Started in a garage. Built by people who missed home cooking.
Eleven years, one small dining room, and a stubborn refusal to cut corners. Here's how Tasty Kitchen House actually happened.
It began with a bad restaurant meal
Founder Matthew Miller wasn't a trained chef — he was an engineer who cooked obsessively on weekends. After one too many overpriced, under-flavoured meals out with friends, he did the obvious, slightly reckless thing: quit his job and converted his family's garage into a six-table dining room.
There was no investor deck, no brand strategy. Just a wood grill built from a repurposed oil drum, a menu of eleven dishes, and a promise scrawled on the specials board that's still there today: "if we wouldn't serve it to our own family, it doesn't leave this kitchen."
Same values, a slightly bigger kitchen
Word spread the old-fashioned way — one satisfied table telling another. By 2018 we'd outgrown the garage and moved two streets over into our current home, but we kept the same wood grill, the same six founding recipes, and hired cooks who cared more about technique than titles.
Today eleven cooks and front-of-house staff run a room of eighteen tables. We still write the specials board by hand. We still close on Mondays so the whole team can actually rest. Growth was never the goal — getting better at the thing we already loved doing was.
Four rules that haven't changed since day one
Season first
The menu is rewritten every few weeks around what's actually good right now, not what's easy to keep in stock.
Open flame, always
If it can be cooked over wood, it is. It's slower and harder to control — that's exactly why it's worth it.
Cook for the table, not the camera
We plate for flavour and generosity first. If it photographs well too, that's a nice bonus, not the point.
Rest matters
We close every Monday. A tired kitchen makes worse food and worse decisions — simple as that.
Meet a few familiar faces
Davis Throne
Founder & Head Chef
Still runs the grill station most nights. Believes a menu should be short enough to memorise.
Peggy Sparks
Pastry Chef
Joined in 2019 and rebuilt the dessert menu around her grandmother's recipes.
Donald Fisher
Floor Manager
Knows most regulars by their order before they've sat down. Ten years and counting.