Ashish Alfred

Now that he’s in recovery, he is focused on transforming the restaurant industry for those who don’t drink alcohol.

Episode transcript

Elizabeth Vargas:

Ashish Alfred, welcome to the podcast. Great to have you.

Ashish Alfred:

Thank you for having me. Grateful to be here.

Elizabeth Vargas:

I have a confession to make. I have always wanted to go to one of your restaurants, Duck Duck Goose. And I have yet to make it, and I’m going to definitely come down and enjoy a meal.

Ashish Alfred:

Well, on the bright side, you now know a guy that can get you in with or without a reservation.

Elizabeth Vargas:

I know a guy. I know a guy.

Ashish Alfred:

You’re good.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Okay, sounds good. So listen, let’s just start off very quickly talking about substance use disorder in the restaurant industry. You have several very famous restaurants, but we’ve had a few other chefs on this show, and they’ve talked about this too, about the culture of drinking and drugging in the restaurant industry. We know statistically, it’s one of the highest industries where this kind of thing happens. Why do you think that is?

Ashish Alfred:

Yeah, I think that we’re second to construction in terms of substance use disorder. Why do I think it is? I think that the restaurant business, if it’s your full-time job, if it’s how you put food on the table, keep the lights on, pay the mortgage, it takes a lot out of you. It’s physically very demanding, it’s mentally very demanding. It’s even emotionally very draining, in the same way that a therapist’s job can be emotionally draining. In the same fashion, a restaurant worker’s job can be draining.

You’re taking on a lot of people’s energy every single day, whether they’re in a bad mood, whether they’re happy. A lot of people’s evening, or day, or whatever is predicated on how you show up for them energetically. That is exhausting.

Add to that, the fact that you’re on your feet. And if you’re in the kitchen, you’re standing around in 105 degree heat. You’re starving, but you have no appetite because you’re tasting aggressively seasoned things. Whether it’s a vinegarette, which is super sour, whether it’s food, which is typically saltier in a restaurant than you find it in other places. So you’re hungry but you have no appetite. Everything is against you, in terms of being healthy, or taking care of yourself, or doing the things that you need to do. So I think that’s why it’s so rampant in the restaurant business.

I think that a lot of people have glorified the rock and roll and debauchery that used to be restaurants, that I think they’re working their way out of. And I think that a lot of people that suffer from those things already, they find a solace in restaurants, unrightfully so.

Elizabeth Vargas:

You got sober in 2014.

Ashish Alfred:

That is correct.

Elizabeth Vargas:

So most of your professional success has happened since that time.

Ashish Alfred:

All of my professional success has happened since that time.

Elizabeth Vargas:

So what has this been like working in all these places, and opening and running these restaurants at a time when there is so much hard partying going on, and you were the sole sort of sober person, not only working, but succeeding in building this business?

Ashish Alfred:

I would say since getting sober and being in this business, it makes it harder. It makes it… How do I say this the right way? It makes it easier and harder all at the same time.

Harder, because one, you’re very much aware. And when you’re a sober, clear-minded human being, it is very aggravating, very exhausting to be around people that are still getting over last night or two nights ago. So it does require a lot of patience out of you as a leader, because while I may live my life a certain way, I don’t stand on a soapbox and preach how other people should live their life. Every time we do an orientation, I know the business that I work in, and I tell people very clearly, “Listen, what you do in your free time is your prerogative, but just do not come to work looking like it, smelling like it, feeling like it.”

My hope is that by taking some measures in my business wherein there are no shift drinks after work, we’re not handing out cash for tips at the end of the night, managers are directed very clearly that they’re never to be out with their subordinates. If they have something to celebrate or a team building exercise, it’s something done without alcohol. I very, very rarely will make an appearance when they go out. It’s not part of our culture. I think that makes it a little bit easier. But also, it really thins down the pool of who you can hire. A lot of people get into this business-

Elizabeth Vargas:

To have fun.

Ashish Alfred:

To have fun, correct.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Yeah. All right, let’s go back to the beginning of your story. You grew up. Your parents immigrated, but you were born here, correct?

