Shifting the Post-Shift

How I got into cooking is a mixed story. There’s the romantic version and the raw version, grounded in necessity. I left home pretty young and didn’t have much education or work experience, so I started working in restaurants. But alongside that, I’d always had a creative side and a love for cooking. I had family in the restaurant industry, and they were people I looked up to. And once I found myself in a kitchen, it just clicked. I knew this was it.

From the start, I was drawn to pastry. I had a family friend who was a pastry chef, and he told me, “If you really want to understand pastry, start in bakeries.” So I did. I worked in scratch bakeries here in Austin for about five or six years. My first was Texas French Bread, where I got to work with laminates, sheeters, and all kinds of doughs—bread, breakfast pastries, and everything. The more I worked with those doughs, the more I fell in love with them. The science, the magic, and how you could tweak and refine things were addictive. I knew then that I wanted to bring that knowledge into restaurant kitchens.

Back in the mid-to-late ’90s, when I started working in restaurants, kitchen culture was… different. It was the height of that macho, toxic environment. I was a young pastry chef, hungry and driven. I worked in a few small restaurants where I wore multiple hats—pastry chef, sous chef—and soaked it all up. We were young, working at cool restaurants in downtown Austin, and I let myself become a product of that environment. There was kindness in me, sure, but I was also knee-deep in the culture: heavy drinking, partying after work, telling ourselves we were building “community” at the bar. Work hard, play hard. That was the motto, and I lived it hard, etc

My career took off. I got some national recognition, a few James Beard nominations, Food Network appearances, all that. But the more the success came, the more my ego fed off it, and the deeper I fell into that lifestyle. Over 20 years, I picked up four DWIs. The last one, while I was the culinary director and a partner at a major restaurant group, was the breaking point. It was public. It was humiliating. I spent time in jail, and I knew I couldn’t go on like that. I’d been given wake-up calls before, but this one finally shook me.

I went into rehab and started facing the reality of my addiction, really understanding it. For the first time, I accepted that I had a problem. And from there, my whole life began to shift. Personally, it was about rebuilding myself and reconnecting with my family. Professionally, I wasn’t even sure I could go back into restaurants. That world felt dangerous. But I started slowly, consulting, dipping my toe back in while working on my recovery. Eventually, I opened a restaurant called Bonhomie. I hired a mostly sober team, and we created an environment rooted in care and intention, not chaos.

That restaurant didn’t last, but it laid the groundwork for what came next. For the past six years, I’ve been the chef and partner at @comedortx here in Austin. This restaurant has become a vessel for change in the industry. We’ve created programming that directly addresses the pressures and pitfalls that come with this work. I chair the Austin chapter of Ben’s Friends, a national network of sober food and beverage professionals. We host weekly meetings—Mondays at 11 a.m.—where people can show up and talk about their struggles, celebrate their wins, and just be in community. It’s not a recovery program, it’s a support system. And it’s saved a lot of us.

We also started the @comedorrunclub. It began informally—just a few of us running loops around the block to get outside. Now, it’s a full-on community. We run Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 10 a.m.—a time that actually works for restaurant folks. You don’t have to be sober to show up. You don’t even have to be a runner. It’s about connection. It’s about building a new kind of community in this industry. One that’s based on health, support, and accountability.

When I got sober, I weighed nearly 280 pounds. I smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. I was fueling my body with fast food and soda while creating beautiful food for others. That disconnect hit me hard. So I decided to take care of myself, not just mentally, but physically. I changed the way I ate. I started running. And it wasn’t just about fitness—it was meditative, transformative.

Now, on any given Monday, my day might start with some pastry prep in the kitchen. Then, I’ll change into my running gear and go out for a few miles with the crew. After that, we host our Ben’s Friends meeting and then return to work. This is the rhythm of my life now, and I wouldn’t trade it.

To anyone in the restaurant world who’s struggling: You don’t have to do it the old way. There are people out here doing it differently. Look for them. Connect with them. Build something better for yourself and the next generation of cooks coming up behind you.