the idea is to share as much as possible, because it gets people excited about it before it actualy comes. Like if you were gone and didn't tell everybody and you came back with a menu, it's good for you. But because we've been able to share so much so what we've already seen and are going to see while we're here, people feel that they're getting a taste of it already? So they're curious. 'How is he going to take some of those things and put it in something that he already does?' So I think that is becoming more of a trend. As our ability to be more connected through social media continues, you'll see that trend just become amplified.
How about for the menu you are doing for the Asian tour, how did you go about conceptualizing it?
For today's menu, they are actually all very different dishes. They could live and breathe on their own. They're all either rustic or a part of street food, and some of them are recipes of what we did on Season 2 of Rebel Without a Kitchen–not the whole recipe but components of it. A lot of the sauces and ingredients from Rebel Without a Kitchen, we did here, and also our cookbook. And then stuff from our restaurant. We tried ways of bringing in all these things together, and I really wanted to just execute what we're considering a very Toronto kind of street food menu tonight.
If you had to prepare a meal for yourself in 30 minutes or less, what would you cook?
I think a really good cheeseburger. I make a good burger. If I had to make one thing for someone… And actually, whenever we hire new cooks, I make them cook me a burger, because I wanna know how well they can cook one.
The burger test. That's your gauge?
Yeah! That is my gauge. You know? Do they flip it too much, do they underseason it, overcook it… That's my thing. Burgers.
How about sharing your earliest food memory with us? An early memory of eating something really good when you were younger.
I remember the first time I had an artichoke. And I was like, wow! My nonna [grandmother] made them. She cooked them in garlic and white wine, and they were phenomenal! And I would go to other people's houses and be like, 'Do you have artichokes?' [laughs]
Such a strange thing for a kid to ask!
Yeah! Such a strange thing. [laughs] I think it helped me realize how different we were. I think artichokes and meatballs. Those were the two, that I think we were the only people that really make this kind of food. I mean obviously you learn that there are other Italian people out there doing the same thing. [laughs] But it was funny though. But yeah, artichoke. Even snails, too. My nonna used to make snails, little ones, and we used to eat them with clothespins because you can't put a fork it there. So you cook them in tomato sauce and you're eating them with clothespins, and they were so small, you'd eat a hundred of them, so tiny! And even yesterday, my first meal in the Philippines, we had snails, stewed in coconut milk. And I asked for a clothespin, and they didn't have any. [laughs]
What else did your have for your first food trip in Manila?
We went to Dampa, and we the funny thing is all the stalls pretty much have the same thing, so youreally aren;t buying because of one person having a better crab than the other–they all look the same. So what I'm spending my money on was this kind of energy from the people. So we did scallops, we did the bamboo clams which were my favorite thing. We did snails, we did little clams in a ginger lemon broth. Then we did two whole seabass, some Chinese fried fish. Then we did crab with the egg and salt, which is very good. We did prawns, scallops two different ways, some green vegetables… First off, I couldn't believe the price! There was five of us, we could have fed twelve people. Then we told them how to cook it. If the meal was not good, it still would have not mattered because it was so much fun buying the food! And so on top of it the meal was fantastic. It was great, it was really really good.And it was a great first introduction to not just the Filipino cuisine, but the people and the way the whole meal was done. I love these calamansi limes? The small ones? They're great. You can't get them back home.
Photo from Fidel Gastros Instagram
If you had a day to tour someone in your hometown, where would you take them for good food?
I'd take them to my restaurant, and then to my food truck. [laughs] You know, in all honesty, I would take them to a part of the city called Kensington Market. It's downtown, and if you walk in, there's a lot of Jamaican food, and a little bit after that there's a lot of Latin American food and South American food. And across the street, there's Chinatown as well. In like four blocks, you can hit like three quarters of the globe. And then there's a burger place and a really good taco place [laughs]. I don't know if it's the best food in the city, but if you want to get a really quick snapshot of the flavors, it would be there.
Do you have a favorite ingredient when you are cooking?
Yeah, I'd say garlic. It's pretty amazing. Anyone who doesn't like garlic, I'm like, 'Really?! Why? What's wrong with it?' [laughs] It's so amazing. And then I guess, more recently, I really started to fall in love with ginger. It has a very unique property, it's very cleansing, I find. And it could work in a lot of styles of cooking. It's a good bridge ingredient, I call it? Like if you want to make something have some northern Thai flavors, but also have Indian flavors, whatever it is, I think there's a lot of possibilities with ginger. What else? Love limes, lime juices. Fresh limes are amazing. Grilled lemons. Whenever I have steak I always grill lemons, and put lemon on the top of it.
Is there something that you can't ever give up eating?
I can never ever give up pasta! Like, I see gluten-free pasta nd my heart breaks. [laughs] I would give up anything else, pasta would be very hard.
Any pasta in particular?
Rigatoni!
Why?
'Cause it's such a big tube that sauce can get stuck in it. If you cook a nice meat sugo, meat will get stuck in it, and cheese… No, I will never give that up! [laughs] And it's gotta be al dente! Cause there's nothing worse than an overcooked burger, and an overcooked pasta.
If there was a restaurant that would serve a dish inspired by you, like 'The Matt Special,' what would it be?
That's a really good question. It wouldn't be a dessert, I know that, because I'm not a big dessert guy. Hmmm. I don't know, maybe a t-bone steak with a side of rigatoni. [laughs]
And a burger on top!
And a burger on top. [laughs] But you know in all honesty, it would be something elaborate, and hopefully memorable.
And if you could pick your final meal on earth, your last supper, what would your spread look like?
