Pizza & Pasta Northeast 2018

Matt Hyland
Owner/Executive Chef
Pizza Loves Emily, Brooklyn & West Village


Matt was born in Brooklyn, where his parents read him sarcastic quips from Zagat before bed, and he adopted a lifestyle of eating pizza and dumplings that continues to this day. When his family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, Matt quickly picked up lacrosse, which in retrospect was a solid ten years of training to use a pizza peel. After college in Rhode Island, Matt moved back to New York armed with a computer science degree, a pizza-loving girl on his arm, and a love for food. He enrolled at the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) and has been cooking ever since. To Matt, EMILY is an American pizza place that pays homage to the two places Matt grew up – the two pizza capitals of the world – New York and Connecticut. In April 2016, Matt and Emily opened EMMY SQUARED in Williamsburg, offering New York City’s first Detroit-inspired square pizzas in addition to nostalgic American fare. A second outpost of EMILY followed in June 2017 opening in Manhattan’s West Village neighborhood. This March, Matt launched EMMY SQUARED in Nashville making it the fourth restaurant in the Pizza Loves Emily family and the family’s first restaurant outside of New York. When he is not in the kitchen, Matt is looking at Google Maps, dreaming of clam shacks, keeping the secret ͞Matt͟ pizza under wraps, and trying to convince Emily to eat dumplings.

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