Chef's Table isn't your average Q&A. We scrapped the tired interview routine and went for something a little tastier: dinner. Here we are, wining and dining with some of Shanghia's best chefs, no scripts, no fluff–just food, drink, and whatever else comes up. It's raw, like a good sashimi, but polished up so you can enjoy it too. Got a chef we should dine with? Let us know in the comments.

Matty Waters tried the conventional route to adulthood. He tried studying architecture in college, and quickly realized it wasn't for him. Education seemed like a noble pursuit, but who are we kidding? It's more fun to have a job where you can sling tequila shots while the Chiefs score touchdowns on a hi-def flat screen. That was the revelation that Matty had midway through college. He powered through and got his degree. He even did some teaching for a while. But eventually, he succumbed to the siren call of the grill. It started as a few parties, then a small catering business, a consultancy, and now, he has parlayed all his skills into, well, Parlay, the Kansas City barbecue joint he opened in Shan Kang Li at the beginning of summer. We'll let Matty fill in the details from here.

Tell us your origin story.

I was in college in Kansas City studying to get a degree in education, and I got a job at Uno Pizzeria & Grill, a chain restaurant famous for its Chicago-style deep-dish pizzas. I wasn't very good to start, but I eventually got the hang of it. Then I got a job at this sports bar called 810 Zone. Amazing place. Maybe not as big as Cages, but it was a bar and restaurant with a game room in the back and, like, 500 TVs. I started off waiting tables.

Then, I got behind the bar. That was when things just took off. I started making tons of money, and it was so much fun. I'm running the bar, and I've got a crowd in front of me that's 10 people wide and four people deep. And they're all waiting for drinks. The machine keeps spewing out tickets until they touch the floor, and I've got to pick it up and wear it like a boa. It was chaos – sometimes for, like, 14 hours straight. But I would walk away with over US$1,000 in my pocket in a night, which is a lot for a college-aged kid. When we got off work, we'd all go to the next bar and get drunk. It was really fun – almost to the point that I started neglecting my studies.

I even thought about moving into a management or ownership role. Then, 2008 happened. The economy crashed. Everything I was trying to line up kept falling through. So, I figured I'd get this teaching degree. I might as well finally give it a try. I came here and helped build a school from like 50 kids to 400 in four years. The first year was great. By the second year, it became clear that the school only cared about the tuition, not the kids. I was disillusioned.

So, a friend approached me and said, "I need an American. Kind of scruffy. It looks like he's good with his hands." The next thing I knew, I was in Jiaxing (in Zhejiang Province) assembling pergolas, barbecue grills, and other stuff that they're selling on Amazon in North America. Then, I'd do voiceovers or even write the script for their instructional videos.

During that time, I was living in this amazing apartment in Shanghai with a friend. It had a rooftop as big as this restaurant. We threw this St Paddy's party up there, and everybody brought their own meat for the grill. Everybody was throwing stuff on the grill randomly. Raw meat on top of vegetables. Total chaos. I remember just thinking, "What the hell are you people doing?" So, I went up next to the guy who was trying to man the grill. I elbowed him out of the way, grabbed the tongs, and took over. And boom! Made it happen. It was all good.

A month later, we did it again. Only this time, we got a DJ, and my friend donated 10 cases of newly expired – but still very drinkable – beer. This time, I didn't let anyone near the grill. I didn't even let them bring their own food. I bought it. Then I prepped it all in a sous vide bath and finished it on the grill. We did proper ribs. You know, things like that. It turned into such a rager. And then I ended up doing another one. Bigger turnout.

The whole thing just started growing organically. People even approached me about catering their birthday parties. That was when I decided that I needed to brand myself. That was the origin of Smoke KCQ. I started doing pop-ups at places like that now-defunct bar District in Jing'an. They were a good connection because they served Boulevard, a craft beer from Kansas City.

I did all that for a solid two years. Eventually, I opened my own company so I could work as a consultant. Then COVID hit. I got stuck back home in the US for almost a year. You know, after eight, nine months, you're like, "Do I need to pick up my life here again? Am I ever going to get back?" I thought picking up where I left off in teaching, but they treat teachers like garbage in America. Besides, I had to come back, if for no other reason than to retrieve my dog. After I finally got back, I ended up consulting with Camel, and that's how The Smokehouse was born.