Oh man. So I get a full spread? Okay. There will just be bacon right here, just cooked bacon with Nutella on it. Bacon and Nutella over here. A salad—no, I'm kidding. [laughs] I would then have a t-bone steak, I would have some rigatoni with a white bean tomato sauce. For dessert I would have a Baked Alaska. Like I said, I don't like dessert, but it's huge, and if they're gonna kill me, I wanna make sure that I have gas before I go, just to make them suffer. [laughs] Some ribs, too. Some saucy Texas ribs.
Last question: if you could give some advice to anyone aspiring to enter the food business, what would your advice be?
Be prepared to work all the time, that's the first one. And I think that's important because people don't realize it. I mean, here we are today, here I am today being invited here to cook for everyone and AFC brought me here. It took a lot of work to get to that point. And it seems that if you just talk about it to someone, it seems like it just happened. But I was working 7 days a week, probably 20 hours a day for a good year and a half, and I could've worked longer if I had to, if I was able to. So I think, really understanding the value of a solid work ethic is definitely the most important thing.
And the next important thing is to be well researched before you dive in. Our food truck is very popular, not that we make it look easy, but we get requests to book the truck for events, and once again, we worked hard to get there. But people see this now, and they see our show, and they go, 'Looks easy, I'll open a food truck!' And then they don't even understand how the bylaws of the city are like, they think people are just waiting to give them spots to put up the truck. They don't understand the business around it, and I think that is a shame, I think that you have to be well researched. Passion is great, but misguided passion is just a curse sometimes, you know? You have to be well-versed and have a strategy. Understand what you're getting into because if you're saying you're going to give up everything to do this, you got to be ready for what that means. It's a cutthroat industry, and costs a lot of money. It's a volatile industry, and I think you just have to be as prepared as you can be.
Matt's Recipe for Elvis in a Jar
Dessert, Serves 4
Photo from Fidel Gastros Instagram
It’s a well-known fact that Elvis' favorite sandwich was a peanut butter, bacon and banana sandwich. Now I’ve always admired the king. He was different in a time of static. He was rock n' roll in a time of crooner, and he was eating these bad boys when everyone else was eating green peas out of a can.
This dish is made up of brioche French toast, cooked bananas, zabaglione, candied bacon, and peanut butter whipped cream. In a jar.
- 6 mason jars (250 mL each)
- 4 egg yolks
- ¼ cup of white sugar
- ¼ cup of Marsala
- 2 bananas
- 250 mL of maple syrup, divided
- 2 oz of dark rum
- 500 mL of whipping cream
- 250 mL of sweet peanut butter
- 8 slices of brioche bread
- 6 eggs
- 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter
Where to begin. The zambaglione is the hardest part of this dish so maybe let's get it out of the way first. Find a large glass bowl and a pot that will allow the bowl to fit in it snuggly but still large enough that there is space between the bottom of your bowl and the water in the pot. Boil the pot of water over high heat, and then reduce the heat to medium-low, and allow the water to simmer. Carefully place the bowl in the pot, and mix the egg yolks with the sugar in that bowl. Whisk thoroughly but be careful, if you whisk too quickly or if the water gets too hot the zambaglione could cook which means its garbage. Slowly pour in the Marsala, and remove the bowl from the heat. Continue to whisk. You’re looking to make a thick, foamy, velvety, yellow cream. Once you get it like this, first give yourself a pat on the back, and then put the zambaglione in the fridge. Cut the banana into small pieces, and cook them for approximately 5 minutes in a non-stick pan over medium heat with 1 tablespoon of maple syrup.
Preheat oven to 400ºF. Cut each slice of bacon in half, and place them on a baking sheet. Paint each slice with some of the maple syrup and rum. Bake the bacon slices for approximately 6 minutes. After that, double check the bacon and bake for a few more minutes until the bacon caramelizes. The bacon can go from under-cooked to burnt very quickly. When the bacon comes out super crispy, give it one more brush of maple syrup. Take half the bacon and chop it into small pieces and keep the remainder as full pieces.
Pour your whipping cream into a bowl, and use an electric mixer to give it body. Add the sweet peanut butter to the mixing bowl, and continue to mix it until you have peanut butter whipped cream. Place it in the fridge, uncovered, right next to that zambaglione.
Last stop, cut each piece of brioche bread into quarters, and dip into egg wash (scramble the eggs together in a bowl). Melt a little bit of butter in a non-stick pan over medium heat, and grill the bread for approximately 2 minutes on each side until it is golden brown.
Build these bad boys in the jars. Take a piece of the quartered French toast and use it as the first layer in the jar. Then build up with a layer of the zambaglione, then crumbled candied bacon, and bananas. Then top it with another piece of brioche French toast. Slather it with peanut butter whipped cream. The zambaglione and the peanut butter whip cream might need a quick little whip up with a fork or spoon before they go in.
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Catch Matt Basile's 'Rebel Without A Kitchen' Season 2 on Asian Food Channel, with its next episodes airing on September 18 (10om and 10:30pm) and September 19 (2:00am and 2:30am).
AFC is currently on Dream Satellite TV Channel 27, Cignal Channel 26, Destiny Cable TV Channel 71 Analog and Channel 22 Digital.Visit www.asianfoodchannel.com or Like them on Facebook (/asianfoodchannel) for more information.
Matt's food truck Priscilla and his flagship restaurant Lisa Marie are both located in Toronto, Canada. His first cookbook, 'Street Food Diaries: Irresistible Recipes Inspired by the Street,' is available online via Amazon. Visit http://fidelgastro.ca/ for more information or follow Matt and his truck's food adventures on Twitter and Instagram (@fidelgastros).
