Review: At Rizzo’s House of Parm, Italian like the good old days, just better

Idealized dishes are Matty Matheson’s love letter to Buffalo Italian-American

Veal parm at Rizzo’s House of Parm

If you’ve seen The Bear, the Emmy-winning show about a Chicago restaurant crew, you’ve seen Matty Matheson. He plays Neil Fak, the restaurant’s motormouth repairman.

Matheson’s legion of online fans grew to battalion strength during his years as a Vice television personality, where his kitchen journeys and personality made him the Anthony Bourdain of the next generation of cooks. 

Like the character he plays on The Bear, Matty Matheson’s menus value authenticity over nouveau chicness. His restaurants pick a specific wheelhouse, and nail it. 

At Matty’s Meat and Two, Matheson offered his hometown, Ft. Erie, an homage to American barbecue, with spot-on beef, pork, sausage, and spectacular sides. At Ca Phe Rang, in Toronto’s Chinatown, he partners with mentor Rang Nguyen in banh mi and pho.

At Prime Seafood Palace, his steak-and-seafood house in Trinity-Bellwoods, Toronto, Matheson sells his definition of indulgences, osetra caviar on hashbrowns with sour cream, dill pickled kohlrabi with the tuna tartare, and creamed clams on an English muffin with cultured butter. After the steak stampede comes duck breast with foie jus, and indulgent sides like carrots in sea urchin butter and Yorkshire puddings.

After eating his way through Buffalo and environs following hardcore bands as a youngster, Matheson champions the eating opportunities of “ONE OF THE BEST AMERICAN FOOD TOWNS EVER!” as he said on Instagram. 

At Rizzo’s House of Parm, in Matheson’s hometown, his love of classic Italian-Canadian-American shines in iconic versions of dishes he knows by heart. He named it after his first daughter.