Meet Chef Matteo

Chef Matteo Silverman’s passion is creating unique plant-based food focused on farm-to-table concepts as well as incorporating flavors and ingredients from diverse cultural cuisines. He seeks fresh, seasonal ingredients that are local, organic, and sustainably grown. Chef Matteo has been a vegan for 25+ years. He graduated from San Francisco State University with a Bachelor of Science in Restaurant and Hospitality Management in 1999.

He then wet his feet in the San Francisco restaurant scene, working at the famous Greens, Millennium, and Paul K. restaurants. Chef Matteo moved to NYC in March 2001 and graduated from the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health & Culinary Arts that July. Upon graduation he worked at various bakeries and restaurants honing his skills and learning the trade. Along the way he has worked privately for families and high-profile clients in entertainment and finance.  In January 2003, Matteo launched,

 4 Course Vegan, his highly acclaimed underground restaurant he hosted in his Williamsburg loft every Saturday until 2012. During this time he also created the raw foods menu for Juice Generations’ Cooler Cleanse and its retail stores in NYC.  Upon moving back to California in January 2012, he founded Chalk Hill Cookery , a vegan food company in Sonoma County that garnered quite the local following at farmers markets and festivals.  In 2019 he joined the NewTree Ranch family. NewTree Ranch is a eco-luxury farm stay with a produce farm and animals, providing guests an experience that models a spiritual-ethical-ecological approach to agriculture, plant-based nutrition, and wellness.

Chef Matteo also owned and operated Buddha's Garden, a vegan cafe in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua for 2 years. His love of tropical ingredients and increasing desire to learn local Nicaraguan recipes were the inspiration for the menu at this location. 

Here in Costa Rica, El Aguacate is the next extension of Chef Matteo's career. He loves connecting with locals to learn about traditional Central American dishes and recipes. He features tropical ingredients in his menus including coconut, cashews, papaya, chilies, avocado, jackfruit, cacao and much more.