MEET: CHEF MIKE MASTRANTUONO, 15 CHURCH, Saratoga
Executive Chef Mike Mastrantuono on shouty chefs, respectful hunting, quiet leadership + the weirdest (best) chicken marsala in the world
Interview : Susie Davidson Powell @susiedp
Photos: Victoria Sedefian/The Dishing @citrusforward | All photos ©️ TheDishing.com
Location: 15 Church, Saratoga, N.Y.
Tastemaker: Chef Mike Mastrantuono | IG: @chefmikemast
Location: 15 Church | website 15churchrestaurant.com | IG: @15church
Hometown: Oceanside, LI
Current city: West Sand Lake
Personal style: Hedley and Bennet in the kitchen, Sitka gear for hunting
Currently listening to: Bring Me The horizon, Motionless in White, Luke Combs
Favorite wine, spirit or N/A: N/A Corona, but on days off Buffalo Trace. 🙂
Favorite classic cocktail: Whiskey, neat
Favorite bar or venue ever: Fish and Game, Per Se
Biggest chef influence: Jose Andres, Thomas Keller,
Industry trend that should end: Gimmicks and overpriced burgers!
Welcome to The Dishing’s Quick Serve interviews where we talk matters of taste with tastemakers in the hospitality industry and trailblazers at the intersection of food, culture and art. Today we’re talking with Executive Chef Mike Mastrantuono his last decade at 15 Church, hunting, being obsessive over quality ingredients + what changed him from being a shouty chef.
Chef, it’s nearly 10 years since I reviewed your opening menu when you joined 15 Church as Executive Chef. In a decade, the restaurant has weathered a pandemic, the passing of founding partner Paul McCullough, a lawsuit, and its sale this year to long-time patrons Scott + Cait Smith. Through it all, 15 Church has remained among the best restaurants in Saratoga. What is the secret to its resilience + lasting appeal?
MM: The restaurant has been through so much. There are many factors to why and how this restaurant made it through, even with the pandemic. After Paul passed I felt obligated to carry on his legacy with Thomas Burke and not let all those years that Paul put into the restaurant, his career, go to waste. That’s when I really picked up the torch. And when the pandemic hit the previous owner, Burke made sure all the employees were taken care of. After being closed for eight weeks during the pandemic not one employee missed one paycheck. As a matter of fact, we all got raises! The restaurant has been through many operations and general managers throughout the years—some good, some terrible—but what has always remained was a solid kitchen run with consistency as the priority, and selflessness. The product we source and purchase is world class—that's what separates us. It isn't easy to run a restaurant at this level with that level of elevated ingredients. Everyone who works here takes great pride in it, and it made 15 Church what it is today.
You had an early start in the industry helping in your father’s Greenville restaurant from about the age of 9-years old and rising to your first Executive Chef position by 19. I recall you wanted to be a veterinarian or in the military. What drove your hunger for a culinary career?
MM: My career started pretty early. My original goal was to become a veterinarian or going to the military, but in high school I got into a dirt bike accident and fractured my hip. It kind of put a small detour in the military approach and at the time I was working at my father‘s restaurant. I was getting better and better in the restaurant, executing at a higher level and at that point, I started to enjoy the pressure and mental strength it took to run a kitchen. I found peace in the pain of it (again, young and stupid, ha) and I decided to go to culinary school. At SCCC, I did the Disney internship at the Hollywood Brown Derby in Hollywood Studios. That internship gave me a huge boost of confidence and the motivation to convince my family to move on from the Mom and Pop establishment that we have run for years and go for a higher end approach, so we opened up Indulge restaurant in Latham.
The restaurant was very short-lived, and at the time being 19 with no sense of reality and a partnership that fell through, my father and uncle and I regrouped and purchased Dale Miller’s old Stone Ends in Glenmont turning it into Milestone restaurant. After 2 years, an opportunity arose for me to become executive chef of Mezza Notte in Guilderland, and although being a partner in owning my own restaurant, I felt it was a step I had to take to progress my career and get my name out there. For a year I did both but it drove a large divide between my father, my uncle and me, and it got to the point where I had to make the hard decision of moving on and going my own way. They understood and gave me the reassurance that it was the right move for my career goals.
So you grew up in a restaurant family, but what are your childhood memories of cooking or dining out?
MM: So dining out when I was younger didn't really exist. I was constantly working and so were my parents. However, often my mother would take us back to Inwood Long Island to see my grandmother. She was such an unbelievable cook. I can still taste the roasted pork ribs, the sun-dried eggplant and her delicious eggplant parm. I have fond memories of putting salad in my pomodoro pasta bowl and eating the rest of the sauce with heavily dressed greens and an offensive amount of Pecorino Romano. My mother carried on that legacy for years and her cooking is still unbelievable. I find myself having to take the drive to see her, making sure that she has her eggplant or her pasta with fat back and white beans or her chicken marsala (which really isn't chicken marsala at all—it's the weirdest thing in the world) but, good God, it's fucking delicious!