So, how did you end up with this place?

This used to be Bubba's, a place of decades worth of fame in Shanghai. Ken Walker, then owner, had been contending with some health problems for a while. This life is not good for somebody who's got his health condition. Owning a restaurant is a seven-day-a-week job. Even on the days you're closed you're worrying about it. He realized it was time to step away from it, so he approached me to buy it. He had known me for several years and caught a lot of people's attention by participating in the Bubba's chili cook-offs a few times.

You do seem like the obvious choice to take over this place. What are you doing that's different?

We've changed the layout a bit. We've reduced the space behind the bar, so we can have a prep kitchen. There used to be this gigantic table here. We cut that in half, and that became the new surface for our bar. We threw in some booths, a pool table, dartboards. All the wood paneling you see here, that's from this market in Suzhou. All they sell is reclaimed wood – just football fields of stuff salvaged from demolitions. It's pretty cool.

We have a 250-gallon barbecue grill sitting outside, a giant grill, 25 seats. And we can expand that on the weekends and add up to about 50 seats outside. And then we added all the TVs. I think we opened right in time too, because we hit the Euros, the Olympics, the Stanley Cup, and the NBA Finals. College football is about to start, and the Premier League just started back up too.

There is also one crucial detail you're not mentioning. Ken did Texas-style barbecue here. You do Kansas City-style.

I'm not one of those guys who goes on about that so-called rivalry. Texans will tell you that all their barbecue needs is salt and pepper and that it doesn't need sauce. But that's only because they don't want you to know the other seasonings they're adding. And in Kansas City, they're always like, "It's all about the rub." And everybody thinks Kansas City barbecue is just sticky sweet sauces. Which is completely wrong. Our house sauce is not overly sweet. I modeled it after one of my favorite barbecue places, Gates, back in Kansas City. Also, we're not trying to make any kind of statement here about Texas versus Kansas City. People can still come here and put Bubba's sauce on their barbecue. We have a bottle of both on every table here.

"And everybody thinks Kansas City barbecue is just sticky sweet sauces which is completely wrong. Our house sauce is not overly sweet. I modeled it after one of my favorite barbecue places, Gates, back in Kansas City."

Matty Waters

What do you smoke your brisket with?

Apple wood. It's versatile. That's probably one of the biggest differences: regional woods in America. In Texas, they're probably using more post oak. It's a much stronger wood, so maybe that's where you get your differences. But apple wood is prevalent in the Midwest. It also works well with chicken.

Speaking of which, tell us about these wings.

We do a slow smoke and then we cook them in the smoker until done, Then we drop them in the deep fryer and hit them with this spice rub we call the Pit Master Special.

What's in the spice rub?

A lot: a couple of different kinds of sugar, paprika, turmeric, garlic powder, and a bunch of other stuff I'm not going to tell you. We have an adobo chicken wing as well. A lot of our chefs are Filipino. So, the staff meals they cook are often Filipino food. I tried their adobo and was like, "Man! This is good! Can you make a sauce and reduce it down to a glaze?" It's gotten good feedback. The Filipino customers dig it, too.

What about this hot ham and cheese?

Yeah! This is the silent killer! I love ham, and in China, good ham is really expensive. I don't think anybody is importing proper American-made ham here either. And I feel like every restaurant uses the same ham here. So, we're smoking it in-house, doing it ourselves. We do really thin slices and pile it up high, like an Arby's sandwich. And I even do a Dijonnaise sauce, which is similar to what an Arby's horsey sauce would be. And instead of just melting Swiss cheese on top, we make a beer cheese sauce in-house.

Where do you eat when you aren't at work?

Substandard. Jason Oakley (the owner) is my guy. He was just here today, in fact. Those sandwiches are so good. The F-bomb on Fridays. Have you had that one yet? He does an amazing job even with the lettuce all shredded up into fine threads like that. That is a nice touch. That makes a big difference. We do that for our southern-style fried chicken sandwich, but I don't think we do the lettuce as well.

So, where did you come up with the name?

It just rolls off the tongue, and it's a word with a lot of layers. You can think of "parlay" in terms of sports betting. You can also think of it in the sense of parlaying your skills into something successful.