Ashish Alfred:

Correct.

Elizabeth Vargas:

And you said you grew up as the father of an alcoholic. In fact, I was struck by an interview that you gave to Baltimore Magazine, you said, “I remember my father being a nasty drunk. I also remember him being nasty sober too. When he wasn’t drinking, he was doing the white knuckling thing. He was sitting there thinking about when he could drink again, so you could never be quiet enough or not move enough.” It’s a pretty stark picture you painted.

Ashish Alfred:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think you and I both know that not drinking is not the same as being sober. Not taking drugs is not the same as being clean. And my father, it took him a long time to come to the light, so to speak. He finally did, and he’s a different man now, and I love him very much.

But in my younger years, like I said, he was drunk or he was thinking about being drunk. And that made him a very difficult, scary human, a very difficult human to be around. Just because as a child, especially that unpredictability of somebody that you rely on for safety, security, and comfort, not knowing what you’re going to get, or which cards you’re going to draw, or walking on eggshells from a young age, it’s exhausting.

Elizabeth Vargas:

You were only, I think in eighth grade you said, when you started drinking and smoking marijuana. Eighth grade before… You were in junior high?

Ashish Alfred:

Yes, so we would skip school or we’d get dropped off early at school and I’d steal booze from the family cabinet. And we’d walk around some stupid neighborhood and drink peach Schnapps, and think that we were special.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Explain that to people who don’t understand. You’re a kid who’s grown up watching a dad who scares you because he drinks and he’s an alcoholic. Why are you drinking in eighth grade?

Ashish Alfred:

I don’t know if it was to get drunk. I don’t remember ever being drunk at such a young age. It was something to do. Being home was not a fun experience for me. My mom was in the throes of building a business, because she had to support an entire family. My father was around or not around. Mostly by the time I was in the eighth grade, not around very much. But school was my playground. It was the one place where I could express myself. And I wasn’t as a student unfortunately, but I equated alcohol or people who drank alcohol with people that were having a good time. I didn’t know that there was another way to have a good time. So it was like, “Okay, well if we’re going to skip school, what are we going to do? Well, let’s get some alcohol.” Just making sense.

Elizabeth Vargas:

You said in that same article, the Baltimore Magazine, “All I had to do to stay with them,” meaning these other kids, “Was to drink and party. That’s where I learned to be violent.” What do you mean by that?

Ashish Alfred:

When I was in high school, I started at a public high school. My parents had sent me to a church school when I was younger, and I think they finally asked me to leave after I was told I had to do ninth grade for the second time. And I get to high school, and there’s this group of kids that weren’t super supervised by their parents. Anything that happened at their house kind of went. And it was just a violent group of people.

They went out, picked fights. I don’t know how to explain it. I was in a place where I was kind of tired of getting picked on. I was super insecure. I was very insecure about my race, my size, my upbringing. So I figured if I can drink with these guys, and if I can keep up with them, and if I can throw hands like they throw hands, then I’m good. This is kind of like my family.

I wasn’t getting… My mother loved me very much, don’t get me wrong, but that attention that I think a boy needs from other men, I wasn’t getting that. But here’s this group of guys that had nothing to lose in life that they would get drunk and rough and tumble, and so I learn to get drunk, and rough, and tumble.

But I think that as I got a little bit older, and as I got a group of friends that were bigger than me, and a little bit tougher than me, and whatever, for me, I really valued that safety and that security. So I was willing to do whatever I had to do to keep up, and kind of stay in their good graces, so to speak.

Elizabeth Vargas:

So you started with some alcohol and pot in junior high. By high school, what did you move on to?

Ashish Alfred:

By the end of high school, I had tried coke for the first time. I had popped a couple ecstasy pills. I was drinking. By the end of high school, I was drinking to get drunk. I was drinking to the point where I was passing out. I was drinking pretty regularly, and enormous amounts of alcohol too. But I managed to keep it hidden. So maybe-

Elizabeth Vargas:

How did you keep that hidden from your parents?

Ashish Alfred:

When you say parents, it really was just my mother at that point for the most part.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Where’s your dad gone?

