Ever wondered how a chef goes from two-star French rigidity to painting with fire in the garden and landing Selfridges with a sauce born at a dinner party? That’s the pulse of this conversation with Mat Blak—restless, funny, bruised by failure, and absolutely electric about food that respects where it comes from.
We start with boundaries and how to break them well. Mat calls it free cooking: pushing flavour without trampling the roots. He explains why anchovies, Galician beef, proper olive oil and technique are the difference between fusion that sings and mash-ups that go nowhere. Then it gets human—pulling cold pork butts for a festival queue, brisket humbling a pro, and the truth that repetition turns chaos into craft. He walks us through his backyard “studio,” Big Green Egg, Minimax, gas for clients who rely on it, wood-fired ovens for heat and theatre, and the reality that wind and rain don’t care about your content plan.
The sauce story is a masterclass in scaling. Partnering with an ex-chemist, Mat learns how garlic refuses to scale neatly, why water matters, and how a late-night Instagram message became a Selfridges deal. We talk wins and stalls—Blackfire’s slow burn, Blak Elder’s sweet-chilli pop, and the maple-smoked pineapple vinegar that stole Christmas hams across the country. He’s frank about supermarkets, margins, ticking shelf lives, bottles and labels that swallow profit, and the grit it takes to keep going.
Culture and community thread through it all. Mat shares a careful collaboration with Tribe Apparel using a Māori hammerhead motif, tying the shark’s need to keep swimming to mental health—move, breathe, endure. Proceeds back the Burnt Chef Project with training that reaches kitchens where it’s needed most. And for pure cooking joy, Barbecue Bingo lands on chicken hearts, and Matt leaves the next guest a gem: finish a hard-charred steak with a brush of kecap manis before the rest for a glossy, umami-laced crust.
If you love live fire, honest craft, and the stories behind the plates and bottles, you’ll feel right at home. Subscribe, share with a mate who lives by the grill, and leave a review—what lesson from Matt will you try first?
