One Block West Restaurant--Winchester, Virginia

One Block West

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Chef Ed Matthews

Ed Matthews is a relative newcomer to the restaurant business, having bought One Block West in 2002, after working in the metro-DC high tech world since 1986. He has no formal training as a chef.

Ed is a proud Virginian and native of Charlottesville, home to the University of Virginia from which he graduated in 1984 and where he met his wife Marianne, who is a physician in their adopted hometown of Winchester, Virginia. Ed and Marianne have two daughters, one in middle school and one in high school.

At UVa, Ed majored in French (or was that beer and women?) and needing to make a living, he enrolled at Texas A&M University and crammed his Master’s of Computer Science degree into 15 months. Then, really needing to make a living, he went to work for IBM, but quickly left Big Blue to join the first of several software startups in the metro-DC area.

2002 found Ed restless and bored with the high-tech world and facing an ever increasing commute. After many months of negotiation, he bought One Block West in a fit of insanity and the rest is history.

Ed also writes a daily food and restaurant blog called One Blog West.

For more, see Ed’s February 2008 interview with Matthew Razak of The Loudoun Connection.

In addition, here are several other questions that he answers frequently at the restaurant.

Q. Are you related to Eddie Mathews of the Boston/Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves?

A. No, sorry, I’m a Matthews, two t’s, and although I did make the little league all star team one year playing third base, I could never hit a ball because I am nearly legally blind in my right eye – I have no depth perception. Eddie is too young to be my grandfather and too old to be my father. I’m also right-handed and I hit only one home run in my career, and it was a bit right of the right field foul pole, alas. Moreover, Eddie’s a Texan and I’m a Virginian. Bottom line, I suck at baseball, unlike my cousin Mike who should have made the show, but didn’t. Now that boy could put a ball over the fence!

Q. Where do you get the ideas for your menu?

A. Usually from a little spark from something. I might be at the farmer’s market and see baby beets and start riffing on beets. I find that I have to feel, smell, and taste produce to get my creative juices flowing. Or I might have a conversation with one of my suppliers who might recommend something that looks especially good. Or I might have been thinking about Oaxacan cuisine for a week. I’m always thinking about food and flavor combinations. Often, I’m not conscious of where ideas come from—I just start writing a menu and the dishes materialize on paper and then I go cook them.

Q. Why put all the pressure on yourself to change the menu daily?

A. Because that’s who I am. I do not ever want to become complacent and I do not want the kitchen staff to become bored. Sure, it puts a lot of strain on me to always be thinking ahead and a lot of strain on the kitchen to be plating different dishes every night. It really would be nice to do the same thing a few nights in a row, to get in a rhythm, but there is a fine line between rhythm and sloppiness.

Q. Do you really shop locally?

A. Yes, I do. I make my rare forays from the restaurant to go to our local farmer’s market. You can find me shopping there in season Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and I do demos at the market throughout the year. Plus, I have local growers that grow for me and bring their products to the restaurant. Freshness is paramount for great flavor and so I try to source as much as possible locally. I also like the connection between grower and restaurateur—it’s a symbiotic relationship and we’re both striving for excellence. I also like that if the ingredients are not organic, I know exactly how they have been raised and treated. Items that we source locally include lamb; herbs; cheeses; wines; produce; foraged items such as wild mushrooms, wild asparagus, pawpaws, and ramps; honey; and shiitake mushrooms. If you’re interested in selling to the restaurant, come in and introduce yourself.

Q. How would you categorize your style of food?

A. That’s a toughie and I know that my PR firm would like to know the answer to that as well. It is surely eclectic—any menu with quail, shark, and Thai curry on it has got to be just a bit eclectic. I borrow liberally from every cuisine to which I have been exposed, so you could say there’s some fusion going on. But I’m into simplicity and flavor harmony, and sometimes fusion implies some really psycho stuff such as poached pig liver with caraway foam and peach schnapps. That’s not me at all. I like food at the peak of freshness and ripeness and I like for it to stand on its own. How am I as a chef going to improve upon a perfect basket of green beans? Why would I want to try to improve them? So call my cooking simple, fresh, flavorful, and, OK, eclectic. One Block West has a quaint, Old World, bistro atmosphere and I am American, so let’s call it eclectic American bistro, to coin a phrase.

Q. How do you know so much about wine?

A. Since I became of legal drinking age, I have been exploring wine. Compared to the vast universe of wine knowledge, I know virtually nothing. But after nearly 30 years of tasting, learning, and exploring, something has rubbed off—it’s sure not been an overnight thing. Also, I taste relentlessly—thousands and thousands of wines a year. And after hundreds of thousands of wines, I have built a taste memory and profile for lots of wines. I’m also fortunate to have learned a lot from Fran Kysela just before and during the startup phase of his importing business, Kysela Père et Fils. We’ve tasted gazillions of wines together and his palate is one in a billion. And I am very fortunate to know many winemakers who have graciously answered my endless series of questions and supplied lots of barrel samples to help me understand how vineyard management and winemaking affect the juice in the bottle. Finally, here’s to all the wine reps who bring me interesting things to taste just because they know I’d like to taste them, not because they necessarily think I’ll buy them.

Q. As a chef-owner, do you really do any cooking?

A. Yes, I need the relief from the constant paperwork that occupies most of my life. I cook at least one shift every day.

Q. How do you caramelize your scallops? I don’t seem to be able to do it at home.

A. First, you must have the right scallops, called dry scallops. Unfortunately, those that you get in the grocery store are probably wet scallops, which have been treated with sodium tripolyphosphate (STP), a chemical that helps retard spoilage as well as causing the scallops to retain moisture (more moisture, more weight; more weight, more money). When you cook such a scallop, it merely oozes water and steams itself in the pan.

Second, you must have a pan that is very hot—and forget about non-stick pans. Third, once you put the scallop in the pan, please just leave it sit there for two to three minutes to crust. Do not be tempted to move it about. Once you can see the crust that has formed on the bottom, you’re ready to flip it.

All this is by way of saying that dry scallops are hard to find if you are not in the business and you need to smoke up your house to really do it right, so just come to One Block West and eat our scallops! If you want to do it at home, you can try to get scallops from your fish person, but realize that he is going to have to buy them by the gallon. You probably have no need for a gallon of scallops, so… caramelized scallops is not really a dish for home.

Q. What’s a normal day for you?

A. About 8 am to 1 am. Here’s what happened on one day…

Q. I think I might like to own a restaurant or be a chef….

A. Forget about it! It’s brutal. You have no life, work all the time, burn yourself constantly, and work in brutal heat in the most fickle business in town for trivial pay. Unless you cannot picture yourself doing anything else despite all the hardship, it’s not the business for you. If you still think it is for you, maybe you want to try our Chef for a Day program. Call us at 540-662-1455 for details.

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