We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Matt Reeves. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Matt below.

Matt, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

I do listen to my audience most times for when they want to see a certain item appear or a certain theme that can be drawn in our menu or our venue, which is part of the reason why I have taken a step back from popping up on the regular, and instead, tighter, more comprehensive, full service events in the later half of the year.

I don’t think it started that way, I did not see food as a means for creativity or income for that matter, but more so, a means to feed people like myself, who might have grown up with this food or miss it in some capacity. I think meaning started to sprout there. I have heard so many personal stories from guests who have some childhood or travel-like connection to my food, something found on grandmother’s table, or something they only found in their hometown, which turned to, “This is really good”.

When did I start applying my own meaning to the food? Maybe this could be used as a force of good, the project Brave Wojtek started to take in its own identity sometime in its first year mainly through its marketing, and in the American twists on the recipes.

I started looking through old Soviet and Polish magazines of images of life under occupation during the war, and later life under Communism. I thought about the kitchen drawers in my grandmother’s home, stuffed with bottle caps, why were we like this? Cans of food for months. Why did we save everything? I started to go back in time just before my birth in the late 80s. The normalcy of life in lines for groceries, the constant need to learn to repair the damaged car. My Polish culture, as it were, on my mothers side, has endured great duress. These were hard people.

I feel I have come up this way in life and difficult times, often a stranger at home, through wanderlust, homelessness, a pandemic, a calcifying police state, with my thumb on the pulse of the underground, now standing on the bloody edges of a world war. American life doesn’t really feel all that secure anymore. Maybe someone should sound off about it. Well, maybe I could point us in the right direction.

I know it seems a bit heated for someone who should perhaps ‘shut up and make you pierogi’ to voice loudly about global catastrophes and report on wars, while still promising you a good meal, but my integrity tells me I have something here with this brand, and probably should use it for something useful beyond food porn.

Longtime supporters would notice a shift in the aesthetic of Brave Wojtek after the invasion of Ukraine began last year. The vintage images of Polish and Eastern European life, subtly replaced with old magazines of urban life globally, of counter-cultures and lost scenes, out of print zines of misfits and imperfect settings from the 70s and 80s waving their arms to music, lying across the bed, tormenting the camera. Well, these lunatics, they’re just like me, I thought. In a way, I’m not quite in agreement with the world either, neither is my food: contemporary, messy, funny, blending of cuisines from the lowbrow of American fast food, to Babcia’s pantry. People seem to get their rocks off with it, and like what Brave Wojtek has done.

Matt, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

For a long time in the restaurant industry in Atlanta, I could probably be passed off as familiar. That is, I’ve been working in Atlanta restaurants for about (ten-ish?) years. And I still work in them to get by. From managing One Eared Stag, to making cocktails at Ration and Dram, to late night Octopus Bar, to staple steakhouses like Highland Tap.

I didn’t have a lot of opportunities growing up, and while I did go to college to study art and literature, it appeared to be going nowhere for me but student debt. Restaurants provided a tangible means to earn money and live my life. Which is to say I could not afford to educate myself. Also, I was so bloody bored. I was already out there in the world, fighting and working, and tumbling through relationships, searching for love, experiencing whatever.

I took a chance when I found out about the pop up scene in Atlanta, because I could cook, and made intuitive sense to work for myself, and not for someone else. That’s seemed to never sit well with me, I think everyone should work for themselves, and do their work in their own way. But that’s frightening, and not easy to do or galvanize others who might be taken good care of at their job.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I want revenge for us all, the working class, I really do, on the ones who caste the rich from the rest. There are so many terrible practices only procured by the men behind the money, who think they have entitlement to our labor, our creations, and even our bodies. There are so many horror stories of thievery, violence, sexual violence, and bare cruelty of quote respected business owners, chefs, and investors, that it would make your head spin. I want them all to pay for their cowardice in veiling their atrocious behavior behind the glee of vanity, fame and fortune, and knowing so many sleep at night, having exploited their workforce in various inhumane ways is no comfort of mine. “A good man is hard to find” to quote Flannery O’Conner, I think I have come to it, want to be remembered more having been a fair and good person to those around me, and someone not afraid to speak up for the silent, rather than be labeled a creative, or talented, or a master of my craft.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Man, show up. Collaborate. Listen to what they have to say. Give them the space to present themselves. There is so much you can do to support pop ups and artists. Some of the goals are finite, sometimes it’s about something bigger. You have to ask them personally what they want. Where they want to be. Not all of us are trying to open a restaurant for example. Not all of us are trying for the awards or recognition. We are all trying to get by, and we are all working very hard. You just have to be where they are. If you can’t, ask how you can help. I don’t have an answer to society for that, it depends on the individual.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @bravewojtek
• Other: [email protected]

Image Credits
Personal Photo and photo of pork knuckle dish by @nerdyretreat