On my father's side, my grandmother was also a great cook. She’d make Easter pies and this incredible baccála salad that my father still makes to this day. Growing up was Italian American food on my father’s side and authentic Italian on my mother’s side. I could never understand how they can make food taste so good with so little ingredients. As I got older in my career, I started to get it more and started putting less and less and less on plates, just focusing on where I'm buying food from and the environment where it’s grown. I’d make a dish and sit there contemplating what else I could take out of it. Besides eating at my grandmother's, most of my memories were immersed in my father and uncle's restaurant where they taught me my work ethic and made me mentally strong for the career path that I chose.
As a young head chef you began attracting a buzz when you moved to Roux in Slingerlands. I know you also had some cool culinary experiences around that time, competing on teams with rising star chefs who have become celebrated industry players. Can you tell us about that?
MM: Working at MezzaNotte taught me so much about the business. Connie and Mitch Ware were unbelievable people who really took me in and showed me the side of the business I didn't know. I'm forever grateful to them. Miss Connie had a hard time keeping chefs before me —she was very aggressive, but in a good way; she knew what she wanted. We had such an unbelievable relationship — leaving was a really hard decision, but I wanted more. I wanted to cook at a higher level. I really thought that I would travel the country and work at a bunch of really high-end, Michelin restaurants, but my friend Angela had a restaurant in Slingerlands, called Roux, and she was having a chef crisis, so I went there to help her rebuild her brand and hone my craft working with a lot of local farms. Putting my head down and cooking for a year. But we gained a lot of recognition; I built an extraordinary team and made a lot of really great relationships with farms.
It was there that I was nominated for FSR magazine’s 40 under 40 in the United States and with that recognition I was invited to Omni Island for the Fish to Fork event where myself and a dear friend, Jeff Whitaker—who is an absolute fucking rockstar now—traveled to Florida to cook with some extraordinary chefs like James Beard-recognized Brad Kilgore and Joey Ward. After doing so well surrounded by extraordinary chefs, Paul McCullough reached out to me and expressed the importance that I keep pushing my career forward and take the leap by coming Saratoga to spearhead the kitchen at 15 Church. I turned it down several times expressing to Paul that I loved working at Roux. I loved the family, I loved my team and I was very content and happy. Sleeping on it, I realize I needed to put myself in an uncomfortable position and put myself in the best restaurant in upstate New York, even though I thought I wasn't ready. I knew that if I could run 15 Church and get it to the level I thought it could get to then that was it. I could do whatever I wanted after that. It was just a three-year plan.
Your passion for ingredients has always been a hallmark of your cooking. I remember in 2017 you were sometimes hopping on a private plane to pick up fresh seafood from Maine. Maybe that was just the glory days, but can you talk about your relationships with fishmongers and purveyors?
MM: Cooking is simpler than people think. There's a lot of great chefs out there, a lot of great cooks and a lot of quick learners. You could pull up a YouTube video right now and learn how to cook a piece of John Dory perfectly! However, if I'm able to source and purchase better ingredients, I'm gonna be a better chef. That's something that can't be argued. It’s just reality. Relationships drive the restaurant industry. Reputation and relationships. The relationships I have with fishmongers is very similar to some of the big dogs in New York City, Le Bernadin, Jean George, Per Se. I have direct relationships with the majority of their buyers and fishmongers. I can't name names because that's why 15 Church is what it is today.
There’s an awesome scallop person who only dives for us so when we run scallops I know they're better than anywhere in upstate New York. If it's Hudson Valley Fisheries’ steelhead trout, I know how world-class it tastes and the process they go through for a perfect and sustainably raised fish. We could talk about Maddolone Cattle Co. and their extraordinary pure breed Wagyu program right here at our back door in Saratoga Springs, or talk about Hudson Valley chickens and Hudson Valley foie gras, and Hudson Valley ducks. No basic commodity items, no just calling a distributor and telling them, “Hey, send me some ducks, hey send me some beef.” Everything is built through relationships and I've learned I'm able to get a better product. It's all these small decisions on sourcing that you make on a daily basis in the restaurant that creates a constant culture of excellence. And, most importantly, consistency.
You’re an avid hunter, but also an animal lover who wanted to be a veterinarian. What’s your approach to hunting and why is it important to you?
MM: My lifestyle has dictated my career so much. I'm an avid outdoorsman so if I'm not in the kitchen I’m more than likely in the woods either scouting, putting up trail cameras, hanging tree stands or planning some kind of hunting trip.