Ashish Alfred:

When I was about 15 or 16 years old, my dad and my mother had divorced, and he had gotten remarried somewhere else, and he just wasn’t around very much. And that time were really the worst throes of his alcoholism, like going to bed with a glass of Jim Beam next to the door. If he was around, the police were being called to the house because he was acting out violently. And he was just at that point when I got to 15, 16, and he knew that he could not really exert himself over me physically, then it just became a very mentally and emotionally abusive environment.

And I think that really, really had an effect on me. It really had an effect on me. I think it made me incredibly insecure, and it’s not something that I really dealt with until recently in my life, but made me very insecure to the point where I would come out on early girlfriends that I had, where I was just a very insecure partner. And it wasn’t until later in life that I figured out why I was that way. Your parents are supposed to build you up, not break you down.

Elizabeth Vargas:

I’m sorry. When you said you used to come out on girlfriends, what did you mean by that? I don’t understand that part.

Ashish Alfred:

I mean, it would come out on girlfriends in the sense that I would have a hard time believing that people really liked me, or that people really wanted to be with me, or that people really appreciated the way I looked, or the way I dressed, or whatever. Just anything. I had a very hard time believing that people could actually love me or actually like me. I didn’t know this then. To be very clear, I was not a very enlightened young man. It wasn’t until later in life that these things started to make sense, because I still struggle with it. I still struggle with it. And as a chef, I think even more so. That whole imposter syndrome, when is somebody going to see through and realize that I’m not the chef that they all think I am, or when is somebody going to see through and realize that I actually don’t have this all figured out? It was a lot of that as a young man too.

Elizabeth Vargas:

So with that crippling anxiety, alcohol and drugs worked to numb that?

Ashish Alfred:

I don’t know that I knew that that’s what it was doing at the time, but I knew that I had a good time when I was drunk.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Yeah. It was the one time you could forget that you were worried that people didn’t really like you.

Ashish Alfred:

I was confident. I could talk to anybody. I could approach anybody. I could kind of just blend into the room.

Elizabeth Vargas:

So after high school, what happened?

Ashish Alfred:

After high school, I tried the college thing a couple times. I tried a couple different career paths, and it just wasn’t working out. I was very much living paycheck to paycheck. I could not save any money. I was damaging a lot of relationships, platonic and otherwise, just because people didn’t want to hang out with me. Not that I was a bad drunk, but I was just, the party never stopped for Ashish. I just kind of keep going, and there was no sense of responsibility. I wasn’t beholden to anyone or anything. I would get drunk on Friday and tell them that I wasn’t coming to work on Saturday. It’s actually why I lost a handful of jobs because I would get a paycheck and drink it and shove it up my nose for that night, or that night into the next morning. And then I wouldn’t show up to work for four or five days. And some places would tolerate it once and some places would tolerate it twice.
But I mean, to backtrack a little bit, I get out of high school. I try a couple jobs, things aren’t working. I try working for my mom, that’s not working. I remember being in the car and driving at 9:00 in the morning to go do something that she might’ve asked me to do, and here I am with a bag of drugs in my pocket, and doing coke in the car while I’m driving, just because I don’t want to come down.

I remember as a 21-year-old guy, stealing money out of my mother’s purse, so I could go buy coke. I remember pawning her watch, pawning my father’s jewelry, or a thrill that I couldn’t even tell you about today. It was that insignificant.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Wow.

Ashish Alfred:

I remember those feelings of looking up at the ceiling at 5:00 in the morning when the birds are chirping saying, “God, if you just let me go to sleep, I swear I’ll never do this again.” And then you wake up, you feel better 48 hours later, and you go and do it again.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Yeah, the insanity of the disease.

Ashish Alfred:

Yeah.

Elizabeth Vargas:

You actually say that you were attracted to jobs right away in the food industry, in the service industry, because of that partying lifestyle. And it helped sort of sustain you for a bit.

Ashish Alfred:

Correct. It was very much like the fraternity that I found in high school. It seemed like a fraternity. The bartenders were raking in cash, they were partying, they had drugs, they had drinks. Didn’t seem like they were paying for much of it. They were the star of the show. They were loved everywhere they went. And servers were making a bunch of money, and bouncers. And I was like, “Man, I could do this. I could live this life.” And fuck did I try. Did I really try.

