NEW YORK—The world was Chef Michael Young’s oyster. He was sous chef at Aqua, a fine dining seafood establishment in San Francisco in the late 1990s. At one point, the restaurant had two Michelin stars.
But Young was an alcoholic, a cocaine addict, and partying like a rockstar.
“It was acceptable to go out and drink every night. There are not a lot of professions where that’s OK,” he said. “As long as I was producing really good food, no one cared.”
But it caught up with him eventually, and he was fired.
“It was when it got to the point that it was really impacting my performance and I was inconsistent in an environment where you had to be perfect every day,” he said.
Already predisposed to alcoholism, Young found that the restaurant culture fueled his addictions. From the dizzying highs of a perfectly executed evening of service, to the crushing lows of negative customer feedback, along with relentless hours and rampant substance abuse—it was a recipe for disaster.