I'm a bow hunter and through hunting so many animals on a yearly basis I've gained much respect for animals. You have to really be up close and personal; you have to know their every movement, how they live, how they eat, where they sleep and it helps you have more respect for wild game. Still to this day, I get emotional after I harvest every animal because the truth is as bow hunters we love them. We love animals. We target specific animals of an older age class, and we hunt them because they're the harder animal to harvest. It's more about conservation and creating a balance so in return the deer herd is healthier. My family enjoys the meat. My kids enjoy the meat. It's a huge part of our diet at home. If we're not eating venison we're eating buffalo or moose from another bow hunter. When you take an animal's life and you're right there watching the whole thing, even when it takes its last breath, it forces you to gain respect and honor that animal. We use every piece and I take that same level of dedication in my kitchen.
When I first really started working with local rabbits, a farmer named Bruce out of Vermont worked hard to get me the specific size rabbits I wanted for my infamous rabbit ragu [laughs.] but one time, my team overcooked them on my day off. I came in realized there was really nothing I could do with them. I tried to eat it to not waste it, but we had to throw it out. I remember taking those staff members to Bruce and making them watch those animals be killed. I remember how bad the staff felt after watching this process just so we can make pasta. Sometimes when reality sets in on where your food comes from and the process for you to have it before you get to see it on your plate is eye-opening. I’ll bet you to this day those three cooks never wasted rabbit ever again, and set timers whenever rabbit went in the oven.
You told me you grew up in the late ‘90s admiring shouty chefs like Marco Pierre White + Gordon Ramsey, but starting a family really shifted your management style. In what way?
MM: Growing up in the ‘90s, watching chefs like Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White, I admired their kitchen management style and how aggressive they were, screaming and yelling, their hard-core push for consistency. To be honest, for a long time that's how I ran my kitchen. I was aggressive. I was loud. I was right in your face because in my mind I was sacrificing more than you to my craft. I did that for a long time, it wasn't until about eight years ago when I met my wife that my mentality really started to change. I took a step back and realized I needed to manage through leadership and respect, and that I needed to be loved, not feared. Now having two beautiful daughters at four and two years old, my mentality has taken a total shift. When I look at people that work for me in the restaurant I think about what their life is like and who they are as people, as a brother, sister, cousin, husband, wife, son or daughter, and that's how I treat them. I have an empathy like I've never had before. I listen to their story. I listen to them when they're frustrated and they need help with something, even on a personal level. I'm there for my staff and that can not be taught or faked, that's character and leadership at its finest.
My daughter's and wife's love taught me that.There's nothing sadder than being a deadbeat dad so I pride myself on being a great father, a great husband and a great mentor in that order.
As a manager when you start treating people that way, that's when fear turns into respect and love. This is truly why I believe I'm able to live the lifestyle I do. Every staff member has my back. I can have any line cook work expo and if I send up a steak cooked wrong on purpose or test them with a piece of fish not seared correctly, they'll respectfully say, “Chef, the salmon skin is soggy” or “Chef, you grilled the side of fillet and that's a no-no” and send it back! This is why even when I'm not there, the show goes on. Culturally, the restaurant is run with respect and love. No toxic hate, no jealousy, no ego. If the restaurant does well and we get an excellent review, then we all got an excellent review.
I know you had an idea for a restaurant and when Fish & Game opened in Hudson, you felt it was really executing the idea you’d had. After being in the industry so long, do you still think about opening a restaurant of your own?
MM: Many years have gone by with me running 15 Church and I’ve thought about opening my own, but I've also had an extraordinary amount of freedom at 15 Church. I've been able to work with the greatest ingredients on this planet and cook for a great community. There's definitely a style of restaurant that I really wanna open and I have painted a perfect picture of that next restaurant, something more my style and my lifestyle. 15 church has been so consistent for so many years now that it's hard for me to diverge from the menu. For example, the gnocchi Bolognese is a part of the restaurant, the filet mignon, the Chilean sea bass, and crispy oysters. It's hard for me to change things up because guests come in longing for those dishes and I would feel terrible if I didn't have it for them.
Definitely in the near future, there will be an opportunity for me to spread my wings more and switch my style up a little bit. 15 Church will always be 15 Church but eventually we’ll allow another restaurant to blossom. Without divulging too much, I can confidently say it'll have a massive impact on the culinary scene in upstate New York. It'll be a perfect addition to this freshly-started restaurant group.
Okay, that’s intriguing! So with Scott + Cait buying 15 Church, has anything changed and presumably you’re collaborating on these plans for the future?
MM: Really it’s true that our consistency has taken the restaurant through a decade of success. There are some things I miss like being in an open kitchen, open fire cooking, having guests be able to walk into the kitchen, walk right up to the pass and taste the sauce, see how the kitchen operates, and the dedication. So we plan to soon incorporate tasting menus for more diversity in the 15 Church food and create a new level of consistency and new fan favorites with more game and interesting things for people to try.
