Ones to Watch 2013 // Matthew Daughaday

Why Watch Him: He’s developing a grown-up Taste.

Age: 32

When Matthew Daughaday graduated from California Culinary Academy in San Francisco in 2008, his next step was to apply for an externship: unpaid, work experience in a professional kitchen. In his hometown of St. Louis, “people were talking about food way more” than before. Twenty minutes after his interview with Gerard Craft, chef-owner of Niche, the celeb chef called Daughaday to offer him the post at his flagship restaurant. What’s Daughaday done since then that people are now talking about him way more than before? Time – and food – tell his story.

July 2008
Daughaday begins his externship at Niche. “One of my initial duties was making family meal for everybody every day. So as everybody’s prepping, I’m running around trying to throw pizzas in the oven.”

Winter 2010
Having climbed the ladder from the fish station to sous chef, Daughaday experiences a moment of pride: His “really, really simple” brandade (a creamy salt cod dish) gets a thumbs-up when he tests it out at Taste, Craft’s cocktail bar. “It was an easy sell.”

October 2011
Newly appointed chef de cuisine at Taste, Daughaday conceives a lamb sugo plate: “That was the first dish that I drew inspiration from somewhere else besides Niche, but still fit to the concept that was Taste. [I was] not trying to recreate a Niche dish.”

September 2012
When Daughaday puts bacon fat-fried cornbread on the menu, he reaches a new high on the low-brow scale that defines the culinary quest at Taste: “to take a homey dish and refine it.” He doesn’t know whether he’s CDC or exec chef, but he knows when he’s hit the mark. “A foodie person told me that the cornbread was probably the best plate of food they’ve eaten in St. Louis. Really? Cornbread? That’s exactly what we’re going for: Taking something that you’ve had a bunch of times as a kid and making it the best that you’ve had.”

Future quest
Will Daughaday invent a dessert as wildly popular as the Pigwich, a bacon-buttercream-filled, pig-shaped cookie conceived by Craft and now retired from Taste’s menu? “I have yet to come up with anything that rivals it.” While he’s chewing it over, the rest of us can chomp on the churros he just added to the menu.

Taste, 4584 Laclede Ave., St. Louis, 314.361.1200, tastebarstl.com