What you see is a crisp, white menu embossed with the restaurant’s logo and dozens of dishes listing mouth-watering combinations of ingredients.
What you don’t see is the chef’s countless hours of careful curation, meticulous editing of elements and the hundreds of recipes weeded out along the way to get to that point.
For the diner, it’s an exciting choice from the menu.
For Chef Matt Welsch, it’s the culmination of passion, precision and an unwavering commitment to quality.
“There’s a wild number of factors to consider when planning a menu,” said Welsch, owner of The Vagabond Kitchen in Wheeling, West Virginia. “My job from concept to execution is to make people care about where their food comes from and make them think, ‘holy s—-, I didn’t know food could taste this good.’”
As Welsch puts the finishing touches on his fall menu for the restaurant, he bases the final selections on the following:
- Seasonality of the dish
- Availability of locally sourced ingredients
- Practical execution in the kitchen
- Estimated preparation time
- And, maybe most importantly, what people want
“I’ve learned that no matter how much I have to say with my food, it’s important to listen to people,” Welsch said.
“It’s important to have that dialogue. What do people want to taste, and it is my duty as the guide to help them get where they want to go.”
Welsch is taking diners on a journey this season that showcases the season’s best flavors with new menu items like:
- Smoked Rabbit Cornbread Casserole – Rabbit from Wheeling butcher Miklas Meat Market served in a cast iron skillet with a creamy blend of vegetables topped with cornbread.
- Last Harvest Pasta – House-crafted herbed alfredo cream sauce over fresh, local 740 Project pasta tossed with roasted winter squash, blistered tomatoes, and fresh vegetables from Wheeling store Jebbia’s Market. Served with toasted Mancini’s garlic bread. Add salmon or citrus chicken.
- Pork Porterhouse – A one pound bone-in pork chop slapped atop a mound of cheesy garlic mashed potatoes and topped with a mountain of fried onions, then drizzled with red wine reduction.
“I see the menu as our contract from the kitchen to the guests, and it’s important for me to fulfill the duty,” he said. “I don’t want to put something on there and then not do what I said I was going to do. Every dish has to deliver on that promise.”
Welsch opened The Vagabond Kitchen in 2014 and rose to fame when he competed in and won Food Network’s TV show Guy’s Grocery Games in 2018. He currently partners with the West Virginia Department of Tourism, West Virginia State Parks and West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition on sourcing local food and serving as a culinary ambassador.
The Vagabond Kitchen is located at 1201 Market Street, Wheeling, WV 26003. It can be reached at (304) 905-6173. It is open Wednesday and Thursday from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.; and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. It is closed Monday and Tuesday. For more information, visit www.thevagabondkitchen.com.