When we open a new restaurant, that's where my team and I will hopefully be able to chase a James Beard nomination and ultimately win one, in my mind. These aren't unrealistic expectations. My work ethic is unrealistic for most people. My team's work ethic is unrealistic for most people, but for us, we're doing what we love with people who we love and we treat the restaurant not as family but as a winning team. Family will allow you to be complacent because they care how happy you are. We do too, however we have standards and hold everyone accountable while celebrating the work and dedication they put in. This is why we’ve remained on top.
This is off at a tangent, but I often ask industry pros about their tattoos. Do any of yours have a story?
MM: My first tattoo is an identical twin to my father's tattoo of my sister who had passed away of Down Syndrome. Nicole was her name. After that, I just continued as my cooking career progressed. I started working with whole animals and I thought it would be fun to get tattoos of rabbits, pigs, cows, and mushrooms. My wife's favorite tattoo is a simple English pea on the inside of my elbow [laughs.] I haven't gotten a tattoo in years, however I'm getting ready to start it up again. Gonna add a lot more wildlife to my skin and start to express all the other things I love in life besides food.
The industry is notorious for burnout. You work long hours and have a young family. How do you manage the work/life balance? And what do you do to relax?
MM: There always comes a time during the season where even myself, and my heaviest players burn out. It's almost impossible not to happen. In my opinion, you'll never find the perfect medium. You'll never be able to really have a work/life balance in this industry. it's just not realistic. What you can do, however, is enjoy what you're doing. Enjoy the people around you, while constantly remaining grateful that you have an opportunity to go to work and chase dreams you never thought you could.
For me personally, number one would be my wife Holly, this beautiful woman inside and out, who has held down so much that I can chase this dream not only in my professional life, but hunting trips and bow hunting while raising two little girls and managing everything a household needs, with me having to work 19 to 20-hour days. And on top of that working 55 to 60 hours a week herself at a hospital. Just for me at the end of track season to be able to get away climbing up a tree for six days at a time to chase my other passion. It wouldn't be possible without her.
When people ask, “Chef, how do you do this, Chef? How do you not give up?” That's a tough question, but for me it's simple: I don't have a choice. I have a beautiful family that's relying on me to be the best to give them a bright future, to give them any opportunity they want in this world. I have to be the best. Moreover, I have to take my team with me. They’re relying on me to motivate them and take them into the future. I'm not given the privilege to burn out. I have to keep pushing so one day my teammates can look back and say, “Thank God Chef Mike didn't stop.”
So when I'm relaxing, I like to just surround myself with family. I like to sit out on my father-in-law's back porch, watch my mother-in-law's horse running around and watch the sunset. I try not to overcomplicate anything. All those really small simple things in my life add up to being the backbone of my success.
Can you tell us three of your favorite spots in the Hudson Valley or Capital Region for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
MM: Unfortunately, I don't get out much. If me and my wife or the little ones go out for breakfast, it's always at Alexis Diner in East Greenbush. What a fantastic diner! And you just cannot beat Ala Shanghai in Latham. They're just the best. The Peking duck is absolutely on fire and I think about it daily. Their soup dumplings too, and their crispy beef.
I just can't get away for dinner and it's hard for me to go to dinner in Saratoga because most of the chefs have come through 15 Church Restaurant, so when I read their menus I just see a reflection of my menu in little tiny innuendos. Most change it up a little bit, but most of the menus come from a 15 Church Legacy! Which is fine—I'm not talking shit! It's actually pretty humbling when you start reading your menu items on other chefs’ menus—you know you're doing it right.
I don’t get out often but if I had to pick one chef in the capital region that I could truly say is just a gangster who I genuinely respect, it would have to be Chef Michelle at Familiar Creature. She doesn't know this, but I admire her cooking very much and I think she's a rockstar. If I'm going out for dinner in Saratoga besides 15 Church, you bet it'll be her food.
If you could go anywhere with no limits on costs or reservations, where would you go?
MM: Oh, wow, that's a tough question. There's so many places I'd wanna go and see so many things I'd wanna try, however there's just something about dining at a three star Michelin restaurant like a Per Se or Eleven Madison Park that's just unparalleled to anything. It's so inspiring to eat at places like that. But as far as traveling goes, I'd love to go to Spain—and not just to hunt giant screaming stags in the mountains, although I'm definitely gonna do that one day! It would be to eat at a chef's restaurant like Jose Andres and just eat Spanish tapas all day… fresh anchovies with so much olive oil… great bread and jamon… while drinking great wines and great ciders and looking at the ocean.
Thanks so much for talking to The Dishing, chef. It’s great to reconnect a decade after our last interview. Congrats on all you have accomplished to date. We’re looking forward to the new summer menu you’re dropping for 15 Church’s new owners, Scott and Cait.