Childhood serves as a crucial foundation for future learning and behavior, a period of time when children absorb lessons from adults around them, develop their sense of self, and gain confidence in their place in the world. In an inspiring conversation with host Jamie Truman, celebrity chef Ashish Alfred opens up about his complex relationship with his father and the impact of familial instability on his life.
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As the owner of several restaurants Ashish has built a successful career — but his journey was not without its challenges. He offers a candid look into how family dynamics shaped the trajectory of his life, specifically his father’s absence and the internal struggles that ensued. He then discusses his addiction and the effect on his early business ventures, as well as the pivotal moments that led to his sobriety and culinary achievements.
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Ashish shares not just his culinary triumphs, but also the newfound clarity and focus he found through sobriety and rebuilding his family connections.
Tune in to hear Ashish’s story of passion, ambition and personal growth!
Connect with Ashish Alfred:
Website
Instagram
Purchase Vanishing Fathers
100% of the proceeds go to charity that help at-risk youths
Connect with Jamie at Truman Charities:
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Website
YouTube
Email: info@trumancharities.com
This episode was post produced by Podcast Boutique https://podcastboutique.com/
Childhood serves as a crucial foundation for future learning and behavior, a period of time when children absorb lessons from adults around them, develop their sense of self, and gain confidence in their place in the world. In an inspiring conversation with host Jamie Truman, celebrity chef Ashish Alfred opens up about his complex relationship with his father and the impact of familial instability on his life.
-
As the owner of several restaurants Ashish has built a successful career — but his journey was not without its challenges. He offers a candid look into how family dynamics shaped the trajectory of his life, specifically his father’s absence and the internal struggles that ensued. He then discusses his addiction and the effect on his early business ventures, as well as the pivotal moments that led to his sobriety and culinary achievements.
-
Ashish shares not just his culinary triumphs, but also the newfound clarity and focus he found through sobriety and rebuilding his family connections.
Tune in to hear Ashish’s story of passion, ambition and personal growth!
Connect with Ashish Alfred:
Website
Instagram
Purchase Vanishing Fathers
100% of the proceeds go to charity that help at-risk youths
Connect with Jamie at Truman Charities:
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Website
YouTube
Email: info@trumancharities.com
This episode was post produced by Podcast Boutique https://podcastboutique.com/
Welcome to the Truman Charities podcast. I'm Jamie Truman, your host. Today I spoke with Ashish Alfred, known as Chef Al, from our Damishing Fathers series. You may have seen him on the Today Show's Daily Mail Good Morning America or ate at one of his many famous restaurants Duck Duck Goose Ducking Burger or Anchor Tavern, just to name a few. Chef Al has been a good friend of my husband's for years and has been a wonderful sponsor of Truman Charities, but it wasn't until recently that I had a chance to sit down with Chef Al and talk about how he was able to go from being addicted to drugs and alcohol to becoming a celebrity chef. We speak about his upbringing, his addiction and how he's had the strength to stay sober. It really was an honor to sit down and speak with Chef Al, and I know that this conversation will help so many people that may be struggling. This is Chef Al's story. Hi Al, how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm great, thank you. How are you?
Speaker 1:Good, I'm so glad that you decided to come on. I've known you for years, but I don't really know a lot about your story, so I'm very excited to hear about that. So let's start out from the beginning, like where and when were you born and what was your family dynamic as a young child.
Speaker 2:I was born in Silver Spring in 1986, just next to where a lot of people are familiar with, the Golden Bowl. I was born just near there also of Mestorot Road. We lived in Montgomery County. Most of my life family dynamic, I mean mom was a big-time worker. She worked during the day and then in the evening she ran. She would help people with their immigration paperwork from home, just help them fill out the papers, kind of told them the right way to go about things.
Speaker 2:My dad was, I mean, he was around a lot when I was young because my mom worked during the day. So when I was little my dad was around a lot, but as I got older his presence in the house kind of dwindled. I think that as he struggled more and more with his own issues, obviously his presence in the house became less and less. My oldest brother was not around much growing up, my middle brother, who passed away, george in 2015,. When my parents weren't around, he was sort of my primary caregiver. He took a lot by caring me growing up. I mean, bed me, clothed me, you name it he did. He was 10 years older than me, so he was as much a parent to me as anybody else. I think I said already, mom wasn't around much. Even into my teenage years mom was not around a lot. She just she had to work. She was building something and it worked out well, because she's built a little empire for herself.
Speaker 1:What was it like at school for you?
Speaker 2:I remember the younger years of my life, school being a pleasant thing for me up until maybe the second or third grade. I remember not really having an issue at school, not having issues at school. I think that as I got into the third or fourth grade, that's when issues with my performance began to arise. There were progress reports being sent home every week. There were issues with discipline. There were just a lot of questions as to what happened with this kid. He seemed to be doing fine and all of a sudden he's not. It continued. My entire academic career was challenging, More for my mother than for me.
Speaker 1:Why do you think there was that change from? You were performing well in school until second and third grade and then you started to have issues.