And I did pretty well. Any job that I had, I did pretty well. I tell people that one of my first jobs was as a host at an Italian restaurant when I was 15 still in high school. My next job was at a Starbucks. And every single one of those places that I went to, it was very much an environment where I wanted to do well. I wanted to impress the other people that were there. I wanted to be the best I could be at my job. I didn’t want to be anybody else’s boss. I didn’t want to be over anybody. I just wanted to be recognized for how good I could do that job.

Elizabeth Vargas:

How did you land on cooking? How did that come about, and how did you figure out you were so astonishingly good at it?

Ashish Alfred:

I feel like I need to come up with a better answer for this, because I get asked this a lot. But the honest answer is the back of a napkin answer that I give people is I really sucked at everything else. But the honest answer-

Elizabeth Vargas:

That’s not good enough, come up with a better one.

Ashish Alfred:

No, I know. The more honest answer is I was sitting on my mother’s couch, and I was addicted to these Food Network shows, whether it was Chopped, or whether it was… Wasn’t Food Network, but No Reservations with Bourdain. And as I was watching the shows, I was like, “This doesn’t look difficult to me. This looks doable. These guys that are in here.” It made sense to me. The same way math makes sense for some people, or the written word makes sense to some people. In the same way cooking, when I was watching it, it just made sense. Hospitality just made sense. And I was doing a whole lot of nothing with my life, and I was getting tired of sitting on my mom’s couch, and I just started looking around at what culinary school looks like. What does that path look like for me?

And I land on this place that’s in New York City. It’s called The French Culinary Institute. A bunch of big names had been there. Jacques Pépin was the dean of studies. I was like, “Man, if you’re going to go somewhere, this is the place to go. And also, if I F this up, I’m in New York City. We’re good.”

So I take this packet, and I show it to my mother, and my mom’s like, “Yeah, get out of here.” She’s like, “There’s no way. You’re going to go to New York City, live by yourself, show up to school at 7:00 in the morning in a uniform, and hold down a job. There’s no way. I’m not paying for it.”

So I go to my father. And although his opinion is the same, he says to me, “This is your one shot to get something right for yourself.” He said, “I’ve had a couple opportunities like this in my life and I’ve pissed them away.” He said, “I will go to bat for you and I will get this done for you. I will help you get this done, but don’t fuck this up,” basically.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Yeah. Wow.

Ashish Alfred:

So I cook Thanksgiving dinner for my family just as a way to push the envelope a little bit more that, “Hey listen, I can cook a little bit.” And even as a chef today, knowing everything that I know here 15 years later, 16 years later, that is still to date, one of the best meals that I’ve cooked, technically best meals that I’ve cooked.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Really?

Ashish Alfred:

100%. 100%. That is-

Elizabeth Vargas:

What was the reaction to everybody? What did they do when they ate it?

Ashish Alfred:

I think there was a little bit of like, “Okay. Okay, clearly you’re bought in, you’re committed. This is something that you really want to do, and let’s ride the ride.” So that was in November. And February was the start of term at The French Culinary Institute.

So I have to go pick up my key and sign my lease. I spend the entire night shoving blow up my nose at the W Hotel the night before. Get on a train, get on a train, get to New York City, pick up the key. Hadn’t slept at this point in close to 48 hours. Get to this apartment, this little efficiency apartment in the West Village. And I slept on the floor for a whole day. Woke up, called my mother to help me out with the train ticket back home, go back home, and pack the U-Haul van, and drove up to New York City about a week later.

So I get to culinary school scared shitless, scared shitless. Because I know just even in orientation, I know that this is a hard drinking, hard partying environment. I’m looking around at some of the other kids that have come here, and some of them are pretty serious, but they have their shit together. And I’m like, “Man, I’m going to fuck this up.”

Elizabeth Vargas:

Did you?

