The cool story behind The Asbury’s new executive chef

Chef Matthew Krenz steps out of the swinging door of the Asbury kitchen with a measured confidence. The newly appointed executive chef dons clean chef’s whites and brings with him a beef heart carpaccio, one of his newest creations on the summer menu at the sophisticated restaurant in the bottom of Uptown’s Dunhill Hotel.

The dish is visually stunning: a bright piquillo pepper puree is the eye-catching backdrop to thinly shaved slices of beef heart arranged in a tender pile with ember-roasted squash, golden raisins, cocoa nibs, and contrasting frills of frisée. The beef heart has been treated like a pastrami—left overnight in a brine, seared, and roasted rare, shaved thin—and its flavor bears the labored results.

Beautiful plates like this one are a calling card for the 31-year-old chef who will tell you that he strives for excellence in each dish. What sounds like a PR-crafted statement is not. Matthew Krenz has more than his restaurant career invested on that plate. His commitment to food is rooted in his family tree.

The beef heart comes from the Krenz Family Ranch, his father’s operation in New Salem, N.C., 45 minutes due east of Charlotte. It started as a hobby to provide family and friends with sustainably raised beef. Alan Krenz, or “Papa Krenz,” is a broad sketch of a man, with a head of white hair that is often covered with a cowboy hat.

He comes from a long line of hardworking Midwesterners where self-sufficiency and sweat equity were paramount. “I grew up around the Kansas-Oklahoma line,” says Alan Krenz. “My grandad was a dairy man for seven decades and my family on my dad’s side raised cattle.”

The DNA certainly doesn’t fall far from the tree. In the kitchen, Matthew Krenz is focused and intense, often the first one to arrive and the last to leave.

Chef Chris Coleman, former executive chef at The Asbury, who brought Matthew Krenz on as chef de cuisine, describes his peer as a “brilliant chef” whose “standards are ridiculously high in the best way.” Coleman says working alongside Krenz taught him discipline. “He pushes cooks to be creative, to strive for excellence,” says Coleman.

But it was work with his father on the Krenz Family Ranch, pulling fence and developing the infrastructure of the cattle operation, that opened Matthew Krenz’s eyes to a different type of ethic. “I learned what true hard work was and just how much sacrifice is given to put a steak on a plate,” he says.

As Matthew Krenz proudly dropped the beef heart carpaccio to the table that evening, it wasn’t just the pride of a chef promoted, but the understanding of a man who knew that the heart being served on the plate held a bit of his own inside it too.

You can find the extended version of this story in the August 2016 issue of SouthPark Magazine.

Photos: Michael Hernandez

This story was originally published July 19, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "The cool story behind The Asbury’s new executive chef."