Speaker 2:I think I just became more perceptive to what was going on in the house around me. I think when I was younger I was very, very naive to the tension and the stress and, at times, the violence. As I got older and became less naive to those things, I think they just started to affect me differently. I think that at home, where I very much had to operate in sort of like a straight jacket, I think school became a place where I could express myself and try to find out who I was and try to gain some confidence and instead of going to school for what school is for, if that makes sense- how did that feel, as your dad started to have less and less of a presence within the house?
Speaker 2:I remember him popping up. Sometimes it would be late at night and then he would be around for a while and then there would be some sort of crescendo that ended with the police or him just leaving, or whatever. I remember not seeing him for long periods of time. I remember sometimes being dropped off to see him at some apartment that he may be staying at for some short period of time. I know from what my mother has told me that at a young age I longed for him very desperately, as much as I was in many ways afraid of him. I did, I think, long for the love that I knew he was capable of giving me and that was very painful for me as a child.
Speaker 1:And so is that where you think your brother, george, stepped in and did a lot of those things that say you would have done with your father. I think he tried.
Speaker 2:I think George tried to the best of his ability, but he was still a kid too and also he had grown up. He's from my mother's first marriage, so he had seen a lot of trauma, or he experienced a lot of trauma and seen a lot of violence before my father even came into the picture. And then, when my father came into the picture, it was just even more so. So I think that George operated to the highest level of his consciousness and he did the best he could for me, but I don't know that he really filled that void. And also, it's important to remember, he's 10 years older than me, so when I'm nine years old he's going off to college, and he did. He went out to California.
Speaker 2:So I became the only man in my mother's life, for better, for worse, and we kind of a lot of people wonder how my mother and I got so close. And people are easy to think that, oh, it's just you know this world. Easy to jump to the conclusion like, oh, he's just spoiled by his doting mother. You know that might be a little bit true, but most of it is. You know, we were all each other had for a very long time.
Speaker 1:So what was that like when you had to change the dynamic in the house? So your brother you know, both of your brothers are now out of the house, and you're nine and it's just you and your mom.
Speaker 2:It was tough, you know it was tough having a strong, gross feat to my mother trying to process all the stress and emotion of one trying to build a business, two doing it alone, three, trying to raise a young man and four, you know, dealing with my father or who at the time was in the throes and heights of his addiction.
Speaker 2:People from time to time will ask me I want to, you know, get a divorce or I want to get a separation or whatever have you, and they'll say but I don't want to hurt the kid and I'm no therapist, but for whatever reason, people feel safe asking me these things and I feel blessed that they do. And and I always say you know what your kid wants more than anything else is happy parents. And I remember as a child it holds not that I didn't feel like my mother loved me. I always knew that she loved me very much, but I remember imbibing a lot of her anxiety, a lot of her depression, a lot of her stress. I remember experiencing a lot of her pain, which you know. She was an adult, she was equipped to process those emotions. I, the child, was not, which, of course, this is many years of therapy and whatever later. I obviously was not always wise enough to know these things about myself, but I do not.
Speaker 1:Right. They do say that kids absorb feelings and emotions. That event so much differently, obviously, than adults. Still, because your brain's still forming. So can you tell me a little bit about your adolescence?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I was a pretty lonely kid. I struggled for a while to fit in. I eventually became the young man that would kind of do anything to get friends, that would kind of fuck off his academic career, act like moron, you know, get into slightly violent altercations and drink to excess. Whatever I could do that I felt like would weave me into the fabric of whatever group it was that I wanted to get acceptance from, because I who knows it was because I didn't feel acceptance at all, or if I just wanted attention, who knows? You know any number of those things.
Speaker 2:But as I've grown and become more observant and become more self-aware and aware of the world around me, I've found more and more that people that experience the kind of adolescence that I have have not all the time, but a lot of the times.
Speaker 2:They come from a place where you know there was not a lot of, there was not a strong familial support behind them, and though my mother was very supportive and loved me very much and wanted to see me do well and went to great lengths, you cannot make up for lost time. And at 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, those are golden years for a child to develop his confidence himself, this sense of self or her confidence or her sense of self, and learn from the grown-ups around them how they want to show up in the world and how they want to set boundaries about what they will and won't do, and and you know kind of what their trajectory looks like, and I missed out on that, for better or worse and so when did you start drinking and hanging out with these different type of individuals that are doing drugs and all of that?
Speaker 2:My late teens I always had a healthy respect for alcohol because I thought it had done to my father. I kind of stayed away from it until 16 or 17. 17, 18 is when I really started drinking heavily. It was what everybody was doing. Been drinking was a big deal. We were shot getting beers. You don't see it as becoming a problem. And again this is. I started being 20, 20,. I think that, whether I knew it at the time or not, I think I was using alcohol at that time as a way to just not just numb myself but also to feel like king of the world, like I can have a conversation with anybody. I belong in any group. Alcohol is my ticket in because I alone, on my own, I'm not the ticket. Alcohol buys me entrance. It's my cover charge.
Speaker 1:And then, when did you start experimenting with other drugs?
Speaker 2:Literally 20s.
Speaker 1:Okay, and so during this whole time, as you were growing up. So now you're a famous chef. You have all of these restaurants. Where did you get the love for the kitchen, for being a chef? Was this all throughout your childhood? Is this something that was later on?
