By Erica O’Neal
Managing Editor
“I like to take Southern food, different items that people eat in the South and make them together and do a fusion with them,” Executive Chef, Matthew Lamb explains while standing in Lake Blackshear Resort’s kitchen.
Matt is cooking his favorite dish on the menu: peach and sweet tea pork chop.
“A lot of people grow up eating pork with applesauce, which was a big thing when I was a kid so what I did was I took a bone and pork chop and we made a sweet tea sauce. We reduce sweet tea, make a caramel out of it almost and sauté Georgia peaches into it and pour it over the pork chop. We ran it as a special for a couple of weeks and we couldn’t keep it. We sold out every time we put it on there,” Matt says.
The pork chop is now on the menu and will most likely continue for a while. Lake Blackshear Resort hired Matt Lamb a little over a year ago. Previous to accepting the job at Lake Blackshear, Matt was cooking at a country club in Albany where he had been trying his hand at dishes of his creation for the last five years.
Matt hails from Albany and currently lives there with his wife and three children. His love for cooking began when he was a child.
“I grew up with my grandparents on weekends, I spent a lot of time with my grandmother and granddad. On Sundays we’d always have family eat at the church, so it was fun for me to help my grandmother cook and prep on Saturdays to help cook for Sundays. I grew up doing that and as I got older I started doing it myself, cooking for my mom, my sister and that kind of stuff. I just got kind of good at it,” Matt says.
Matt graduated from Cordon Bleu in Orlando in April 2007. Matt chose the Orlando campus because he wanted to take pastry classes that were only offered in Orlando.
Before deciding to go to school, Matt began working at Wendy’s making burgers and worked his way up to chain restaurants like Outback. It wasn’t until he attended Cordon Bleu that Matt had the chance to experiment and get creative with dishes.
After graduating, Matt worked at a hotel kitchen in California. Matt moved back to Albany after the hotel burned down from wildfires and spent a brief amount of time in Tallahassee, Fla.
“My granddad passed away so I came back and went to work on the oilrigs. I cooked on oilrigs for almost two years. That was a whole different experience. A friend of mine took the head chef position at Stone Bridge Country Club in Albany and called me and said ‘listen I really need some help getting this place back in order.’” Matt says.
Matt initially thought he would only stay with the country club for about six months, but instead the job turned into five and a half years.
“Being at the country club, it helped me expand what I could do. It helped bring out the talent I didn’t know I had, because I’d never had the opportunity to experiment with anybody out of culinary school, I’d never had the opportunity in a place of employment to just practice on stuff and make stuff that wasn’t already on the menu. So now I can do that there, they would say ‘make us a menu’ and I just got to play with items, so it helped me grow into being able to make a wide variety of stuff and making things people hadn’t seen before. It taught me a lot,” Matt says.
As Executive Chef at the resort, Matt manages two restaurants, Cordelia’s and Cypress Grill. Matt also organizes banquets held at the resort and plans meals for groups who stay for events or business conferences. There is a board hanging on the wall in the kitchen, which maps out what meals needs to be prepped for next and what time events are happening.
“It’s not just the same thing over and over every day. It’s a challenge so my brain is always working to make sure that things are going right for each group,” Matt explains.
Matt attributes the success of the kitchen to his staff, especially his Sous Chef, Christy Paul. Christy has been working at Lake Blackshear Resort for 10 years and helps to catch anything Matt might have missed.
General Manager of Lake Blackshear Resort, Jason Smith is glad to have Matt leading the way.
“We’re fortunate to have Chef Lamb on the team. He’s been here for just over 14 months now and has done a terrific job in updating the quality of the cuisine. The dynamic specials that are offered here on a daily basis are all his creation, he and his culinary staff. He’s dedicated to changing the menu on a frequent basis in order to accommodate new tastes, themes, and what’s trending in the marketplace. One of the most important considerations here, when you look at our menu at the items that are noted as Georgia grown,” Smith says.
Some of the food items brought in locally are the peaches, goat cheese and rib eye, which are all Georgia grown. The goat cheese is from Silly Goat Farms in Tifton and the bone and rib eye are from Degraan Farms.
“He’s very proud of searching for and identifying locally sourced products. Not only meats, but the vegetables and fruits which play an important role in his menu development,” Smith comments.
Matt is constantly modifying the menu, and has done so three or four times in the last year he has been working as Executive Chef.
“It’s stressful sometimes but fun. I get home at the end of the day and feel like ‘we did it.’ That’s what I like about it,” Matt says.