Matthew Keaveny’s Eden Cay

Passion projects burn brightly within multi-tasker Matthew Keaveny’s creative being. Already a sought-after music and jingle producer, the Grammy Award-winning talent is now putting his long-practised love for international cuisine out for public consumption. Launched at the tail-end of last year, Keaveny’s Eden Cay fusion fare has carved out a niche, with a rapidly expanding clientele.

“We got 70 requests on December 16 when we started but we were only able to accept 50 orders,” he said of the business he was encouraged by his partner, Kay Smith and several longtime friends, to undertake.

“She was always saying, ‘Keyz, you should have a restaurant and do this professionally’. My pushback was always that I didn’t have the time, as I had a lot of things dealing with day-to-day.” He also maintains a 9-to-5 as a sales executive at Lithographic Printers.

With his initial hesitancy eventually abated, the self-taught cook revealed, two months in, “Things have been going really well, actually. It’s moving at a faster pace than I expected. Our customer count is rising each week, and it’s a wide cross-section of people. We have customers from Norbrook and Cherry Gardens to Maxfield Avenue and Orange Street, and [even] Franklyn Town.”

Keaveny reminisced that the concept for Eden Cay grew out of conversations with Kay and their friends, as well as cooking for them.

The brand currently offers three protein meal options, each infused with his specially crafted sauces.

Pescetarians can relish his pan-seared salmon with sweet chilli sauce, while poultry devotees can choose between jerk teriyaki chicken or lightly fried, buttermilk-marinated chicken. All orders come with jasmine rice and a vegetable slaw.

During a recent drop-in to Orange Grove, Stony Hill, where he cooks outdoors on a makeshift charcoal grill amid lush greenery, he noted that “all my meat is marinated and seasoned 24 to 48 hours before actual preparation”.

He went on, “I go through a very meticulous process when I am cleaning my chicken before seasoning. Once I get to the cooking stage, everything is prepared on the grill, using coal. The only thing prepared on the actual stove is the fried chicken.”

The earnest enthusiasm for ethnic cuisines deepened while Keaveny lived in Los Angeles, California, for an intermittent four-year stretch, working alongside music producer Donovan ‘Don Corleon’ Bennett.

“When I moved out to LA, I was exposed to different styles of cooking and palates. I ate Mexican, heavy Asian, mid-Pacific, Italian, Peruvian, and Portuguese,” he recalled.

The Eden Cay boss is also very particular about the mood of the space where he cooks.

“Everything is an energy transfer with food, so I try to ensure the vibe and environment is always right,” Keaveny explained just before turning on a retro-styled Bluetooth radio resting on a table next to his cooking utensils and sauces. From the speakers came a multi-genre playlist of downtempo, lounge, and lo-fi music.

With tongs in hand, as he placed days-marinated chicken quarters on the fired-up grill, Keaveny added, “You are supposed to experience Eden Cay food and feel relaxed. It’s comfort food with refined flavours.”

CULINARY FASCINATION

Culinary fascination entered the fray when he started cooking at age 11. “The first meal I prepared was salt fish and cabbage with boiled dumplings,” he recounted.

The son of retired dentist Vincent Keaveny and special educator Dawn, Matthew, now an adult, recalled to Food his younger days: “I moved on to making oatmeal and cornmeal porridges, and corned beef and rice – those were the basic things I first learnt. I would normally be up early in the kitchen on Saturday mornings, around 5 or 6, when everybody was fast asleep.”

A significant moment in his childhood that shaped his affinity for coal-infused fare came from “watching the workmen who were renovating my parents’ house. They lived on site and cooked on a coal stove. Even at that early stage, I loved the flavour of food cooked over coal and how different it tasted from regular gas-stove cooking.” He also grew to appreciate grilling, and, in his teenage years, began experimenting with roast chicken, stewed chicken, and sweet-and-sour chicken.

Today, with Eden Cay up and running, Keaveny is keen on maintaining focus on his three signature meals. “We are trying to keep the menu very simple and consistent. I don’t think I need a menu with 10 or 15 options,” remarked the Campion College and University of the West Indies alum, who majored in economics and business management.

“If you are honest with yourself, when you find a restaurant that you love, you go in and you order the same thing almost every time,” he added.

As the culinary entrepreneur presses on, he continues to navigate other creative interests – he’s the jingle-maker behind some of the MultiLink, Juici Patties, Walkerswood, and Tastee Cheese earworms you may know. Music projects, including Gentleman’s new album and Romain Virgo’s Driver single, also demanded his attention.

The long-term goal for Eden Cay, according to Keaveny is, “to have a physical restaurant where people can come in and dine, [moving] from just strictly lunch and delivery, [so] you can experience the food in a proper setting and ambiance. Next year Christmas is the deadline I am giving myself to open.”

With the clock ticking down to that target date, he wants to add another item to the menu: “It’s an Asian Fusion Stew Chicken that I am fine-tuning. I think the Eden Cay family is going to love it. I am now putting the final tweaks and will roll it out by the end of this month.”

Eden Cay’s fare is available for order on Tuesdays and Fridays. Find Keaveny’s business details on Instagram at @edencayjm.

lifestyle@gleanerjm.com

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