April 22, 2021 |
Top Chef: Drew Sebastian Cooks Up a New Career |
LOS ANGELESâIn the middle of the most prolific and successful run of his long career in the adult entertainment industry, Drew Sebastian recognized that he needed to make changes in his life. And when the pandemic hit last year, he had no choice. âI was living in L.A. when COVID started happening. We were all kind of going into lockdown, and I just felt like going to Palm Springs. My friend had a house there and I had just had hernia surgery,â he says. âIt was just easier to be in Palm Springs while I was recovering for six weeks. During that time, I was so bored. Obviously, no studios were filming at the time, and I was like, âWhat can I do to make money?ââ And he wasnât the only one. Sebastianâs predicament was something that many of his porn peers were struggling with. âPeople are like, âWhat am I gonna do? Iâm struggling! Everything sucks!â And weâre smart people, we can figure this out. I keep trying to be encouraging and tell people that whatever you do, just pivot and try to figure out what you can do now. Weâre all survivalists, and a lot of my porn friends have gone back to whatever theyâve done for a living before porn or during porn. Youâve got to figure it out, and thatâs been happening for a lot of people.â For Sebastian, the answer was easy: He permanently moved to Palm Springs late last year and started a business that allowed him to rediscover his love of the culinary arts. âIâve been a chef and Iâve done meal prep for individual clients and some celebrities, and I thought, âHow about I just throw a menu out there and see who would want some homemade meals?â So I started doing meal prep here in Palm Springs, and a lot of my friendsâand lot of their friendsâstarted to order from me. It turned into a full-fledged thing.â He became so overloaded with orders that he has started to look for a commercial kitchen, and also has someone help with cooking. âIâve been wanting to do a meal prep business for a long time, at least for 10 years. When I was in San Francisco, I had some people that I cooked for, and I did some extra meals for my friends and stuff. And they were like, âYou should make a business out of this.â And here I am.â Ragin' Cajun Originally called Healthyish Meal Prep, Sebastianâs business was recently rebranded to Andy's Bites. He focuses on whole grains and wholesome ingredients with no preservatives or processed sugars, with Keto, gluten-free, paleo and vegetarian options also available. He also prints nutrition labels for his offerings (âI have a program that I calculate everything on, so itâs like legit,â he laughs). Every week, he updates the menu on AndysBites.com, with a local pickup window on Mondays and limited delivery on Tuesdays. âFor now, Iâm just doing what I can handle locally. Iâve been driving some to L.A. to deliver the meals, but mostly Palm Springs is where Iâm focusing. Eventually Iâll spread out into L.A., and then Iâll do nationwide shipping,â he says. âIt took off really fast. So many people are like, âYour food is so good, I want to tell my friends!â And Iâm like, âHold off!â I canât do much more, but Iâm hoping to add a second day of the week, so Iâll be cooking and delivering twice a week.â Some of Sebastianâs specialties include a pistachio-crusted salmon, Cajun jambalaya, lamb meatballs with golden raisin pesto, a roasted chicken and onion quiche/frittata, a Philly cheese chicken bowl with brown rice and kale, Cajun crab cakes with remoulade, Vietnamese chicken bowls, a pesto chickpea soufflé and a ciabatta breakfast sandwich with prosciutto. âIâm part Puerto Rican, part French, and part Native American, although I havenât really explored a lot of Native American cuisine,â he says. âMy family is all from the southâthe Bayou areaâso that part of me comes out a lot. I think my family is from France, and then they went to Canada, and then they came down to New Orleans and Mobile, which is I think a normal pattern for a lot of the French people down there. So thatâs what I grew up cooking and knowing. We made excellent gumbo, we always went crabbing, we always did lots of shrimp.â Sebastian honed his craft nearly seven years ago at cooking school, and when he was working at restaurants in New Orleans, he learned a lot about Creole and Cajun cuisine. âCreole would be the fancier stuff, and Cajun was more the down-and-dirty version, kind of cheaper ingredientsâbut itâs all super-flavorful. I could talk about food and nutrition all day long. Donât get stuck on an airplane beside me.