Matthew Herter

Executive Chef

Early Years

Staples Center and Nokia Theatre complex in Los Angeles, California pioneered the concept of fine dining at large sports stadiums and has the leading market share of premium foodservice operations at sports and entertainment facilities around the country. Chef Matthew Herter oversees one of Levy’s most visible and active clients with a Center that hosts several professional sports teams and a theater in a city that invented the award show.

For Matthew it provides a new and exciting challenge each day. Every Grammy Awards requires a sumptuous array of dishes for the press, celebrity Green Rooms and luxury suites. For every Lakers basketball season, menus must be planned and prepared for premium dining in the luxury suites, the Arena Club, the Chairman’s Lounge, and the Lexus Club. The chef also designs the arena’s general concession menus, which have come a long way from the hot dog and peanut fare.

The culinary management of such an array of venues would completely overwhelm most chefs. This multiplicity is exactly what lured Chef Matthew to leave ten years of culinary success in San Diego, California to join Levy’s Los Angeles based staff after a happenstance introduction to this unique section of the food industry at a Super Bowl in Detroit a few years ago. A friend, a chef employed by Levy to work the game, invited Matthew to come see what happens in the kitchen of one of these mega events. It turned out to be a career-changing experience and Matthew never saw a second of the game.

“I had never given a thought about the behind-the-scenes culinary planning and execution that was needed for these one-of-a-kind special events until I went to Detroit. Figuring out the appropriate cuisine mix for the gamut of service levels that are involved seemed like a fascinating professional test for me,” explained the chef.

The chef got the challenge he was looking for with one of his first assignments for Levy, which entailed moving to London for a year to bring American style upscale stadium food to a culture of beer and meat pie fans at London’s 02 Arena, where he designed the fare for the entire stadium. While the arena was being built, he took six months to learn all about British foods and then successfully gave this traditional cuisine a Matthew Herter-American Gourmet makeover. The arena’s venues are still the most popular of all the stadiums in the city, continuing to draw critical acclaim and awards long after his departure. It seems that a little bit of Britain rubbed off on the chef, too, with the use of Pimm’s in his luscious berry dish.

Current Projects

Chef Matthew rings in the summer with a dish that most certainly celebrates the season. His Cucumber and Summer Berry Salad with Pimm’s Granita is one of Chef Matthew’s very favorite summer dessert recipes. The rumor is that he personally volunteered to prepare and photograph this dish because he got to do the “clean up” too! “I am a huge fan of this dessert. It’s a take on a quintessential British summer cocktail,” the chef explained. “Pimm’s is a wonderfully refreshing drink that cuts the heat of day. Berries are at the peak of flavor at this time of year, and there is an herbal tone to the granita that creates a wonderful finish to the dish.”

Chef Matthew is part of the Sports and Entertainment food industry, a fascinating sector of the foodservice business that supplies arenas, theaters and other large special event venues with all their culinary needs, be it a one-time event or an entire sports season. He orchestrates every aspect of foodservice for the STAPLES and NOKIA complex, with the aid of his talented crew of sous chefs from Levy Restaurants, a long time customer of Melissa’s own Food Service Division.

The chef is always “in season”, since he designs new dishes every season for each of the five professional teams that call the Staples Center home. Matthew works ahead at least one weather season and, in the case of the Grammy Show, it takes a whole year of planning from one to the next. This means knowing what fresh, and interesting, ingredients will be available long before the harvest and where a close relationship between Melissa’s and Levy Restaurants Group is critical.

This feature was written with the cooperation of a very busy chef who had to also deal with an extended professional basketball season at the same time, since the Lakers made the playoffs again this year. Still, Chef Matthew was able to add another pin to his culinary juggling act. However, whether the team wins or loses, we know that the fans are winners because of this culinary master whose game goes into overtime every day!