Matt is the chef/partner of the Brooklyn barbecue restaurant Pig Beach and Pig Bleecker, a full-service restaurant with a focus on smoked-centric comfort food in NYC's Greenwich Village. Both restaurants have been celebrated by diners and critics alike including a great review from Eater's resident meat expert Nick Solares, who named Pig Beach one of their "Essential Barbecue Restaurants," and an enthusiastic one-star review from The New York Times for Pig Bleecker. Matt first earned his BBQ chops during his time working on America’s highly competitive barbecue teams, Salty Rinse, receiving 2nd place medal for Whole Hog in 2015 and 1st Place for Best Sauce (Mustard) at the annual Memphis in May World Championship. Prior to opening his own restaurants, Matt was the Chef de Cuisine of Del Posto and during is tenure, the restaurant received a coveted four-star review from the New York Times, and the Relais & Chateaux distinction. Raised in the small upstate New York town of New Hartford in an extremely tight-knit Italian-American-Lebanese family where he began his culinary training at a very young age by rolling meatballs and house made pasta with his nona. Today, Matt is a frequent guest chef on The Today Show and has appeared on NBC's The Chew and DirecTV's Fantasty Zone.