Ashish Alfred:

I did not. I don’t know how I did not. To this day, I don’t know how I did not, but I did not. I loved the rigidity of it. I loved how militaristic it was. I loved that there was a uniform. I loved that I was good at it. Not good in the sense… In a creative sense. When a chef says a cook is good, they’re not talking about their ability to cook some one-off ingredient from the Amazon rainforest covered in fermented angel’s tears. When a chef looks at a cook and says, “They’re good,” that means, “That guy has efficiency of movement, that guy can think 10 steps ahead. That guy checks his own work. That guy keeps his station clean.” That stuff I was good at, and I believe very strongly that it has a lot to do with my upbringing. My father was not a patient, man, move quick. And so that level of pressure that came with the kitchen was nothing new to me.

Being in bars, nightlife, nightclubs, some hospitality jobs, the level of controlled chaos that took place in a kitchen was nothing new to me. So I think that’s why I excelled. And I passed. I made it through. Not only did I make it through, but I made it through with flying colors.

Elizabeth Vargas:

You made it through with flying colors. And yet, you said you were actually suicidal. What does that mean? I mean, you were succeeding, and yet you were desperately unhappy?

Ashish Alfred:

I don’t know that I was suicidal until after I came back home from New York City.

Elizabeth Vargas:

After the Culinary Institute?

Ashish Alfred:

Yeah, after the Culinary Institute.

Elizabeth Vargas:

So what happened? Why after succeeding and launching yourself?

Ashish Alfred:

I mean, just because you’re successful at something, doesn’t mean that your problems don’t ail you.

Elizabeth Vargas:

That’s absolutely true.

Ashish Alfred:

It’s an external gratification that doesn’t solve an internal problem. People ask similar questions about how does somebody like God rest him, but Michael Jackson have a drug problem. He’s filthy rich. He’s known world round. And anybody, insert anybody’s name, right? Michael Jackson is the first one that came to mind.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Why does Anthony Bourdain have depression? He’s got so much success, and wealth, and yet?

Ashish Alfred:

Yeah. And I want to be careful how I say this. The depression and anxiety hasn’t left me. It’s still very much there. I mean, the difference is now, I can sit with it for a second, and I don’t have to react based on how I’m feeling. For the most part, I can sit and say, “Okay, why are you so sad? Why are you so anxious? Is there something you can do about it? Okay, then do it. If there’s nothing you can do about it, fuck off. It’ll pass.”

But no, I was suicidal because one, I was using drugs very, very heavily. At that point, Percocet’s on the picture, oxy’s in the picture, coke is in the picture, mountains of booze are in the picture. I’m feeling physically very unhealthy. I’ve gone from living a very, very structured life in New York City. Even once I finished the culinary school, I stayed on for two or three years, and I had a couple jobs. I would lose them sometimes, but then I’d find another job because it’s New York City and I was a pretty decent cook. I had a couple jobs. I sold drugs. It kind of kept me inside of a left and right barrier.

And then I come home and I get involved with my first restaurant venture, a place called 4935 Bar and Kitchen, which was a disaster. Underfunded, had no idea what I was doing going into it. My mother had no idea what she was getting into. The people that were working there with me were just kind of there to party with me. I hired a bunch of my friends. It was miserable, and I was failing miserably. And waking up every single day, “Hey, my check bounced. Hey, we can’t pay for this. Hey, this guy’s not delivering.” It’s just after a while, you’re like, “Man, I’ve really fucked up every single thing that I’ve set out to do. I don’t have a family that cares about me. I don’t have a girlfriend that likes me. I don’t have friends that like me. My employees don’t like me. I’m a public failure. I’m the laughing stock of,” whatever, all the things that you tell yourself to make yourself feel even worse than the world already does.

And I was ready to go. I was ready to go. And the straw that broke the camel’s back was I broke into my restaurant one night and stole a bunch of cash after I was already on dope. I had made the decision that I was going to do enough that I wasn’t going to wake up again, because I figured that was just the easy way. And by God’s grace or something, I never got that dope in my arm. I fell out in the middle of the street. When I say fell out, I mean I nodded out.

Elizabeth Vargas:

You mean you passed out?

