Chef Matt Chatfield on can openers and life in the Hallmark kitchen

When your dad is a lead design engineer for Rival, the omnipresent kitchen-gadget maker, it’s a fair bet that you’re going to be gathering around the kitchen table every night.

There was always a Crock-Pot or can opener — whatever his dad, Norman, was working on — that needed to be put through the paces in Matt Chatfield’s childhood home in south Kansas City.

“I grew up around the family table. We had breakfast, lunch and dinner together. That’s just something that’s carried over to today,” Chatfield says.

He explains all this from the massive wooden table adjacent to the kitchen in the the Culinary Center of Kansas City (7920 Santa Fe Drive, Overland Park), where he has been the executive chef since 2006.