Matt Rolnick grew up in Parkland, Florida and started in restaurants the way most cooks do — at the dish pit. He moved through the line, through culinary school at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, and then out of South Florida to stage and cook in Italy and Japan.

Those two kitchens set the range. Italy taught him restraint: good oil, salt, heat, and the discipline to stop. Japan taught him precision, and how much a plate can carry without being crowded.

In 2023 he won Food Network’s Chopped, season 56, after a regional tournament. He has also run the Salvage City Supper Club at EDC Las Vegas as executive chef: a five-course dinner for a room of guests, three nights running, inside a festival. He has cooked on a 121-foot Benetti in the British Virgin Islands, and prepped weekly meals for Florida Panthers players.

Fifteen years in, the work is private homes, athlete kitchens and yacht galleys — where the menu is written for one household and nothing is cooked twice.

He is based in South Florida and travels anywhere the client needs him.

Parkland, Fort Lauderdale, then everywhere.

Cook with me once, then decide.

Tell me about the date.