My Life in Meals: Matt Hranek

"I was working a lot for Wallpaper ... and they let me just pick and choose whatever assignments I wanted. I pitched them this cool new restaurant called The French Laundry."

Illustration by Clara Arnold

Welcome to The Supersonic, Blackbird’s newsletter for the restaurant-obsessed. If this is your first time with us, please enjoy a subscription on the house.

Matt Hranek is, among many things, all of which involve style, food, and a taste for adventure, the founder and editor of WM Brown Magazine, as well as the author of such books as “A Man & His Watch,” “A Man & His Kitchen,” and “The Negroni: A Love Affair with a Classic Cocktail.” We caught up with Matt as he was packing up his Brooklyn apartment and decamping—along with his wife Yolanda Edwards, founder and editor of YOLO Journal—for Southwestern France.

I grew up in Upstate New York with an Italian mother and a Czech father. There was no way that the Eastern European cuisine was gonna win out with my mom at the helm. My mom was a great cook. I put her meatball recipe in my book, “A Man and His Kitchen.”

But I also grew up in a classic American diner, which was my Aunt Laura’s. Most diners in New York are owned by Greeks but this was an Italian-American diner. Instead of souvlaki or gyro as the special it would be, like, eggplant parm and baked ziti. My uncle had a bar surprisingly called Uncle Tony's because he was Uncle Tony.

My immigrant Italian grandparents made most of my meals as a kid. So you could just imagine that was salami and mortadella and Italian bread. Of course, I wanted Fluffernutter and Wonder Bread and instead I'm getting soppressata and focaccia, that kind of shit.

A classic Upstate New York egg sandwich you do on toast with white American cheese. I love it. I’d never seen yellow American cheese until I came to New York City. I mean, I didn't know bacon egg and cheese on a roll, either. 

I just love vernacular foods. Growing up, it was chicken wings, clambakes. Then during Easter, it would be all the Eastern European stuff. Pierogies. Halupki. The smell of dill in paprika at my grandmother's house. I remember those kind of fire pit chickens that you would see on the side of the road. Classic Upstate New York kind of Italian marinated whole bird. I just love all that stuff.

When I moved to New York, I was really broke, but I didn't want to eat crappy food. I lived on the Upper West Side. I had a Pullman kitchen. It had a microwave and two burners, but I used to make the most exotic things. I used to pretend I was making money. I would save up money and go buy quail at Dean & DeLuca. Who the fuck did I think I was? I mean from chicken wings to prosciutto and sage-stuffed quails. I was leaning into as much pretension as possible.

When I moved to Mulberry Street, I bought a rice cooker. I was always on a bicycle, and I was so close to Chinatown and I just fell in love with this one fish market where I could buy lobsters with only one claw. You’d be able to get three for twelve dollars. And my friends would be like, ‘how are you eating lobster?’ And I was like, ‘you got to go buy them from the Chinese fish market guy.’ The lobsters had no value commercially, right? I’d buy a 10 pound bag of white rice and a bag of white onions and a bag of bok choy, and I would just eat things on white rice with soy and chili paste. I ate like a king. 

I wanted to be a fashion photographer, but some of my first jobs were for Food & Wine. All of a sudden I'm hanging out with Daniel Boulud and Eric Ripert. We're shooting and then we're eating all this food. I was saving all my money to eat and drink. I wasn't saving it to buy camera equipment. I was just squirreling money away to pay rent and eat.

The lifestyle world was kind of blowing up. Travel + Leisure. Martha Stewart. House & Garden. They would just cut you loose on an assignment. I always had this kind of exploratory travel bug. I took really deep dives when I would take any assignment. It didn't have to be exotic. It didn't have to be Thailand. It could have been, like, Toledo, and I just was like, ‘I’m gonna find what Toledo is all about,’ and that was usually through food and beverage.

Yolanda and I met in the early ‘90s. She was originally from San Francisco. And she said, ‘we’ve got to go hang out with my friend Laura, she's working at this new restaurant that just opened. It's called The French Laundry.’ We would go to San Francisco, go up to Yountville and visit Laura. I met Thomas [Keller] and we were eating there like it was the cafeteria. I mean it was absurd and we never had to pay for anything. I mean, I didn't know how good I got it. I was working a lot for Wallpaper at the time, and they let me just pick and choose whatever assignments I wanted. I pitched them this cool new restaurant called The French Laundry. Thomas and I spent the day together shooting food. And of course I was eating everything. He was changing the world with that restaurant. I remember eating that oyster and pearls dish, and just being like, ‘this is the best fucking thing I've ever eaten in my life.’

I really started taking that journey with Yolanda. She was so immersed in those kind of Northern California food traditions. I was traveling a lot and shooting a lot of travel stuff that often was food and beverage related and … it just exposed my world to such interesting things.

It’s all about vernacular food culture. That’s what I come back to. What are they eating in the Amalfi? What are they eating in Portland, Maine? What does Upstate New York mean to me in terms of food flavors and traditions? For me, it’s sort of like this bell curve, right? I kind of started with fried white onion and chilies over rice, and then I went to this fancy food world, and I think I've come exactly back to simplicity. 

Living in France now, in the southwest of France, a tin of sardines with good butter and perfect bread? That's Last Supper stuff.

