Chef Matthew Roberts has a way of making the quieter parts of cooking feel like the most important ones. Returning to larder-centric kitchens. An ingredient sourced with care. The relationship behind that ingredient. The understanding that a dinner can be thoughtful, ambitious, and deeply personal without needing to announce itself as such every five minutes.
Long Beach has witnessed that approach through his work at Alder & Sage, through pop-ups and collaborations, and through his help behind the scenes at the Long Beach Grand Prix Fixe. And on Friday, Oct. 16, he will bring what he calls the True North Social Club to Partake Collective in Downtown Long Beach for an intimate, five-course dinner.
The menu moves from tuna carpaccio and chilled beet soup to clams, mushroom-laden cavatelli, and lemon verbena budino. Seafood. Produce. Pasta. Herbs threading their way through the entire evening. It reads like a chance to sit down and get to know a chef whose contributions to our food scene deserve more attention.
And it comes at a particularly fitting moment: Long Beach is increasingly embracing dinners that give chefs room to tell a fuller story.
Chef Matthew Roberts’s Long Beach work has been rooted in seasonality—and True North Social Club will reflect that.
San Diego-raised and now a Long Beach resident, Chef Matthew arrived at cooking through an unconventional route: photography, travel, and the realization that feeding people offered a creative connection. Gigs in kitchens. Live-fire dinners. Food-and-wine pairings across California…
“I wanted to tell the story of the hands that feed us to the best of my ability,” he said in an earlier interview.
That desire helps explain his presence here in Long Beach. Before taking the helm at Alder & Sage in fall 2025, he was already contributing around town: helping Got Your Back, popping up at Kitchen Lingo, and assisting Chef Jason Winters during the inaugural Grand Prix Fixe. At Alder & Sage, his approach centered on produce, preservation, and a kitchen culture built around mentorship. Ferments, infused oils, and preserved citrus became tools to add depth to familiar dishes.
Through those different settings, the thread remains clear: Chef Matt wants people to connect with the food and with one another.
“I will be a forever student,” he said. “I am still very much inspired by the seasons and new ingredients I come across in my travels.”
Long Beach’s growing love of intimate dinners makes this a particularly welcome addition
I have written repeatedly about the importance of special dinners to Long Beach’s food scene—and their growing presence. I always begin with Chef Carlos Jurado and his continual evolution at Selva. After all, it goes beyond his seasonal turn and prix fixe offerings. The team also demonstrated something essential: Giving a chef space to experiment can give diners a compelling reason to return.
The broader picture keeps expanding. Chef Philip Pretty’s collaboration dinners, like the one at Olive & Rose with Nonna Mercato. Got Your Back’s residency at Selva. Wine dinners at Alder & Sage. Cocktail dinners at Chez Bacchus… All helped make special evenings an increasingly visible part of dining here.
These formats offer something a regular service cannot always accommodate: a meal with a deliberate beginning, middle, and end. A chance to follow a chef’s interests across several courses. An occasion that asks diners to give the evening some time.
For Chef Matt, that format is familiar territory. His years of traveling dinners helped him build relationships directly with producers and gave his meals an educational dimension. Bringing that experience to an intimate Long Beach table feels like a natural continuation of his work.
What to expect from Chef Matthew Roberts and his True North Social Club.
On paper, the True North Social Club menu balances brightness with richness, moving from citrus and herbs toward shellfish, pasta, and a fragrant dessert.
The full True North Social Club menu:
- First: Tuna carpaccio + preserved Meyer lemon | caper | Calabrian oil | Persian mint
- Second: Chilled beet soup + apple | fennel | crème fraîche | dill | citrus & Aleppo oil
- Third: Grassy Bar clams + Weiser potato | sweet corn | minutina | guanciale
- Fourth: Sonora flour cavatelli + wild mushroom | farmers cheese | piñon | sage | pecorino
- Fifth: Lemon verbena budino + lemon curd | pink peppercorn & pistachio | basil | Chantilly
Five courses. A chef with a thoughtful connection to ingredients. A space that has already helped bring some remarkable culinary evenings to Downtown. It is a very good reason to pull up a chair.
Chef Matthew Roberts’s True North Social Club dinner takes place Friday, Oct. 16, at Partake Collective, 456 Elm Ave. The event listing notes that seating begins at 6PM; tickets are $110 per person, including service, with tax additional. Guests are encouraged to bring a bottle to share. See the event listing for registration information.
