Chef Matteo Silverman’s passion is creating unique plant-based, vegan food focused on a farm-to-table philosophy as well as incorporating flavors and ingredients from diverse cultures and cuisines. He seeks fresh, seasonal ingredients that are local, organic, and sustainably grown. Chef Matteo has been a vegan for 30 years and cooking professionally as a vegan chef for over 22 years. He graduated from San Francisco State University with a Bachelor of Science in Restaurant and Hospitality Management in 1999.

He then wet his feet in the San Francisco restaurant scene, working at the famous Greens, Millennium, and Paul K. restaurants. Chef Matteo moved to NYC in March 2001 and graduated from the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health & Culinary Arts that July. Upon graduation he worked at various bakeries and restaurants honing his skills and learning the trade. Along the way he worked privately for families and high-profile clients in entertainment and finance.  In January 2003, Matteo launched, 4 Course Vegan, his highly acclaimed underground restaurant he hosted in his Williamsburg loft every Saturday until 2012. 

As consulting chef, from 2009-2014, he also created the raw foods menu for Juice Generations’ Cooler Cleanse and its retail stores in NYC.  He created menus, standardized  recipes, trained staff and sourced packaging and ingredients. He oversaw the expansion from  3 stores to 8 stores and helped scale the raw foods program to keep each store well stocked. Matteo assisted the commissary kitchen manager in daily operations as needed.

Upon moving back to California in January 2012, he founded Chalk Hill Cookery , a vegan food company in Sonoma County that garnered quite the local following at farmers markets, popup dinners and festivals.  In 2019, as the Executive Chef, he joined the NewTree Ranch family. He co-created the plant-based, vegan food program at the ranch that nourished the guests who stayed. NewTree Ranch is an eco-luxury farm stay with a produce farm and rescued animals, providing guests an experience that models a spiritual-ethical-ecological approach to agriculture, plant-based nutrition, and wellness.

Chef Matteo owned and operated Buddha's Garden, a vegan cafe in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua for 2 years. His love of tropical ingredients and increasing desire to learn local Nicaraguan recipes were the inspiration for the menu at this location.

Matteo has consulted with numerous businesses in Northern Califonria, helping them grow their plant-based offerings and writing new menus and recipes for their food establishments.  It is his mission to have restaurants of all types and sizes to offer more plant-based options to their communities, to follow the trends and increase their margins through these adaptations.