On the surface, the Zero Proof dinner at Feast Portland was like all the others at the often-hedonistic foodie festival. There were celebrity chefs, both local (Gabriel Rucker, Gregory Gourdet) and national (Andrew Zimmern, Michael Solomonov, Sean Brock). There were excessive appetizers, elaborate mains, and decadent dessert. And, as with all Feast events, the pricey ($225) meal helped raise funds for Urban Gleaners and Partnership For a Hunger-Free Oregon.
The only difference? Not a drop of alcohol. The courses were all paired with unusual juices, and for dessert, a jazzed-up Mexican Coke, courtesy of former Portland barman Evan Zimmerman. Over the course of the meal, instead of talking to the diners about their culinary inspiration or what local farm the veggies came from, the five chefs and Zimmerman got personal and shared their stories. They were all people who’d had substance abuse problems, trying to stay sober in an industry where food and drink go hand in hand – and where, as we’ve seen in the #MeToo era, that boozy kitchen culture can be paired with toxic masculinity.
The September dinner was organized by Rucker, the chef-owner of Le Pigeon, Little Bird and Canard, and two-time James Beard Award winner. Rucker realized just how many colleagues he knew who were in recovery and had chosen not to stay anonymous. Zimmern, the Minneapolis-based chef and TV personality, has been sober for 27 years, and South Carolina’s Brock, once known for his legendary bourbon collection, went to rehab in 2017.
“I was like, ‘Oh, there’s enough of us out here to make this a thing,’” Rucker said. “There’s people that matter in this (industry) that are living this kind of a lifestyle and have made this change.”
Soon after Feast, Rucker started a second Instagram account, @fitchefpdx, dedicated to sobriety and fitness. He and Gourdet, executive chef at Departure and a Top Chef finalist, also both have recovery-themed tattoos. Gourdet’s is “To Thine Ownself Be True,” with a rose for Portland; while Rucker’s is “One Day at a Time.” The two chefs met up with Street Roots at Canard to talk about their journeys.
Jason Cohen: Gabe, I was reading an interview you did with Bon Appetit in 2017 that mentioned you didn’t drink and talked about having a healthy lifestyle but didn’t actually say that you were in recovery. A more recent Bon Appetit article, about the Feast dinner, did. Was that a process?
Gabriel Rucker: No, I’ve never shied away from saying that. I think quite the contrary, because I really drank publicly and openly, as a chef/boss. If at 8 o’clock I wasn’t drinking wine while I was working the line, people would be like, “Oh, you’re not feeling good?” So it was very immediate. “This is what I’m doing.”
Gregory Gourdet: I got sober about eight months after I moved here. But I’d been in rehab like a year and a half prior.
Rucker: Did you go on the East Coast?
Gourdet: Yeah, but then I left. I went to rehab for like a week and a half, and then I moved to California, and I didn’t get sober until I got here.
Rucker: That’s crazy that it didn’t work!
(Laughter)
Gourdet: It didn’t work at all. A lot of people, the first time you go to rehab, you don’t know what you’re doing. Someone’s like, “You need to go to rehab,” and you’re like, “OK, I need to go to rehab.” And then you’re drinking in rehab, and your friends who told you to go rehab still want to party. I think for anyone, there’s just a point of understanding. That you truly want to be sober, and you feel like it’s time for you to make a lifelong, life-changing change. That’s when it sticks.
J.C.: Were you already running your own restaurant when you got sober here?
Gourdet: No, I was working at Saucebox. But the thing is, the day I walked into Saucebox, my sous chef, he was sober. It was the first time I met anyone who was sober and became friends with someone that was sober. First thing he told me was, “I haven’t drank in two years.” I started hanging out with him and his other chef friends that were sober, and then I would go to the bar right after. Over the course of those months, I saw what sober people were doing, and what it could be like, so when I was in a place where I realized that I had to get sober, I had a resource. Take me to an AA meeting.
J.C.: I asked that because I was thinking, you and all the chefs at that dinner have a certain amount of clout and cache. It’s got to be a lot harder for a line cook to go against the drinking culture.
Rucker: That’s one of the big things about that dinner, was setting an example for our industry. We’ve all read “Kitchen Confidential.” That had a huge influence on me and on a lot of kitchens. That you gotta be able to, like, drink a fifth of bourbon and sleep in a gutter and snort cocaine to stay awake and then go into work and do your job. That book spread like wildfire. And that’s fine. But we can be role models and be “cool chefs” that are not like that.
Gourdet: You realize you have so much at stake and so much is dependent on you. If you have a family or a business in your name. Taking all these things into consideration, if you’re like, “I am done drinking and doing drugs for the rest of my life,” it makes it a lot easier. I got sober when I was 32, 33. I was still like falling-down drunk, and all my other friends were buying houses and having kids. I was attracted to people who were sober in the industry and seemed successful and happy. I saw there was another way to live. So with us being as visible as we are, we’re just trying to portray an image that you can achieve everything you want in the restaurant industry and be sober.
J.C.: “Kitchen Confidential” was basically the tortured artist thing, just like in music.
