Matthew Kempf was about 20 years old, a line cook turning out burgers and fries in a casual local pub, when he strode into one of Minneapolis' fanciest restaurants and announced that he wanted to work there.
"He decided he was going to be a chef and he was going to do fine dining, so he went downtown to Goodfellow's, arguably the best restaurant in town at the time," recalled Kempf's longtime friend Jarret Oulman. "They said, 'You can work here, but it will be for free. You can volunteer to work here.' He said, 'OK, I'll do it.'"
Kempf was told he'd probably have to work without pay for a year — "and even after that, you're just going to make salads," Oulman said. But about a month later, he was getting paid, his friend said, and within a couple of years was sous chef, the kitchen's second in command.
"He pushed and he hustled and he worked really hard," Oulman said.
Kempf died May 13 of complications from an undiagnosed liver condition that came on in October. He was 44.
Friends said Kempf was creative, intellectual and generous, with a sense of humor variously described as subtle, dry, dark, goofy and self-deprecating. Above all, he was determined — in the kitchen and in other pursuits.
"Once he set his mind to something, he became very good at it — skateboarding, reading, music," said friend Ben Pagel of New York.
"He was always kind of curious, would just sort of start doing something out of nowhere," said Jessica Nielsen of St. Paul, who worked with Kempf and lived with him for more than 10 years. "I think his brain was always going, trying to think of something else that would be interesting to try."
When he died, Kempf was restoring a 1976 Volkswagen Beetle for a cross-country trip, said his mother, Kitty Skoog of Champlin.
"He was the kind of guy that could pretty much fix or do anything," she said.
Kempf was born in Grand Forks, N.D., moved with family to the Twin Cities and graduated from Champlin Park High School. He and Oulman worked together at casual restaurants starting as teenagers, and Kempf was working at the Sheridan Room, a Minneapolis restaurant that Oulman co-owns, when he died.
In addition to Goodfellow's — a gleaming art deco palace that closed in 2005 — Kempf worked as a chef at restaurants across the Twin Cities, including Café Maude in Minneapolis, Salut in Edina and W.A. Frost in St. Paul.
"Everybody who worked with him and for him, I think, would agree he was such a nice guy, so professional, he was the hardest working person in the kitchen," Nielsen said.
Oulman remembers Kempf practicing recipes from a culinary textbook, arranging for multicourse meals at other restaurants and exceeding expectations when asked to contribute a dish to Thanksgiving potluck.
"He was supposed to bring sweet potatoes or whatever, and he brought this ornate rack of lamb," Oulman said.
He also immersed himself in cooking at a deeper cultural level. "He saw the bigger conversation that food could have," Pagel said.
"He loved the idea that there was an animal, and it had lived," Oulman said. "And you took it apart and you treated it with respect in how you prepared it and you honored it by making it into something beautiful."
Besides Skoog, survivors include his father, Greg Kempf of Caldwell, Idaho; sister Heide Kempf-Schwarze of St. Paul; brothers Nicholas Kempfof Caldwell; Jim Skoog of Minneapolis, and Jeff Skoog of Rogers, Minn. Services have been held.
