How Chefs and Brands Are Making Modern Matzo

“The original matzo is so bad, but I used to love it as a kid,” says acclaimed New York City-based chef Hillary Sterling. 

The sentiment is common among Jewish people around the world. Matzo — often alternatively written as matzah — is an unleavened flatbread made from just flour and water. The simple, crispy bread is a ritual object at annual Passover seders and used as a bread substitute for the eight days of Passover, when leavened bread is traditionally forbidden. 

Many Jewish people who grew up with the bland and excessively crumbly cracker swapped into lunch boxes and spread with cream cheese and jelly for a week may have a bit of a love-hate relationship with matzo, remembering the springtime novelty fondly, but also recognizing that it’s not exactly delicious.

Sterling shared a similar experience and sentiments, until a trip to Sardinia with her cheesemonger wife, Tess McNamara, evoked a food memory so specific she was ready for a new challenge back home. After securing casu marzu — a controversial Sardinian sheep’s milk cheese that contains live insect larvae and is illegal to sell commercially in Italy, the EU, and the United States — Sterling bought a few sheets of local flatbread to eat with the illicit cheese. 

The chef recalls, “We ate it on the beach and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is matzo,’ but such a better version of it, right?”

The simultaneous sense of nostalgia and inspiration sparked a mission for Sterling: to make mouthwatering matzo. She studied traditional matzo making and combined all-purpose flour, water, and salt for her thin sheets of flatbread, coated with olive oil and flaky salt for flavor, just like she’d tasted in Sardinia. 

Sterling started her matzo journey by baking her flaky, crispy creations at Vic’s in Manhattan, and today she makes the handcrafted oblong matzos at Italian hotspot Ci Siamo, where she’s the executive chef. Each year she teaches a specific team how to follow the traditional process of making and baking the sheets within a swift 18 minutes. 

These sought-after sheets of matzo are available for diners at the restaurant, but customers can also pre-order boxes of the bread to take home. Last year, 175 boxes of Sterling’s matzo sold out swiftly, and each order included the vibrant ramp-horseradish butter she serves the matzo with at her restaurants during Passover. Sterling hopes to make and sell more matzo this year. 

“Everyone keeps asking me why I don’t make it all year-round because it’s flavorful and tasty, but I say, well, then it’s not special. Honestly, I could make it all year round, but then you wouldn’t have something to look forward to every year on Passover.” 

Of course, plenty of matzo enthusiasts enjoy the flatbread year-round. Ashley Albert, founder of The Matzo Project, has built a business model on the joy of eating matzo simply as a snack. She identifies as a “Hanukkah Jew” — a secular, non-religious Jewish person — who previously bought matzo at Passover like some people buy eggnog at Christmastime, because it’s seasonal and provides a sense of tradition. But Albert saw potential in selling good quality matzo as a “crunchy, snappy, neutral cracker,” and launched her own business to do just that, The Matzo Project.

She and a business partner started churning out matzo in local Brooklyn pizza ovens in the fall of 2016, selling out of their matzo drops even though the product was far from in season. By 2018, they had an official matzo factory and co-packer. 

“We knew we were on to something because we were in stores that didn’t have kosher sections, places that wouldn’t carry matzo,” Albert says. “People were using it in really surprising ways.” Specialty Italian market Eataly showcased the matzo on a cheese plate, and the James Beard Foundation partnered with The Matzo Project to create a “matzo chip.”  

Technically (and perhaps ironically), The Matzo Project’s line of products, including matzo flats, matzo chips, and matzo ball soup kits, aren’t kosher for Passover, as they lack the rabbinic supervision necessary, but Albert sees the brand’s mission as larger than appealing to only one week of the year. 

“It’s a Jewish contribution to the cultural snack-scape, and not just for Jewish people. People eat rye bread, and they don’t think it is a Jewish food, they think of it as the thing that they put their pastrami on. We really want to contribute to global eaters. Matzo is more flavorful than a water cracker, more elegant than a saltine, and more versatile than a pita chip.” 

But those seeking artisanal matzos that are also kosher for Passover aren’t out of luck. Yiddish Farm, in the small town of Goshen, New York, offers “farm-to-seder” matzos made with grains grown, milled, and baked on-site — with rabbinic supervision, of course. Vermatzah, a craft matzo bakery blending organic Vermont wheat and ancient emmer for its goods, typically fires up eco-Kosher matzos for the season, but it’s baking is on hiatus for Passover in 2025 due to ongoing equipment upgrades. 

On the sweeter side of things, there are plenty of matzo-based treats available nationwide. Specialty chocolatier Compartes offers a Chocolate-Covered Matzo Gift Box. Chef Missy Robbins creates her a matzo brittle topped with caramel, chocolate, sea salt. and pistachios, and you can snag the seasonally available item right now at one of her restaurants, Misipasta in Brooklyn.

Chef Fany Gerson of La Newyorkina ships her Mexican Chocolate Matzah Gift Box nationwide, complete with passion fruit white chocolate-covered matzo and other creative flavors. Iconic chocolatier Jacques Torres even offers almond praline matzo treats. 

These efforts are all about more than just making delicious matzo and part of a larger movement to expand how Jewish food shows up in American culture, keeping traditions relevant and intriguing for generations to come.