Matthew Mathlage - Chef/Owner
Eric Dietrich - COO/Owner
Karl Williams - Sous Chef
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Matthew Mathlage is Light Bistro’s chef. Underscore chef. He is passionate about the food, the menu, and the preparation and cooking of it.
Mathlage invents (there is no better word) the menu, prepares and cooks the ingredients side-by-side with his line cooks. He does it all. That’s the way he wants it. “If all I was doing was expediting, I’d lose my enthusiasm for the job,” he said. Rest assured, however, that long before plates leave the kitchen, they’ve been “expedited” by Mathlage and the rest of the cooks. They are inspected scrupulously to make sure the dish—be it appetizer, entrée, or dessert—is exactly what the guest ordered. “I’m constantly on the line, never in the office. Best part of the job is the creative control I have of the menu,” Mathlage said.
He will tell you he’s been cooking and loving it since he was 12. His parents owned and operated restaurants, so that when he decided to attend the International Culinary Academy in Pittsburgh, it seemed to him to be the logical progression. “I learned the business from the inside, kind of by osmosis,” he said, “but learning the fundamentals at culinary school reinforced my appreciation of what cooking is all about.”
Before opening Light Bistro at the same spot occupied by Parker’s in Ohio City, Chef Matt (as he likes to be called) was Exec Chef at The Leopard (Aurora, Ohio) where he and his staff ran a kitchen that earned AAA’s Four-Diamond Award four years in a row (2003-2006). Before that, Chef Matt toiled as sous at the Fairlawn Country Club, (Akron, OH), and helped open the Old Whedon Grill, (Hudson, OH). Today the grill is known for its hamburgers, but when Mathlage was chef there, it copped Cleveland Magazine’s “Best New Restaurant” in 1997.
“At Light Bistro, we will be doing a small-plates—tastings-menu—cuisine that no one else around here is even approaching: food that is not stereotypically Cleveland,” he said. “It’ll be somewhat of an extension of what Parker’s chef/owner Parker Bosley cooked: local produce, lots of organic ingredients, a vegetarian menu. Yes, we will have the steaks and chops—that’s a given in most restaurants in the area—but everything else is innovative, unlike anything else here. What we will offer on the menu will be tough to duplicate at home.”
Mathlage describes his small-plates/tastings menu as “progressive American.” Examples will include Kobe short ribs, braised oxtail omelet, pickled shrimp, and eggplant flan. “We manipulate ingredients,” says Chef Matt, “in ways that are not normally thought of. We will present foods in such a way to impart new and different flavors without turning off guests.”
Mathlage wants to be known as curiously innovative, someone who stays way ahead of trends (he learns about them by reading voraciously and checking various websites to find out what chefs all over are doing), thus managing to stay a step ahead of his competition. And, even though he’s read about and experienced the latest fad—molecular gastronomy—he may fiddle with it, but it will never overpower the menu. By the same token, he’ll tell you, “I don’t want to do what everyone else is doing. I need to do different things, those things that other chefs here and elsewhere only aspire to do.”
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There are several nice things that collectively make up the Dietrich persona, but one of the nicest is that he’s a graduate of Cleveland Heights High School; and, in that sense, not only is he a product of the city, but understands, as do many Clevelanders, what the city is all about, what it represents, and what it takes to survive here. There is not likely to be another high school that reflects better the city’s diversity from blue- to white collar; from Black to white, Asian to Hispanic, gentile to Jewish. Whatever else Dietrich learned while prepping at Heights, adjusting to and appreciating disparate cultures and values are what remain rooted in his psyche. He’ll tell you that those qualities not only served him well once he graduated from Mount Union College where he earned a BA in sports management, but are crucial to understanding what takes place in a restaurant: behind the scenes—working with kitchen and dining-room staff—and up front welcoming guests and mingling with them.
His career following graduation took him, from 1998-2000, into his father’s business, Glass Equipment Development (GED), where he was the company’s Midwest regional sales manager. From GED, he joined the Cleveland Force indoor soccer team as vice president and assistant general manager from 2000 to 2005. And then . . .well, then, he got his first taste of what the restaurant business is all about by becoming an investor in The Original Soupman which some people claim is the model for Seinfeld’s soup Nazi character. The company is a soup franchise and retail packaged goods company (in Cleveland, the soups are available at Heinen’s grocery stores). Its soups were rated one of the best-tasting in a recent issue of Consumer Reports. The company is franchisor to 27 franchisees in 13 states and Canada: www.originalsoupman.com
Dietrich and chef/owner Matthew Mathlage have been friends for more than 3 years; and they love to tell you how they noodled the idea of co-owning a restaurant nearly two years ago, inviting potential investors to join them in the enterprise; but, as Dietrich likes to point out, “potential is never a guarantee of commitment,” so they decided to strike out on their own and open Light Bistro.
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