While Los Angeles residents tune in to see Michael Jordan feast on opposing defenses in “The Last Dance,” a local chef has come up with MJ-inspired meals to accompany the viewing experience.
Matt Poley, co-owner of Heirloom L.A. along with his partner, Tara Maxey, introduced “The Last Dance Menu” at their catering business last week. The traditional Chicago dishes, named after prominent characters on those Chicago Bulls teams, coincide with the 10-part documentary and served as a creative way to drum up business during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“For every guy and girl at home watching this, they need to be eating food inspired by this era and this time,” Poley said Sunday in advance of episodes 3 and 4. “With so many transplants from the Midwest out in L.A., it took off. We sold so many orders of everything the first weekend.
“We got so many orders — almost 3,000 meals going out today. Maybe half of them have ‘The Last Dance’ menu stuff on it.”
As the top dog throughout Chicago’s championship runs, the Jordan dish was an easy choice.
“It’s undisputed that the Chicago hot dog is the greatest hot dog of all time,” Poley said. “So it’s undisputed that Michael Jordan should be the greatest hot dog of all time.”
The Chicago-style hot dog is cooked with grass-fed beef and placed on a house-made hot dog bun and smothered with pickled cucumbers, marinated cherry tomatoes, pickled pepper and white onion relish.
He filled out the tasting options by marrying more staples of Chicago cuisine with Bulls figures. There’s a vegan carrot hot dog for Dennis Rodman “that’s colorful, that’s flamboyant and all over the place,” Poley said.
There’s an Italian beef sandwich served with Croatian Goveda Juha [beef soup] to recognize Toni Kukoc.
“You sit down for a Croatian dinner, you’re eating beef soup. It’s the appetizer pretty much all the time,” Poley said. “It’s essentially just a fortified, delicious beef broth which is no different than a French dip. So being able to kind of tie his heritage into the Chicago heritage of the beef sandwich, with the beef and the peppers and the Swiss and everything — that might be my favorite of them from a flavor standpoint.”
Accounting for popular Chicago steakhouse tours and the plant-based diet one would expect from a Zen master, Poley put together five sides (vegan pumpkin mac n’ cheese, sweet potato steak fries and a sweet pea-asparagus succotash among them) as a single menu item to represent Phil Jackson coaching the Bulls five starters to play together.
He also mixed in his own background to round out the options. One can order “The Detroit Bad Boys,” which includes two slices of Detroit-style pizza from Poley, who grew up in Clarkston, Michigan, outside the Motor City, and one slice of Chicago deep dish. “If you’re from Detroit, you’re talking s— to everybody who thinks Chicago pizza is better,” he said. “So you got to do a Detroit pizza vs. Chicago deep dish pizza. So that was a fun one.”
While his life in the food industry in L.A. has caused him to rub elbows with celebrities on occasion — he even once prepared a meal hosted at Jackson’s home and got to meet Magic Johnson, who was a guest — there’s nothing prissy about Poley’s palette. “I grew up going to sports bars,” he said.
So “Steve Kerr’s 3-Pointer” is three roasted peppers and squash tamales as an ode to Claudio Velez, a.k.a. “The Tamale Guy” who packs up his cooler with tamales and parks himself outside bars and clubs in Chicago’s North Side to sell to patrons looking to sop up the alcohol in their stomachs late at night.
And the best seller last week was “The Ultimate Wing Man,” in honor of Scottie Pippen, featuring a dozen spicy chicken wings with blue cheese ranch dressing and carrots and celery. “That one just kind of fell in my lap,” Poley said. “That was great.”
Each individual meal ranges from $12-$18, with the entire Last Dance Menu going for $115, including a coconut water and ginger tonic inspired by the fluids Jordan needed to drink during the famous “Flu Game.”
“There were people buying that and sending me texts, ‘Dude, I just poured that over tequila. That was the cocktail I was having while I was watching it,'” Poley said with a satisfied laugh.
Keeping his business — located in downtown’s Highland Park neighborhood, a stone’s throw from Dodger Stadium — up and running with 46 full-time employees while L.A. is under a shelter-at-home mandate until the middle of May has been challenging.
“Right now we’re following very strict COVID regulations,” said Poley. “We’ve got three different shifts operating to be able to support it. We don’t have any more than 10 people in the kitchen at a time. Everybody is with the facemask, the gloves, all of that stuff. So we’re running a really tight ship in terms of keeping the regulations strong, but we’ve got a team that comes in that works from 8 until 4, a team that comes in from 4 until 12 and a team that comes in from midnight until 8 a.m. and they all have varying degrees of responsibility.”
Heirloom L.A. has raised more than $30,000 since coronavirus hit to feed whom Poley described as the “food insecure.” While they schedule their deliveries for customers on Thursdays and Sundays, on Mondays they have been providing meals to an area hospital.
When “The Last Dance” comes on Sunday night, Poley will take a break from the kitchen, slip on his favorite pair of Air Jordans — the sneakers that prompted him to get his first job in the restaurant business as a 13-year-old so he could afford to buy them — and enjoy some pizza and Pippen wings while escaping into the documentary on the Bulls’ dynasty for a couple hours.
“Being from Detroit and being out in L.A., I felt that people needed to be able to have something special to eat while they’re watching this,” Poley said, “because otherwise, you’re ordering garden bowls, grain bowls and avocado toast to watch Jordan.”