Ashish Alfred:

Yeah, from dope. You’ll just be sitting there having a conversation, and you start to do the dope fiend lean. I did. And I busted my chin open, spit out a bunch of my teeth. And I walked into the bodega that was right there about half a block before my apartment, bought a thing of crazy glue. And my drug dealer slash lady of the night was in my apartment. I remember her sitting behind me, straddling me, holding my chin together after we had put the super glue on it, and taking a blow dryer and trying to get it to dry.

Elizabeth Vargas:

You super glued your chin back together?

Ashish Alfred:

Yeah. And I didn’t realize how many of my teeth I’d actually spit out, because when I fell… Usually you think about when you fall, you catch yourself with your hands. But imagine falling totally asleep. Your hands are down by your sides. So the entire weight of my body fell under my chin, and it caused me to bite down very hard. So a lot of my teeth shattered and I spit them out.

So that’s the last thing I remember. I remember waking up a couple of days later to my mother banging on my door. The money that I had stolen from the restaurant was gone. Obviously, this young lady was gone, and I was sick as a dog.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Your mom convinced you at that point to go into treatment?

Ashish Alfred:

You would think so.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Oh my gosh. Really?

Ashish Alfred:

Yeah. You would think that that was-

Elizabeth Vargas:

You’re still not there? Okay.

Ashish Alfred:

Still not there.

Elizabeth Vargas:

What happened?

Ashish Alfred:

It wasn’t until a few days later that I think… I hadn’t seen my father at this point in quite some time. I knew he was sober though. Sober, not drinking. He was sober, for at that time, about seven or eight months, which was fairly unheard of.

And he had kind of been keeping tabs. I hadn’t seen him in two or three years. And my mom had called him maybe a month before all this happened. And she said, “Hey, I know you’re not around and I know you’ve got your own stuff going on, but just come take a look. He’s your son as much as he’s my son. Come take a look.”

And he did. And God bless him, because he convinced my mom to have the tough conversation she needed to have with me and say, “Listen, I love you, but go out and get help.” And just to see that heartbreak on her face, it is a feeling that I never want to feel again. And I knew in that moment, I didn’t want to feel that way again.

So I did not listen in that moment. I said, “Listen, I need a week. I need two weeks,” whatever, as we do. One morning I woke up on a friend’s couch and broke, and I was sick as a dog from dope because I hadn’t had any. And my friend, she told me, she was like, “Listen, just call your mom.”

So my mother shows up to pick me up. And I’m sure it was hard for her. I can’t imagine what that drive must’ve been like for her, because I know what it was like for me. I mean, on top of being dope sick, just being ashamed. And not just that moment of shame. Just years and years of shame that I had been covering up now is right there in the front seat of a fucking car with me. Sorry for cursing. I’m a chef. I don’t mean to.

But it’s in this front seat, and there’s this awkward silence, and we’re driving to Pennsylvania. And I think that I’m going for some three-day detox program. So I show up to rehab with the same mentality that I showed up to culinary school with. “Yeah, whatever. It’s just something to do.”

And I get there, and I thought, like I said, I was just checking in for a few days. I get into the intake room and the guy goes, “Listen, I got to search your stuff, and do you have anything on you?” And I said, “Yeah, I’ve got stuff on me.” He was like, “I mean if your plan is to do it, at least take me with you so that if something happens, I can be there with you.” And I looked at him and I told him to his face. I was like, “If you try to take it from me,” I was like, “I’m going to break your arm.”

Elizabeth Vargas:

Wow. You don’t sound like somebody ready to go to rehab.

Ashish Alfred:

No, no, not at all.

Elizabeth Vargas:

And yet you stayed?

Ashish Alfred:

Yeah, I stayed. I stayed. I stayed. I stayed. I crawled up the walls for a couple days. And the option was there for Subutex, suboxone, all that stuff. And I opted out.

Elizabeth Vargas:

You didn’t use the medication that would help you through that withdrawal?

Ashish Alfred:

No. Because from my opinion… And listen, I want to be very careful. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with how people get from A to better, right? I’m not saying my way was better or worse or anything. It was just my way at the time. But for me, I knew myself. And I knew that if I had a crutch, I’d never stopped using it.

