Chef Jordan Sclare’s culinary journey began at age seven, when a school project had him cooking breakfast for his family and sparked a lifelong love of food. After stints at London’s Savoy, Gordon Ramsay’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant and Nobu London, where he rose to Head Chef, Sclare teamed up with longtime collaborator Kurt Zdesar to launch Chotto Matte in London’s Soho in 2013. Zdesar, an Australian-born restaurateur with more than 30 years of global hospitality experience, discovered Nikkei cuisine in Shanghai and travelled between Japan and Peru to explore its roots before bringing Japanese precision and Peruvian flavour together at Chotto Matte. Now Group Executive Chef and founder, respectively, Sclare and Zdesar brought the concept to Toronto in 2019, where we caught up with them to talk about their journey, the city’s food scene and what’s next for Chotto Matte.
What first inspired you to become a chef, and how has your journey led you to Toronto?
Jordan: I always loved eating food and loved to taste new flavours, but the oldest memory I have is from when I was around 7 years old. It was a school project where I was tasked to cook breakfast for my family. I loved the challenge and loved the family’s excitement after I served the breakfast. And I’m glad all these decades of running restaurant kitchens it’s led me to Toronto
Who were some of your biggest influences, either chefs or family, in shaping your approach to cooking?
J: I don’t really have family or friends as the biggest influencers, I actually found that travel is the biggest influencer and learning from what other cultures and recipes of the world have to offer
What’s the story behind your restaurant — how did it come to life?
Kurt: Chotto Matte came out of a journey rather than a business plan. I’d spent years building brands like Ping Pong, Nobu and Hakkasan in London, and I wanted to create something nobody had properly done yet. It began with a chance discovery of Nikkei cuisine in Shanghai back in 2005, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So I travelled between Japan and Peru, sat with chefs in both countries, and fell completely in love with this century-old food culture, born when Japanese immigrants settled in Peru. The first Chotto Matte opened in London’s Soho in 2013, built around everything I’d fallen for on that journey. The live theatre of the robata grill, the vibrancy of Peruvian flavours, the precision of Japanese technique.
Bringing it to Toronto was an easy decision. It’s one of the most multicultural cities on the planet, so a cuisine born from two cultures meeting felt instantly at home. And I’ll let you in on a trade secret. Whenever I’m scouting a city I go out on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Most cities can fill a restaurant on a Saturday. When I saw Toronto’s dining rooms buzzing midweek, I knew this was a proper restaurant city. Landing on the corner of Front and Bay in 2019, with Union Station right across the road and a quarter of a million people passing through it every day, gave us the perfect stage for the live kitchens, the DJs, the lava stone walls, the robata flames, all of it.
How does the food culture of Toronto influence your cooking style or menu choices?
K: Enormously, because Toronto doesn’t let us get complacent. Torontonians grew up eating everything, so the palate here is genuinely sophisticated. People already know their ceviche, they understand umami, they’ve tasted the world without leaving the city. That means we can be braver here. We don’t have to soften flavours or explain the cuisine. We can serve Nikkei with full confidence, bold heat, real acidity, proper char from the robata. It shapes the menu directly too. Our Toronto restaurant has dishes and cocktails created specifically for this city, built around the quality of ingredients available here, so the menu has its own identity within the Chotto Matte family. And whatever I discover exploring the city feeds ideas straight back into the kitchen. Toronto teaches you something new every visit.
What’s one local ingredient you can’t live without in your kitchen?
J: It’s not so much an ingredient, but the spice cupboard is something I can’t cook without. It makes life so much easier when you have e a cupboard full of seasonings and spices to add colours and flavours
If someone was visiting Toronto for the first time, what food experience would you insist they try?
K: Eat your way through Kensington Market and Chinatown in a single afternoon. That’s the one I’d insist on, because nowhere else can you go from a Jamaican patty to dim sum to a Portuguese custard tart in four blocks. It tells you everything about Toronto’s food identity in a couple of hours. No single cuisine owns this city, and every community has brought its best. A stop at St Lawrence Market for a peameal bacon sandwich (and so much more) belongs on that list too. It’s a Toronto rite of passage. Then finish the day with us at Chotto Matte. Sit near the robata, watch the flames, order the ceviche and something from the grill, and you’ll taste two cultures and a hundred years of history on one plate. A day like that shows you exactly why a cuisine like Nikkei found its home in this city.
What restaurants, cafés, or hidden gems in Toronto do you personally love to eat at when you’re off-duty?
