OREN Restaurant | Shoutout DFW: Meet Matt Amberg | Chef/Owner, Oren Restaurant

Shoutout DFW: Meet Matt Amberg | Chef/Owner, Oren Restaurant

Matt McWilliams — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 20:30:55 +0000

We had the good fortune of connecting with Matt Amberg and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Matt, have there been any changes in how you think about work-life balance?
Throughout most of my career I missed everything outside of work. Weddings, birthdays, vacations, concerts, funerals, simple dinners with friends or my family, I missed them all. Nothing got in the way of going to work. I never asked for time off. I never asked to leave early. I was never late.

Things changed temporarily a little when my first child was born, but pretty soon went back to the same. The biggest primary shift was due to the covid shutdown. While the restaurant never closed completely, we pivoted to take out. For the first time in a long time, there just wasn’t that much work to be done and I spent a lot more time at home with the family. By this time my wife and I had 3 kids. I quickly realized that; 1. my wife had a lot on her plate with all of the kids and 2. I had been missing a lot of their childhood. Being a parent, husband, and a business owner means I have more than just one full-time job. If we had done a performance evaluation on being a parent and a husband, I probably should have been fired.

I look at work life balance kind of like changing tides. Sometimes work needs more focus and time, sometimes life needs more focus and time. I try to make sure neither is experiencing flood or drought.

I am most able to achieve the balance by letting go a little, delegating, putting the right people in the right spots, empowering. Letting go and trusting other people was not easy for me, but I have found the more I let go, the more I can see that the people around me really do have my back.

I understand I could do a lot more of the work myself and save labor hours, our profit would increase, but there comes a point when you decide that the cost of going home and putting kids to bed is more valuable.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Owning the restaurant is the culmination of my working life and probably my life in general. I fantasized about being a restaurant owner from an early age. Career-wise, I’m probably most proud that I didn’t stay in Tulsa the whole time, I moved around a little. My time in New York was the most formative and important. Probably most notably was the professionalism that was exhibited by the chefs and other cooks, there were chefs I worked for that I felt could have slid into CEO positions just as easily as taking the direction of restauranteurs and chefs. I didn’t work on ‘pirate ships’ filled with drug addicts, drunks, and womanizers that has been portrayed by some books and shows. I worked in a world that didn’t allow that and we don’t allow it at Oren

The road to Oren wasn’t smooth or straight. Operating Oren hasn’t been smooth or straight either. I have said multiple times, Oren has become successful because of all the mistakes along the way. Countless missteps. Thankfully none seem to have been fatal. The willingness to accept failure, pivot and try a new direction has been very beneficial.

We opened Oren on a bit of a shoestring budget, we have continually reinvested into the restaurant to get to where we are now. We take that same approach to our staff, we have made investing in our staff a priority. Wages have gone up substantially, we offer matching 401(k) for all staff and a health insurance plan for our kitchen staff, these things are rare in a owner/operator, single restaurant company.

Our intention is not to reinvent the wheel, our food is not meant to be art pieces. I don’t see anything wrong with restaurants that aim for more of a ‘high wire act’ with their food, they take a ton of skill, work, passion, and they have their place. I enjoy those restaurants occasionally, but that is not the itch Oren is trying to scratch. Oren is meant to be equal parts special occasion and everyday restaurant, this is one of the hardest things we have tried to accomplish. Our north star is hospitality. Our service and food are meant to be intentional without being fussy.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I would be nowhere without my wife. Yaara is the captain of our ship at home. She keeps me centered, helps to remind me of what is important. We definitely have a division of labor around the house and at the restaurant, neither would run well without her presence. In fact, I could probably disappear from home and it would still run relatively the same, she is an outstanding mother and partner.

Website: orenrestaurant.com

Instagram: @orenrestaurant

Facebook: Oren

Image Credits
The Tony Li Project

Nominate Someone: ShoutoutDFW is built on recommendations and shoutouts from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.

The Boston Globe: “Tulsa Is In the Throes of a Dining Renaissance”

Matt McWilliams — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 17:55:12 +0000

The roasted scallop dish at Oren is like something out of a Scandinavian fever dream had in Southeast Asia. They’re served in zingy green curry made with piquant yuzukosho, a citrusy paste spiced with chilis, and a garden’s worth of flavors — cilantro, mint, parsley, kaffir lime leaves, shallots.

The dining room is spare and calming, like a Japanese teahouse reimagined for a coastal Norwegian town. And the servers and bartender are so friendly and chatty that all initial impressions of formality quickly vanish.

Oren sits 1,433 miles due east of Los Angeles and 1,350 miles due west of Manhattan. It’s located on South Peoria Street, in Tulsa, and if you go 2.4 miles up the road you’ll hit the Oklahoma stretch of Route 66, where once the only eateries were greasy spoon diners and the state’s famous burger joints. (Legend has it that the burger was first slapped between a bun at Tulsa’s still-operational Weber’s Root Beer Stand, a bit of folklore that remains inconclusive.)