This is how civilized Italy is. In baggage claim, in Fiumicino, one of the busiest airports in the world, you turn around and there's a coffee bar. I get irritated if the bag comes out before I finish my first cappuccino. It’s just sophisticated and perfect.

The best oysters I've ever eaten are the oysters in the Médoc, which are cold water, briny, deep cup. You just open them up and it's like the sea. So I think I'm more focused in that world than, like, the kind of foamy overthought stuff.

Something I can't stand about New York right now is you can't roll up to most restaurant bars without a reservation, which doesn't make sense. It's crazy. It drives me nuts.

I went to Mr. Chow last night. I'm kind of like doing the greatest hits in New York before I roll and I’d never been to Mr. Chow. It was fantastic. We just rolled up to the bar. We had a martini, we met some people, then we sat down. The meal was way too expensive but it was delicious and it was just like ticking a box. I think I'll do Indochine before I leave.

Whenever we get back to the city, the first meal we do after we get off the plane, if it's not like a slice of pizza from Pino’s with a Peroni or a Corona Light, is Japanese. It's sushi. There's one in Brooklyn that I really like called Katsuei. They do an omakase I think for 80 bucks. It is incredible. I mean the restaurant suffers a bit aesthetically. But these guys are just great chefs with great product. 

I have to say that I was getting a little fomo this summer of all my friends on the Italian Coast like eating vongole with a rosato on the beach. I'm like that is so good, like that is really great. But they're also not cooking Maine lobsters with salt potatoes and great corn on the cob like I did last weekend Upstate. Fresh corn like that, you only get in the States.

They're very seasonal and very local in terms of how they have food for sale in France. You have strawberries for one week. That's it. You don't get a strawberry ever again. They don't have cilantro, they're never gonna have it, it's never gonna be there. 

People give the French a lot of shit, including myself, for their two-hour lunches. But nobody will be stuffing a generic salad in their face. I was Uptown the other day and it was just a lot of bros getting to go salads in compostable bowls. Those compostable brown bowls, like stuffing salad in their face for lunch. Man, that really bums me out. It’s the hamster wheel of New York that drives me crazy.

I lean into my Italian roots real fast. Like being in Rome. In Rome I could roll into one of my favorite bars, Caffè Perù, which has the best negroni. It just went up in price. It went from five to eight euros. Every single day, they have a little vitrine of just fresh sautéed and grilled vegetables. I don't lean into being vegetarian at all. But I could be a pescatarian there without compromise of eating because of the food cultures of Rome. You realize they are by the sea. I don't know, as I get older, I just want to eat good stuff.

Listen, nobody loves a corn dog more than me. But I think that is a special occasion thing. That's the county fair. I was working for Oprah Winfrey once, and I had to go photograph her in Dallas. We went to the Texas State Fair. And she was like, ‘let's get corn dogs.’ And I was like, ‘yeah, we're getting corn dogs.’ There was a film crew with us, and I was also shooting. So I, like, devour the corn dog. Oprah takes one bite of hers and we get a picture of her with the corn dog. And all of a sudden, she's like, ‘oh my God, I gotta run to this television spot’ and she hands me her corn dog. It’s got one giant bite out of the top. I look at my assistant and go, ‘yeah I’m fucking eating this.’

When I used to travel without Yolanda, and our daughter Clara was younger, I would bring back these foods souvenirs, for them or friends, and that became my connection of the place. It could be as simple as a bar of chocolate from Geneva or a bottle of wine from France or, I don't know, some exotic spice or tinned fish from Spain. I try to always share those experiences if people weren't there with me.

My favorite boozy food is in Salzburg, Austria. It’s called a bosna. It’s street food. Two thin white sausages in a bun and then they put curry and onion on it and press it. It’s amazing. I make a curry pickle relish which is a nod to that. It’s in my cookbook. I love boiled meats and sauerkraut, leberkäse with mustard. How great is schnitzel with a dill cucumber salad? I mean, I love it. I love that food. The jury's out on how relative it is to actual cholesterol, but I don't really care about that. It’s life’s great balance. 

Another thing I don't want to hear about anymore is how bad alcohol is. I go on my IG and every one of these health guys that I follow tells me that. It's really irritating. It's like, I don't know, Spain has a pretty great history of contribution to world events and what do they lean into at 10 a.m.? Beer. Or I hear all these things about how carbohydrates and sugar are just deteriorating brains and causing diabetes, and then you go to Italy and there's not one Italian that doesn't start their breakfast with a milky coffee and a croissant. That culture looks pretty good to me. Listen, I want to be in shape and I want to be healthy for myself and for my family, and I owe it to my tailors to fit into clothes as long as I possibly can, but I think a lot of this kind of zealot talk about food is just … listen, I think processed food is absolute shit, and I would encourage many people to stop eating like that. Or just everything in the deep fat fryer drives me nuts. But I am not giving up french fries. Ever.

Where I am in the southwest of France, I can't roll out to any restaurant. We're in this sleepy little village in the middle of nowhere, but I do have access to insanely good product, from the best cheese to seafood and obviously wine, and that makes it really joyful to be home and cooking and taking your time. 

Like I said, it’s all a journey. I mean, I don’t want to waste my time with bad meals. I want to be surrounded by caring and loving people that want to share those meals with you and have an appreciation for what that tradition is. And that does not mean grabbing a salad in a compostable bowl on the side of the street. It's like, no, it does not.