Hello out there

I'm Matthew.
A few weeks ago the doors opened at Reserve, a wine bar in Grand Rapids, Michigan with me at the helm in the kitchen. In tow are Brandon Sturm and Matt Green, our charcutier/butcher and sous chef respectively, long time friends and colleagues. The aim here is to tell the story of our kitchen: the trials of running a restaurant (the toilet in our employee bathroom is currently filled with hot water, an issue that took a day or two to notice, a day to believe it was actually happening, and god knows how long to fix), the joys of working with our suppliers and products, and what we are doing in the kitchen to tell their story.

Before coming to Reserve, I was owner of a restaurant called Journeyman in Fennville with my wife Amy. The name came from the stages of craftsmanship: novice, who learns basic skills related to his trade, apprentice, who studies under a master to hone his skills, journeyman, who goes out into the world to find his identity and purpose as it relates to his craft, and master, who knows enough to at least say he knows it all. I don't think it is possible to have mastery in food and cooking. There is too much to know and the field changes too quickly. Being a journeyman, being in the world and consciously absorbing what it has to teach you, that is rewarding.

At Journeyman we decided from the beginning that the food that came from the farms a stones throw away from us was of infinitely better quality than what we could source from an institutional food service provider and that sourcing from them would be the cornerstone of our culinary philosophy. We expanded that idea to include small scale cheese makers and other artisans from around the country and had some success getting noticed because of it. Ever since, the careful sourcing of high quality foods from smaller, hands on farms and producers has remained of primary importance in my kitchens.

I believe that foods that have a good story behind them actually taste better. That context is real, and luckily the powers that be behind Reserve believe that too. So over the coming years, we will search out and visit new farms and reconnect with old ones, learn new techniques and refine old, taste wine (and beer, and gin, and Irish whiskey...), dig vegetables, butcher pork, eat, talk shop with fellow chefs, and whatever else we can think of to help fuel our understanding of the culinary and agricultural character of West Michigan.