â Family Style Sebastianâs love of foodâas it is for many peopleâis permanently tied to his childhood and family. âWhen I was a little kid, my mom bought me a cookbook. I still have it. I must have been 6 years old. It was for kids, and in that cookbook, I learned to make no-bake oatmeal cookies, and cinnamon toast sticks. I still look at that book, and whenever I do, I see those dirty pagesâtheyâre all stained with chocolate drops and whatever else from when I used to cook that stuff,â Sebastian laughs. âMy mom started making pastries and cakes, so I was that little kid that would want to be in the kitchen and help her. I started decorating cakes, and we would do catering. I remember sitting in the back of the station wagon, and I would hold the wedding cakes when we delivered them.â But there was soon another purpose behind his passion. âMy mom had some heart issues when I was like 15, so we had to start eating healthier for her. I kind of liked thatâI understood more about nutrition from that age on. And then Iâve been in restaurants my whole life. My family used to have some restaurants, and I also worked in restaurantsâfront and back of the house, waiting tables and then cooking. I was like, âThis is really cool.ââ Among Sebastianâs many favorite dishes came around the holidays. âMy favorites were Thanksgivingâsweet potato casserole, with the crunchy walnut or pecan topping. That was a holiday where I would sit in the kitchen with my mom and we would cook together. And I was also that kind of weird kid that liked to make something different for Thanksgiving, so I would bring Cornish hens or a new side item that I found, like oyster stuffing.â Sebastian has no shortage of favorite foods and cuisines, from Italian and Mexican to French and American. âI also love to try to make things healthier. I donât want to be that super-strict dieter, especially when Iâm feeding other people. I want everyone to enjoy everything. When people order food, they can order it healthier if they want it like that. But whenever I cook for my friends, itâs usually something like pasta carbonara or pasta bakes. They love my lasagnaâI make a Bolognese, and then I layer it with ricotta, goat cheese and then Jack, parmesan and mozzarella. I put herbs in that filling, and then I put some extra cheese on top. Then I put some Italian seasoning on top of that, and I bake it. Itâs beautiful and delicious. The goat cheese is what really makes it special.â Pop-Up Shot About 10 years ago while living in Seattle, Sebastian was cooking for friendsâwho were so impressed they encouraged him to pursue it professionally. He soon graduated from one of the renowned Le Cordon Bleu culinary schoolsâand has been a private chef ever since. âA lot of people who encouraged me to start the meal prep business were eating fast food for every single meal, or they were just going to the store once and buying all kinds of junk. They were like, âPlease help!ââ he laughs. âAnd I didnât want to do diet food, so thatâs why itâs âhealthyish.ââ Over the years, Sebastian has also catered for crew members on Raging Stallion shootsâa studio he has frequently filmed with. âWe collaborated so that I could help them eat. Theyâre usually there for a couple weeks at a time filming, and they donât always have access to all the food that theyâre used to. So every once in a while, theyâll ask me for some food. Iâve also cooked for Trenton Ducati and Brian Davilla. I cook for a lot of these people. Weâre all friends, so theyâre helping me out, and Iâm happy to keep them healthy. Palms Springs is like the new gay mecca.â Sebastian has also cooked for restaurants and barsâincluding a recent engagement at Chill Bar in Palm Springsâgaining a wider audience for his food and earning more potential customers and fans. âThey hosted me for a pop-up, and it went really well. I did the pecan chicken tenders, the pistachio salmon, and I do chorizo nachos. In Palm Springs, bars can serve alcohol only if they also serve food. Chill Bar has been serving food for a while, and a lot of bars here serve food anyway. But now because of the COVID ordinance, they have to serve foodâat least one thing on the tableâwhenever somebody comes to drink. So theyâve been opening up the restaurant during the daytimes for chefs from all around town. It was my first time, but they have invited me back. Itâs a good chance to get my name out there, and for a little bit of variety with the food.