Rucker: Sure. There’s that idea of the “rock star chef,” right? But the people that are still pumping out great music and have a lot of longevity aren’t the ones that are still shooting up heroin. Those are the ones that are dead, and that you read about, and you can still listen to their music. There’s a certain romanticism to that, but people can’t still taste our food if we’re dead.
J.C.: Do you think you taste your own food more clearly now?
Rucker: That’s one of the best parts about getting sober. I really love to eat again. I’d lost that. It was my business, and I kind of liked it, but I would go out to eat, and I was just kind of drinking with my dinner.
And I’m better at what I do now. I know that. I thought I was good at what I did, and people told me I was, but I know now, sitting in (Canard), which is like eight months old, that this wouldn’t be running like a smooth machine. I communicate with people that I work with now on a much deeper level, and I’m comfortable with more of a mentor role now, versus, like, uncomfortable with it. Because (laughs disbelievingly) I do truly feel like I’m a good example!
J.C.: There’s the Zen expression,“How you do anything is how you do everything.” I know you’ve talked about applying the 12 steps to every aspect of in your life.
Rucker: For sure. Once you learn that stuff, it’s hard not to. I think that Gourdet and I, as chefs, you can’t just throw that shit at your employees, but that doesn’t mean I can’t back-door it in there.
J.C.: Which is certainly no less valid than the chef who yells at everybody.
Rucker: Way more valid. Yeah.
Gourdet: Kitchen culture has changed a lot. When I was a young cook, I got no direction. I just knew I had to show up at work early, and I had to work my ass off and I couldn’t fuck up. And I partied every night, and I went to work early the next day. I just had to. No one told me how to do that. That’s just what we all did.
Now, it’s illegal to work off the clock. And you can’t get yelled at. The younger generation does not respond to that sort of communication. Everything is different. There’s more women in the kitchen. There are people who identify as trans. You have to treat people differently. Be conscious and sensitive. Mental health is important in the workplace. When I was a young cook, no one had anxiety. Now everyone has anxiety.
Rucker: You had it, just couldn’t say you had it.
Gourdet: It’s true.
J.C.: You’re both also very into health and fitness, which I assume was part of getting sober.
Rucker: Did you used to run before?
Gourdet: Oh God, no. (That happened) overnight. I’d get off work at Saucebox and go run 12 miles. I trained for my first half-marathon. I trained for my first marathon. I gave up dairy. I gave up gluten. I changed everything. Just: hardcore. Same with you, yeah?
Rucker: Yeah.
Gourdet: When you’re in such a routine of addiction, you want to change so much about you. And you still have all that addictive energy to razor-focus on something.
Rucker: It doesn’t go anywhere!
Gourdet: You change your channel into whatever it is. Boxing. Or going to the gym.
Rucker: You feel like, “Oh, I’ve been treading water, and I keep on collecting rocks in my pocket.” When you finally get rid of the rocks, you’re like, “Oh man. I want to go!” There’s a little bit of time and fog, figuring it out, but all of a sudden you realize, my body is like this amazing machine. I abused it for so long; now I can take care of it and operate.
Not everybody. I mean, there’s plenty of really unhealthy-looking people in AA meetings.
But I do that shit addictively, too. I just had my wife tell me, “You know, you need to not run out of the house so fast in the morning. Chill out.” Because I’m like, “I got to go to the gym because it’s shoulder day and I got to do that and if I miss it, oh man!”
J.C.: Yeah, in a previous interview, you said that getting sober can be just as selfish as being an addict.
Rucker: For sure. It’s a very fine line. You have to be selfish about it and put yourself and your recovery first, but it affects – like, for me, being married, our second child was like a month and a half old. So I went from this thing of me getting drunk and my wife never knowing how drunk I was going to be or what the deal was going to be, to being like, “All right, I’m gonna go at 7 o’clock in the morning to all these meetings and talk to all these strangers about all of my most in-depth things.” And she was like, oh, jeez. You took our problem, took me out of the equation and made it your problem.
There was one time Anna came to a meeting, when I had two years, and I said, “Hey, would you like to share?” And everyone thinks my wife’s gonna be like, “This is so amazing, thank you.” And she says, “This has been fucking hell. Great job on the two years, but fuck you for making me have to do this.” It was a really wonderfully honest thing.
J.C.: So, Gourdet, Departure has a vegan menu, a gluten-free menu and a dry menu. Did that all come from your own lifestyle?
Gourdet: Well, no, the vegan thing is just a Portland thing. The gluten-free thing, yeah. I mean, obviously I want to be able to eat most of my food. You just think about inclusion a little more, in all areas of your life. When the chef is sober, there should definitely be a dry menu, but a lot of people don’t drink for various reasons.
Rucker: People just want to have good stuff. It’s not always, “Hey, I’m an alcoholic.” It’s, “I don’t drink,” or “I don’t want wine with dinner,” whatever. There’s so many people, culturally, that don’t really drink all that much.
J.C.: Do you still encounter the awkward social thing, where people expect you to take a glass of wine?
Gourdet: Yeah, but I just shut it down real quick. I’m extremely comfortable saying I don’t drink. It just rolls off my tongue, and clears the air right away. So it’s not like this thing where they keep offering me stuff.
Rucker: People still do do that. And even to this day – like, five plus years in – it feels so good to say, “No thanks. I don’t drink.” It feels wonderful.
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