Forbes: “Top Bites and Brews in Tulsa, Oklahoma”

Matt McWilliams — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 17:45:52 +0000

Tulsa, Oklahoma, the second largest city in the state, is an oil boom town in the midst of a resurgence, with unique neighborhoods and entertainment districts, a recently completed 100-acre, $465 million riverfront park and a remote program that encourages workers to move to the city for at least a year.

On the food and drink front, there’s a wide range of options to keep you satisfied on a weekend trip or longer stop through the city. From a smoked meat mecca to a vegetable-forward New American eatery, here’s some of the best places to grab some grub in Tulsa.

Oren Craft Magazine: “Tulsa trusts Oren’s Matt Amberg to take them someplace wonderful”

Matt McWilliams — Mon, 10 Jun 2019 15:27:21 +0000

Sitting in Oren with Matt Amberg today, you would not get the sense that he’s facing adversity. Matt has a direct and matter-of-fact demeanor that is comforting and surprising.
It’s the focus that becomes possible when you truly know yourself, and that could be said to be the defining quality of Oren Restaurant on Brookside: a restaurant that knows itself.

The Tulsa Voice: “Inventive Restraint”

Matt McWilliams — Tue, 12 Jun 2018 20:22:15 +0000

source: thetulsavoice.com

The moment you walk into Oren—Chef Matthew Amberg’s progressive Brookside eatery—there is an appreciable lack of ostentation. Absent from the dining room are the chintzy gimmicks that too often adorn the walls of restaurants designed to trend. While mood and appetite are easily manipulated by vibrant colors, art, photography, music, and even TVs, Oren eschews unnecessary distractions in order to keep the focus on what you (and your senses) arrived for—the food.

Basking in minimalism, Oren’s dining room is a blank slate of confidence. The color scheme is overwhelmingly white and the walls are mostly bare. In keeping up with appearances, the menu has also been judiciously scaled back. At a mere three pages, the selection of food and drinks can be perused without causing option paralysis or eyestrain.

Edible Tulsa: “A Chef Comes Full Circle”

Matt McWilliams — Wed, 16 May 2018 16:03:39 +0000

source: edibletulsa.ediblecommunities.com

Chef Matthew Amberg, a Tulsa native, has come full circle by opening Oren, a sleek new spot for what he calls “progressive American” cuisine, in Brookside, a stone’s throw from where he grew up.

Amberg’s first food job, which launched him on his career track, started just down the street at Curt & Marj’s, under the tutelage of the renowned Curt Herrmann and Marjorie Alexander.

“Marj gave me a real foundation from cookbooks,” Amberg said. “If we were going to make a béchamel, she would give me a cookbook and tell me to go sit and read about it for 15 minutes. That is the reason I have so many cookbooks in my kitchen.”

Tulsa World: “Oren highlight 2017 rankings of new Tulsa restaurants”

Yara Amberg — Tue, 09 Jan 2018 20:16:41 +0000

source: tulsaworld.com

It turns out the first person who said, “Never say never,” had a point.

Since I first started ranking the new Tulsa restaurants in 2003, I always said I never would pick a tie. Ties are a copout, I said. A cheap way out of a tough decision, I said.

For a person who eats for a living, I now can add my own words to my dining consumption. Because this year, folks, we have a tie….

Attention to detail – Oren is one Tulsan’s take on big-city dining.

Yara Amberg — Tue, 09 Jan 2018 20:12:33 +0000

source: http://www.tulsapeople.com/

Matthew and Yara Amberg have given Tulsa a gift with their new restaurant, Oren.

Oren could very easily fit into the New York City restaurant scene. You can imagine discovering a place like it in Brooklyn or on a list of the hottest new restaurants in NYC.

Instead, Matthew Amberg opened a progressive American cuisine restaurant just blocks from the Brookside neighborhood where he grew up in Tulsa…

Review: Oren makes extraordinary entrance into Tulsa dining scene

Yara Amberg — Tue, 09 Jan 2018 20:05:45 +0000

source tulsaworld.com

Yara and Matt Amberg had a three-pronged plan after they married, when both were cooking at high-end New York City-area restaurants.

“We wanted children, a nice house and our own restaurant,” Matt Amberg said. “It didn’t seem feasible up there, so we had to go to Israel, where Yara is from, or Tulsa, where I’m from, to raise a family. We chose Tulsa.”

…

Tulsa World: “Tulsa’s 33 Best Restaurants”

Yara Amberg — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 19:23:19 +0000

Yara and Matt Amberg had a three-pronged plan after they married, when both were cooking at high-end New York City-area restaurants.