Matt Kelly

Matt Kelly, chef/owner of St. James, Mothers and Sons and Mateo in Durham, NC.

Illustration by Matthew Shipley

Hungry? Chef Matt Kelly, owner of your favorite restaurants in Durham, is here to make you drool even more:

Overrated table manner? 

That’s a great question. I like that question. Scraping your plate. Scrape away. Scrape away! Slosh that bread on that plate. Everybody else at your table wants to do it. They are all thinking about it. If they’re not, you don’t want to sit with them anyway. 

How many fried shrimp will it take to cure Covid fatigue? 

Ha. I’d have to start and see what the number comes up to. 

Favorite after work drink with staff?

Malibu, straight up, at Bull McCabe’s or Accordion Club with Josh “Skinny” DeCarolis. 

What is the most Irish thing about you? 

I love potatoes. I’m obsessed. You can do so much with them. You can do anything to them. They’re used in nearly every culture I can think of. Potatoes. Potatoes. Potatoes are the greatest vegetable. That’s how I know I’m Irish.  

Speaking of potatoes, what’s your Waffle House hash browns order? 

My longtime order is ‘EVERYTHING’ (except the new addition, which is the gravy.) It has to come with a waffle sidecar, and a bacon sidecar for that matter. I turn that into a taco with fake butter and maple syrup. It’s an amount of fake butter that will end you early and a gross amount of maple syrup.