By Paul Post
Don’t let Matthew Killian’s very Irish sounding name fool you.
There’s a great deal of Italian influence in his family, which explains the name of his new restaurant, Buono Notte Café & Catering, opening next month at 6 Maple Street in downtown Glens Falls.
“Not all Italian cuisines are the same,” he said. “Everyone has a different style of cooking. I feel like I can bring a very good Italian ethnicity here. That’s my main goal, to bring in Italian food that we can improve on by adding to what other people have done.”
“We’re using creativity,” he said. “We don’t want to offer the same specials over and over again. What’s going to set us apart is specials like Chicken DiCapo – red-brown sauce, spinach, chicken tender breasts.”
Steak and seafood specials will highlight the menu, too.
The 21-year-old Killian grew up surrounded by good food. His father, Robert, worked at several New York City restaurants and was head chef at the former Orfino’s in upscale Briarcliff, Westchester County.
“Being that close to the city there’s a lot of culinary experiences, a lot of cultural differences,” he said. “I couldn’t find some of the things I found in the city when we moved up here. I began thinking, maybe there’s a way we could bring different styles of cooking to what people here are already offering.”
Inspired by other ethnic-oriented restaurants such as Radici Kitchen & Bar and Mikado, Killian believes there’s room downtown for him to carve out a niche of his own.
But first, he went to the “School of Hard Knocks.”
A Fort Ann High School graduate, he spent five years working at the Boardwalk Restaurant in Lake George.
“That’s a very fast-paced restaurant,” he said. “In summer business is booming. Not a lot of people can make it in Lake George. During COVID they were desperate for help. It was very hard to find people.”
“I was happy to step up and take on more of a learning experience,” he said. “They threw me right on the line after a year of prep work. I started on the salad station, then moved up to doing little things for the head chef like set-ups and baskets. Then I learned to do the grill.”
Killian’s entrepreneurial dream, which is quickly becoming reality, has been made possible by his late grandmother, who left him an inheritance to get started with. Many young men might have used the gift for pleasure or material gain.
For Killian, those things can wait.
His grandmother’s generosity is a driving force that makes him want to succeed.
“She said she wanted me to do something with this money, not blow it on a trip to Cancun,” he said. “I’m going to try to make her proud with it. We have pictures of her we’re going to hang up here. I’m going to try to keep her in the restaurant just as much as she was a part of our lives.”
Killian will be the eatery’s head chef and manager “to make sure food comes out 100 percent on point.”
“We’ve found some very good wait staff that we feel can bring a very good homey atmosphere to what we want to accomplish here,” he said.
His family’s move from Westchester County to Washington County was somewhat of a culture shock for Killian, as a young teen. But he quickly embraced the area’s tight-knit, family-oriented lifestyle, which will be a trademark of Buono Notte’s ambience as well.
“It’s been an adventure,” he said. “We’re here to bring people good times and great food that maybe they’ve never tried before.”