Brad Mathews is a chef who built his point of view through years of hands-on experience and a steady focus on improvement. He grew up hunting, fishing, and foraging around the Finger Lakes, where an early connection to the land continues to shape how he approaches food. By fourteen, he was already cooking in small family-run restaurants, learning the rhythms of seasonal, from-scratch cooking before he had the language to describe it.
In 2009, Mathews moved to Los Angeles and worked his way through some of the city’s most important kitchens, including Bar Pintxo, Cadet, and David LeFevre’s Fishing with Dynamite and The Arthur J. Along the way, seafood became a defining focus of his cooking, reflecting a style that is precise and grounded in a strong respect for product.
At Bar Le Côte, which he opened with Daisy and Greg Ryan in 2021, Mathews brought those influences together in a focused coastal cooking style. The restaurant centers on seafood that is polished without feeling overly formal, with an emphasis on seasonality and restraint. In recent years, the restaurant has earned national recognition, including being named one of Esquire’s Best New Restaurants in 2022.
What sets Mathews apart is not just his cooking but the perspective behind it. Music has long run parallel to his work in the kitchen, influencing how he thinks about rhythm, structure, and balance. Sobriety has further sharpened that focus, bringing clarity to both his cooking and the culture he aims to build around it. The result is a chef working with discipline, intention, and a clearly defined point of view.