K: The hidden gems, always. When I’m off duty, I’m looking for something different from what I do at Chotto Matte. You’ll usually find me in Chinatown, because dim sum has been a passion of mine since I was a kid. I spent years building Ping Pong around that love, and it never faded. Places like Mother’s Dumplings, where the dumplings are rolled by hand in front of you, or late-night dim sum at Rol San on Spadina. That’s where I feel at home. And for tacos, it’s Campechano. They make everything in-house, proper artisanal approach to what’s essentially street food. The owner is meticulous about his ingredient choices, uses heirloom corn, humanely raised meats. It’s one of those spots where you feel the care in every single taco, great chefs understand that sometimes the most satisfying meal isn’t the most complex one. Buk Chang Dong on Bloor is another one. Essentially one dish, soon tofu, executed brilliantly. They focus on just that, and they’ve perfected it so completely nobody else can touch them. It’s the one that does one thing authentically and lets that speak for itself.
I’m very fortunate that the career I’ve built has opened doors to unique experiences, and this trip gave me two meals I won’t forget. Jordan Madley, the actress and wild food expert, invited us into her home and cooked dishes from ingredients she’d foraged and hunted herself. She’s doing something genuinely different. How many people are out there foraging and hunting their own ingredients and turning that into a menu? It’s rare, and it’s the kind of evening you don’t forget.
Then Craig Wong invited us to dinner at Patois. We sat together all night, and he walked us through every dish, talking about the thinking behind each one. It was like-minded people having a proper conversation about food and restaurants, one of the most enjoyable meals I’ve had in years. What he’s built is remarkable. Jamaican and Chinese cuisine from communities that lived side by side in the Caribbean for generations, and nobody had put it on a plate in Toronto until he did. That’s exactly why Nikkei works here. This city understands cuisines born from cultures rubbing shoulders.
Jordan and I have just spent weeks filming across Toronto for Bite Into, our new YouTube adventure food and travel series launching in September, going from St Lawrence Market to foraging in the Ontario countryside, and I discovered gems I’ll be going back to for years. Every meal for me is a learning experience or a reward, usually both, and unfortunately my waistline pays the price. I’ll be back in November, and I’m already planning where I’m eating.
How do you think the dining scene in Toronto is different from other Canadian cities?
K: Scale and diversity, more than anything. Other Canadian cities have brilliant food, but Toronto has the density and the multicultural depth to support real culinary risk-taking. You can open something as specific as a Nikkei restaurant here and know there’s an audience sophisticated enough to find you, which isn’t true everywhere. Toronto also has an appetite for the full night out. Late dinners, live music, DJs, real spectacle at the table. It has the energy of a London or a New York. The difference though, Toronto delivers all that energy with genuine warmth. It’s clean, it’s safe, it’s charming, and somehow it doesn’t feel like the big city it is. I’ve travelled the world chasing flavours and techniques, and Toronto is a city I’ve always said I could happily live in. When a dining scene combines big city ambition with that kind of friendliness, magic happens. We built Chotto Matte to sit right at that intersection.
Where do you like to shop for ingredients locally — farmers’ markets, specialty shops, or a particular supplier?
J: Hands down, I love to shop in and amongst the community at the local markets, where you can see the elders shopping there who know exactly what they want, and I also get to see all the items in person and talk to the market shop owners about the products
Beyond food, what makes Toronto special to you as a place to live and work?
J: Toronto is such a special city. I’ve been lucky to travel all over the world seeking flavours, cooking techniques, and ingredients, but Toronto was the only one I always said if I had to leave London, UK, I’d feel comfortable living here in Toronto. It’s so clean, with a fantastic food scene, great friendly people, and so much nature a short drive away, with amazing forests and natural freshwater lakes
What’s next for you and your restaurant here?
K: In Toronto, we keep raising the bar. The restaurant goes from strength to strength. The Financial District lunch trade is so busy we open at 11.30, and with the city’s major arenas and stadiums on our doorstep, game nights are electric. It’s not uncommon to spot a player tucked into a quiet corner of the restaurant, so sharp-eyed fans should keep a lookout. Expect the Toronto menu to keep evolving seasonally, more entertainment matched to the city’s pulse, and a few surprises for people who think they already know Nikkei cuisine.
Globally, it’s an exciting time. Manchester has just opened on St Michael’s Square with a beautiful rooftop, to great acclaim. Riyadh has just celebrated its first birthday and is thriving. Bondi Beach opens this October, and next year we head to Tbilisi in Georgia, a rooftop across the 43rd and 44th floors with an open-air bar. And in September, Fifth Taste Productions, storytellers with credits across the BBC, Channel 5 and Netflix, launch Bite Into on YouTube. Think Top Gear meets Chef’s Table. Jordan and I ride our motorbikes into every Chotto Matte city, meet the farmers, fishermen, foragers and hunters behind the ingredients, then take those discoveries and turn them into Nikkei dishes, all of it feeding into a potential future cookbook and new dishes appearing on our menus. Toronto is the most recent city we filmed. So watch this space, and in the meantime, come and find us on the corner of Front and Bay. The robata’s always lit.