Elizabeth Vargas:

So you went to rehab for 28 days and came out clean and sober, and you’ve never relapsed?

Ashish Alfred:

No, there were some bumps in the road. There were some bumps in the road.

Elizabeth Vargas:

I mean, I think it’s important. Because a lot of people feel like, “Oh my god, if you relapse, it didn’t work. You’re a hopeless cause.” And I have said repeatedly that relapse is part of recovery. If it was so easy to get clean and sober that you only took one try, we wouldn’t have a problem with addiction in this country.

Ashish Alfred:

I don’t like when I go to a meeting, and they’re doing the round robin or whatever. People are sharing… And listen, it’s your right to share whatever you want to share in the meeting. But I don’t like it when people really harp on the fact that, “I’ve got 17, or seven years, or seven months,” or whatever. And for me, I’m sorry, but I just feel like that conversation needs to change.

At the end of the day, I’ve got today. If you go to any of my restaurants, there’s never a review hanging in one of my restaurants for something that I got, because that review is based on the meal that that person came in and ate that day. Two grains of salt too many, two grains of salt too little, and it’s not the same meal. My day in my life today is different than my day in my life yesterday.

And I think that when people go in and there’s so much emphasis on the time, it’s very easy to lose sight of the fact that, “Man, cool. You did it for 30 days. Awesome. You did it for 35 days. Awesome. At least you know better now.”

And I agree with what you say wholeheartedly. People will get 90 days, slip, and then be like, “Fuck it. What’s the point? I’ll never be like that guy.” So actually, funny enough, I went back. I didn’t relapse, but I went back because I was like, “I’m going to fuck this up.” Because when I came out, I tell everybody, I got out of rehab at noon on a Tuesday. 4:30 PM that same Tuesday, I was behind the bar of my restaurant working. Not drinking, but working.

And I just threw myself right back into work. And I was in for maybe two weeks. And then I picked up the phone and I called one of my counselors up there and I was like, “Man, I got to come back.” He was like, “Well, did you use?” And I was like, “No, no, no. I haven’t used yet, but I’m gonna. I need to come back.”

Elizabeth Vargas:

Wow, good for you for picking up the phone and calling. That’s incredible actually. So did you go back to rehab?

Ashish Alfred:

Yep.

Elizabeth Vargas:

For how long?

Ashish Alfred:

Seven days or something like that? I tell everybody I was just a steak that was rare and not medium rare yet. So I just needed to cook a little bit longer.

Elizabeth Vargas:

And after that, you were okay?

Ashish Alfred:

Yeah, I was okay. I was okay. Like I said, progress over perfection. I did an interview with Baltimore Magazine, and I was very clear with them too. I was like, “Listen, this is not a perfect path. There’s no right or wrong way to whatever.” There’s, like I said to you a couple of minutes ago, there’s A to better. How do you get from A to better? And I believe very strongly in doing the very best that you can do every single day, and you’ll probably get a good result. And be honest every single day, and you’ll probably get a good result.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Do you think you could have had all the extraordinary success you have had in the restaurant business, a really tough, tough, business if you were drinking or doing drugs?

Ashish Alfred:

No, not at all.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Not a chance?

Ashish Alfred:

No chance whatsoever. Not for me. There’s plenty of people that can, just not me.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Yeah. And I know that in many of your restaurants, you serve not only cocktails, but mocktails.

Ashish Alfred:

Yes, we do.

Elizabeth Vargas:

So it’s a tip of the hat. I personally love that, because my standard go-to drink is club soda with cranberry juice. I happen to absolutely love it, but it would be great sometime to go into a really lovely, nice restaurant, a nice restaurant, and have a menu of drinks that don’t involve booze. Because a lot of people now don’t drink.

Ashish Alfred:

For a lot of reasons. They’re pregnant, they’re just taking a break. For a lot of reasons. It’s something that I leaned into when I came home from my first ever trip to Las Vegas. I went with a bunch of my buddies who were not sober at all, and I kind of got tired of drinking Red Bull, because everybody else is awake because they’ve done things to choose to be awake. I’m wide awake because I’m on my seventh Red Bull of the day and I hate the way it by itself tastes. And so I came home from Vegas and I was like, “Man, there’s got to be some options out there.”

