Food & Wine Best New Chefs 2021: Matt Horn
In the crackling flames of the fire he had just lit in his grandmother's backyard, Matt Horn found his life's calling. "The smoke is in your face, you're hearing the wood cracking, you're seeing the embers, you're seeing the coals being formed," he explains. "It was transformative for me. I zoned out. Nothing else around me mattered." That was it—he was hooked, and there was no going back. Horn knew at that moment that he would spend the rest of his life pursuing the mastery of barbecue.
首先，导致霍恩（Horn）点燃了火的原因只是追逐直觉。这位加利福尼亚人在二十多岁时担任各种体育用品连锁店的区域经理。他生活在fast food并发现自己感到沮丧。“有一天，我就像，'为什么我不做饭呢？'”霍恩使自己成为一个简单的盒装意大利面和果酱番茄酱的晚餐，当他看着面条在沸水中跳舞时，他感到镇定。这种经历开始了对烹饪世界的痴迷。而且他无法停止思考烧烤。“我问自己，'如果我每天可以吃点东西，在周围，那会是什么？”霍恩说：“沉浸在我心中的东西是烧烤。”“我认为这是在火和烹饪周围的原始本能。”
Horn倾向于以全有或全无的心态来应对生活决策。霍恩说：“如果我要进入任何事情，我需要完全淹没自己。”“我在脑海中做出了承诺，我对自己做出了承诺，即我将成为一个虔诚的烧烤学生。”他位于加利福尼亚州英格伍德的公寓大楼不允许他开火，所以他开车三个半小时以北到弗雷斯诺的祖母的房子，在那里她仍然有祖父的设置 - 一旦用于家庭聚会，但休眠已有十多年 - 直接。霍恩必须上班，尝试各种树林，烹饪时间和温度，有条不紊地跟踪他的发现。他睡在外面，以便监视大火。他选择自学而不是为某人工作，因为他想发展自己的风格：“我不想学习别人的方法，”他说。（即使到今天，Horn除了自己的餐厅都从未在餐厅工作。）
Shortly after this, Horn, along with his wife, Nina, and their infant son, moved in with his in-laws in Tracy, California. A week after his first visit to the local farmers market, he decided to start selling his barbecue there. He had just eight customers on the first day, and Horn never made more than $250 in a day, he says, but he was still over the moon. "It was an opportunity for me to put my product out there, to get feedback from people that weren't family—and people loved it."
霍恩将目光投向了弹出窗口。在他的第一次，在Tracy的一个酒吧小巷中，在110度的一天中，他整天在黑色帐篷里出汗了五个小时，而没有出售一盘食物。vwin德赢ac米兰出于尴尬，不想浪费肉，他把食物送给了无家可归者。vwin德赢ac米兰霍恩发现自己在家里的沙发上，质疑他的整个道路。他的许多朋友和家人认为他对烧烤的痴迷是个玩笑。霍恩对自己说：“也许我在浪费时间。”但是那天晚上晚些时候，他梦见了“黑色建筑物，从前门，我看到人们在街区上排成一列。”这是一个梦想喇叭烧烤- 沿块上的线路。
Horn jolted awake, recommitted to his vision. He reached out to 40 different businesses in the Bay Area to see if they could host a pop-up, eventually landing a permanent space in Oakland that today is a brick-and-mortar restaurant were he now cooks out of a 1,000-gallon offset smoker—a far cry from a firepit in his grandmother's backyard. Customers wait for hours for a taste of his brisket, the meat cooked low and slow for anywhere between 16 to 18 hours and sliced to order. It's a transcendent mouthful: the bark is properly charred, the meat moist, and the fat so wobbly it gently coats your tongue.
牛ket可能是菜单的明星，但也有自制的热连接，丰满和散发着辛辣的肉，还有熏制的火鸡乳房，美味又嫩，即使不使用盐水。值得为俗气的马铃薯砂锅节省空间。在对他的祖母的颂歌中，Horn烘烤了小土豆的小多米诺蛋糕，鸡肉汤，酸奶油，黄油和切达干酪。对于甜点，妮娜（Nina）制作了奶油香蕉布丁的托盘。这是刚开始几轮烟，火和盐的味蕾的理想箔。
Horn's barbecue is difficult to put into the usual boxes of regionality; he sees his role as part artist and part storyteller. "When I cook barbecue, I look at it, and I'm like, 'How can I turn this raw piece of meat into something that's a work of art?' That's how I look at the barbecue that I do. But also, I want it to tell a story," explains Horn. He wants to pay homage to the Black pitmasters, both well-known and forgotten, upon whose shoulders he stands.
The brick-and-mortar location of Horn Barbecue is only a year old, but Horn is just getting started. He is about to open Kowbird, a Southern-style fried chicken restaurant. Also set to open this year: a burger concept called Matty's Old Fashioned and a trailer that will serve both tacos and smoked meat. "I don't like doing anything halfway. I'm very weird about time," says Horn. "I feel like time is life's most precious commodity, and I don't like to waste it at all."
Photos by Aubrie Pick