Mathieu Palombino

Expert Interview: Mathieu Palombino

Behind the Chef

What were your favorite foods growing up?
My mother's winter Pot au Feu

When did you decide you wanted to be a chef?
Around 14

Where and when did your career in food begin?
I began a four-year apprenticeship at 15.

If you didn't become a chef, what would you be?
Definitely a charcutier.

Who/what has shaped your cooking the most over the years?
Bernard Derrijk was the Chef de Cuisine at Le Charmette, where I did my apprenticeship - he taught me how to work. Later, in New York, Laurent Tourondel took me under his wing and became a huge influence.

What influences your cooking style and particularly your menu?
My cooking style is mostly influenced by the time of the year as most of cooks are. I see things lighter during spring and summer with usually short time cooking; as the weather turns cold, the colors of my menu are getting darker and deeper, and the cooking gets longer as patrons prefer rustic flavors. The seasons influence the menu a lot in the product and the techniques I use.

What is your favorite secret ingredient?
Parmigiano Reggiano is a wonderful thing - it salts, peppers, sharpens, and regulates.

What is the one rule or value you try to instill in all of your staff?
A serious diligence when it comes to cooking

If I'm trying to watch my weight and I'm eating at your restaurant, what am I ordering to eat?
You look great - order a pizza!

What was the most challenging meal you had to make? Why?
A Chanukah breakfast for top executives at The Rockefeller. Having no experience in the matter I did a lot of research and found traditional recipes of authentic Jewish cuisine. It was difficult, because I was trying to get these ethnic flavors right with absolutely no experience. I knew that approaching Jewish holiday traditional food from a French perspective was not going to taste right. I really wanted to make it a success , so I did it very simply - I didn't do anything that a parent would not do.

What was your worst restaurant disaster?
100 pizzas in about an hour and half on the day of opening Motorino. I was very frustrated, but thank god the pizzas coming out of the oven were so beautiful that I was laughing.

What is your least favorite food?
I don't know what it tastes like, but you couldn't pay me to eat beef jerky.

What are some recent dining and culinary trends you have been observing?
In New York the food trends are mutating everyday. After about 2 decades of modern cuisine topped by the era of molecular cuisine, I think that people have gone around and are all excited by eating pigs again and heartier food with substance. I also see an interest in challenging dishes such as kidney or even lamb hearts. When I arrived in the United States nine years ago and served veal kidney, "beauge," to a restaurateur I was working for, he told me to forget about it - that food was long gone and no one was ever going to be interested in eating that. He said, "This is New York. You're not in Europe anymore."

When you are not eating at your own restaurant...you are eating at?
My kitchen table in Brooklyn

Which foreign country inspires your style most?
The United States.

What was the most spectacular meal you have ever had?
A game dinner in the Belgian Ardennes during hunting season: hare terrine, porcini, huge squab with the bullet still in, and wild boar.

What do you eat when you are home?
Olives, saucisson, bread

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Expert Profile

Having played a significant role in the redefinition of the bistro concept at Laurent Tourondel's famed BLT Restaurants; Chef Mathieu Palombino is now expressing the heart and soul of the pizzeria at Motorino.

The chef found his way to Italian cooking while growing up in the small town of Mouscron, Belgium. While his mother owned a local butcher shop, he learned to cook from his father and aunts, who took recipes from their native Southern Italy across the border, and he discovered Neapolitan pizza at his neighborhood's pizza shop.

A wild child, Palombino found structure and discipline in the kitchen as a 14-year old apprentice. By sixteen, he was a professional cook well-versed in French technique. After working in several well-known restaurants in Brussels, he came to New York in 2001. He immediately loved Manhattan's wide selection of pizza, and having found a shop he loved, would frequent it for a majority of his meals. However, in pursuit of culinary training, he courted upscale restaurants: "There was never a question in my mind; since coming to New York I have wanted to open a pizzeria, but first I needed to polish my training."

He found a mentor in Chef Laurent Tourondel, as the Executive Chef of Cello. Palombino took a position as a cook and was transported by "Tourondel's high standards of purity and perfection in the kitchen."

In 2002 Palombino had the opportunity to open Café Charbon on the Lower East Side and implement his full repertoire of French training. In 2004 he welcomed the opportunity to team back up with his mentor for the opening of Tourondel's namesake restaurants: BLT Steak and BLT Fish. As Chef de Cuisine of BLT Fish, Palombino played a key role in the restaurant's three-star New York Times review for "exquisitely-moist, delicately flavored and expertly prepared" seafood.

By 2007 Palombino was ready to pour his devotion, craft and creativity into his own recipe for a dynamic eatery and the answer was already waiting -- a pizzeria. He traveled to his family's roots in Southern Italy, absorbing Naples' pizzerias, sampling Sicilian olive oil, and affirming his desire to bring the region's authentic pleasures back to New York.

He trained with one of the few pizzerias in the U.S. that is certified by the Verace Pizza Napoletana Americas, a government recognized trade association that preserves the tradition of Napoletana pizza, and spent a year alone on creating the perfect dough.