So I started digging around. And with the help of some of my team, there was a young lady by the name of Tara that was working for me at the time. She’s not with me anymore, but she really leaned in with me, really, really leaned in and she said, “No chef, let’s do it. Let’s make this a thing.”

And we used, back then, the bigger player on the market was Seedlip. And we used a lot of their stuff and came up with our first cocktail menu. Now obviously, there’s tons of options out there, and there’s a lot of conversations around it.

And I think that when I go somewhere, when I go to your middle of the road restaurants, I don’t expect that. But when I go somewhere that’s a little bit nicer and they don’t have any options, I think it’s a little bit… It’s like nowadays, you can’t not have something that’s gluten-free. You can’t not have something for the vegans. You cannot have something for the vegetarians. Why not have something for people that don’t want to drink that night for whatever reason?

Elizabeth Vargas:

Yeah, exactly. Do you ever have any problems attracting the best and the brightest in the restaurant business to work for you, given the fact that you do have a policy of, “You’re not going to all get wasted here together when the restaurant closes. We’re not going to reward you with drinks at the end of your shift,” that sort of thing?

Ashish Alfred:

No. No, not anymore. I think that more and more, I think people that are looking for jobs in restaurants like mine understand that the world is becoming a small place for those that want to drink and drug inside of restaurants. And does it still happen? I’m sure it even happens in my restaurant. Let me be really clear. I’m not that naive. I’m sure it happens. But me taking such a hard stance against it, at least it’s not happening to the level at which it would happen if there was no policy, if that makes sense.
I don’t think that it makes it harder for us to attract people. I think that, listen, people that suffer that badly, a lot of them will come thinking, “This will be good for me.” But if you’re not ready, you’re not ready.

So a lot of people that have that issue, a lot of the bartenders, they’ll be behind the stick 10, 15 years at a place where you can drink or do whatever you want behind the bar. And then they’ll be like, “Man, this is too much. Let me go work for restaurant ABC.” And they don’t drink there, so I’ll do better there. Wherever you are, there too shall you be.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Yeah. Yeah. Important to focus in. Finally, you mentioned that you really believe everybody only has today. And you talked about the fact that you still have your feelings of anxiety, you still have bad days, you still sometimes get insecure, and you just sit through it.

So what for you is the key to staying on the path that you have chosen, and the path that has brought you such enormous success, and it sounds like happiness in its own way? While understanding that there is no such thing as a life of unadulterated pure happiness day in and day out. It just doesn’t exist.

Ashish Alfred:

What keeps me on the horse is I know for a fact that if I step out, if I have a drink, if I take drugs, I’m just going to feel worse. The relief isn’t temporary. The relief isn’t a day long, two days long, three days long. There’s absolutely nothing to be gained. Nothing to be gained. I wish it was easier all the time to realize it in that moment, but our brains are diseased the way that they are diseased. But today, I can sit here and tell you that I would rather have 1,000 miserable days sober than 10 fucked up days. Sorry for saying it that way.

Elizabeth Vargas:

No, that’s exactly what it is. Ashish, it was great to talk to you. Thank you so much.

Ashish Alfred:

Likewise.

Elizabeth Vargas:

And congratulations on all your incredible success. I just think that’s the coolest thing on earth. Please come open a restaurant in New York City. We need them.

Ashish Alfred:

Thank you. Thank you. It was really nice talking to you. And actually, I’ve had a lot of these conversations. And I’m not just saying this, but it is refreshing to talk to you.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Ashish Alfred:

Your whole tone and cadence throughout the conversation, it’s made me want to talk.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Well, it’s some very personal deep stuff, but talking about it only helps people. So there’s somebody out there with a story similar to yours, and all it takes is one thing that you said that makes them think, “Oh my god, that’s me. I feel like that.” So you’ll help people, and we really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Ashish Alfred:

Thank you.