â Sebastian also did pop-ups in San Francisco, including for Lookout bar and Truck, which closed in 2015 (âIâve been doing this for a minute,â he laughs). But heâs grown accustomed to his new home. âItâs just been really good for me. So many people have moved here from L.A., Seattle and San Francisco, so a lot of people that Iâve known in those places in the past 10 years, weâre all back togetherâweâre all friends again. L.A. is so close, and Iâll visit a lot. But honestly, once I started staying here, I started developing kind of a support system and a community. Itâs just been really good to get into the groove here and form some friendships, even with people I didnât know. I have lots of friends in L.A., but everybody is always on the go, and itâs hard sometimes just to meet up with all those people. Theyâre always so busy, and here itâs a little bit slower. Itâs a little bit easier to have friendships and hang out and stuff.â Saving Grace That connection has been crucial for Sebastianâs mental health, especially in the last year. âItâs beenâ¦weird. I never thought that we would see this. We all took history lessons in school and heard about plagues and stuff, and even in the 20th century we had some things come up. I had heard about yellow fever a lot, because it hit New Orleans really hard. So I always knew it could happen, but I never thought it would happen to us in our lifetime. But here it is. Itâs kind of surreal.â The pandemic forced the performer to confront a demon that was exacerbated last year. âI took this time to get sober. Iâve really been working on myself and trying to get my mind right. I do a lot of meditation and gratitudes. I kind of had to with COVID and being isolated. Thatâs how I am getting myself throughâand of course the cooking has really been kind of a life safer, because Iâve got something to do and Iâve been delivering to people.â Sebastian first started delivering meals less than two months after the lockdown started, and didnât anticipate how emotional it would become. âI would run into people when I would drop the food off, and they had not seen another personâor they had not been close enough to another person to give them a hugâin a long time. So there was that weird kind of situation; we wanted to hug each other, but we didnât know if we could. It was making me feel like I had been feeling this whole time, that I had been needing some interaction with other people,â he says. âThankfully, Iâve had the porn studios that I could do some stuff like that with, because that was the only sex I had for a whileâand they took all the precautions. I still donât have a lot of sex now because itâs not safe. Those are the things that have really been hard.â But Sebastian has been happy with the progress heâs made. âIâm happy to talk about sobriety. We donât need to go into details, but itâs been something Iâve battled with for most of my adult life, and Iâve tried several times to quit. Alcohol was the thing that was a big problem. I was waking up during COVID, drinking and then falling asleep before 6. What else was there to do, you know? Then I just decided to get control of that.â He went to Alcoholics Anonymous for help. âIâve tried to quit drinking and drugs and stuff a hundred times before, but Iâve never tried AA before in my life. It goes back to what I said beforeâI found a support system. I found people who I can be around, who I feel I can trust, and we all kind of support each other. I have also found a few people to help me with my business who are also trying to stay sober or become sober. Itâs kind of like this weird universal thing is happening, where once I stared to work on myself, then Iâm also able to help other people. Itâs really cool,â he says. âThe people Iâve been talking to in the meetings, they talk about how many of their friends have been sober for 25, 35 yearsâand during COVID, they got drunk again or theyâre really spiraling and they fell out of their sobriety. With this COVID situation, everything is so turned upside down.â And thatâs why cooking has been Sebastianâs saving grace. His success has prompted a desire to write a cookbook, just like the beloved one his mom gave him when he was a kid. âIâve collected a lot of recipes over the years, and a lot of what I want to do in my cookbook is tell people little tricks. Sometimes on Facebook when somebody would recommend me to host a gay cooking show or something, thereâs always that nasty queen thatâs like, âDidnât he do porn videos?!ââ Sebastian says, mocking a judgmental tone. âAnd Iâm just ready for it. Iâm going to be like, âYeah, I did. And my fans love it. And they love my cooking.â And also, Iâve traveled the world a lot being âDrew Sebastian,â so who else would know better about keeping yourself in shape and eating right than someone who has been a porn star for over a decade?â Go to AndysBites.com to see more of Drew Sebastianâs culinary craftsmanship.
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