Speaker 2:No, I don't think that it was necessarily a love score for cooking that got me started. I think it was a love for hospitality. I had grown up. My mom opened her first assisted living home in 1991 in Oli. My father had a background in hotels and when he was around, I mean he was with her when they opened that first business and they both worked very hard together.
Speaker 2:But seeing that level of care and pride and taking care of somebody else, I think that was one lesson that collectively, whether they meant to teach to me or not, they did teach to me in that they took great pride in caring for others. And also, growing up in an Asian or specifically Indian household, I had always seen growing up the amount of pride and effort that was taken in caring for others, even if it was somebody just coming over for a cup of tea, I mean, it's a whole ritual. So I think that that stuck with me and I don't know if it was because it was the one way I knew that I could really impress my dad, like I would watch them make drinks, for example, and the glasses were laying on the train just a certain way and there was an Afghan put down, the glasses put down. And for me, whenever I had the opportunity, I would take great pride in doing those things, almost like when dad let you use the drill for the first time, go ahead, flip that state. But for me, extrapolate that over a career. My passion was for hospitality, so I got into restaurants when I was 15, 16 years old as a host and then worked my way through store to the front end as bar, back door guy, bartender, and you know, unfortunately or fortunately, I found it a very easy place for my addiction to exist.
Speaker 2:So when it all kind of came to a head, I realized that I was not going to do well in college. My mom was sick of paying for it. So I said well, I'm Indian, I need a piece of paper stating that I know how to do something. So like, well, let me try culinary school. So I go to them with this air raid idea for culinary school and you know, when mom walks to the side of the paperwork she's calling and she's like okay, so how much does it cost me when he leaves? Like when he does it for two weeks and he leaves, how much does it cost me? She's helping me get the apartment. She's asking them the same thing, like, okay, how much of you break this lease in a month? Because I got to come get them, because you screwed all this up. So nobody had any idea that I would go there and see that.
Speaker 2:And I think that when I got there it was not that I had a great passion for cooking, it was that I just had a great passion for hospitality and for just. I enjoyed the structure and I enjoyed being told what to do and how to do things. I did well because I took direction very well. I did well because the heat, the pressure, the violence of the kitchen was nothing new to me. You know, I'd watched my mother build a business.
Speaker 2:I'd grown up around my brother, who I wouldn't say was volatile, but my brother was. My brother was fuck around. He was 10 years older than me and he he helped me to a very high standard, whether it was with my chores or with school or with whatever. So it was nothing to have somebody barking at me my father, if you didn't move fast enough, he'd fucking moved you. So you know it was nothing to me to have somebody breathing out my neck, screaming at me. I was like, okay, cool, so I didn't go into it thinking that I was going to be the next Iron Chef. I just went in thinking, okay, I just got a nice peace shower. It's faster and cleaner than the guy next to me and I can exist in peace here.
Speaker 1:What happened when you graduated from culinary school?
Speaker 2:I stayed in New York. I held a couple jobs for as long as I could hold them, but inevitably I'd get really banged up and then I'd miss work for a couple of days and then I'd get fired and then I'd find another job and it's just a very I mean, it's a very common pattern in the hospitality industry. Somebody will work somewhere for a little while until their demons really show up, and then they'll both find another job and then they'll do the same thing there. And fortunately there's enough good restaurants around where you can keep existing that way.
Speaker 2:But came to a point where I'd burned enough bridges and I was just really physically healthy and my mom was like all right, it's time for you to come back down. So I came back down and I opened the catastrophe. That was my first restaurant. I think you were there you had from Roestate and I thought that having this restaurant would help straighten me up. My mom thought it would help straighten me out, but it did just the opposite. Till you address the things that ale you, you will continue to fail because of them, and it's proved true in my life over and over and over again.
Speaker 1:So tell me a little bit about the opening and closing of that restaurant.
Speaker 2:So we opened the restaurant, having no idea how much money it would actually take to get it open. It was just a simple matter. I mean having no real idea of the restaurant business. I had worked as a cook all over New York. What did I know about opening a restaurant or training the staff for running a P&L? I knew nothing. I knew that I had a little bit of my mother's money, a handful of beer and a bottle of cold Coke. I figured I would figure it out and I opened it, thinking that you know, I'm definitely the best cook in Bethesda which at the time I probably was but it didn't matter.
Speaker 2:So I had no idea how to run a business, so opened it super under capitalized, no real plan in place, and inevitably it failed. We tried and tried to make it work and it just it wouldn't work. It wouldn't work because I wasn't working the way I was supposed to work. And eventually my mother got wise and she realized that I wasn't gonna fix myself and there had to be some sort of a catalyst. So my mom came to me and said listen, I love you very much and I'm very sorry for what you've been through in your life and how your life has been inspired, but none of that is my fault and you have to at some point take ownership of it all and I have to push you aside. And so you decided to do something for yourself.
Speaker 2:So one day, on the site of Cordell Avenue, she left me out of her car and said fix yourself for about I don't wanna see anymore. So I did. I went to rehab with no attention of it working, and I think it worked for all the same reasons that culinary school worked. I went somewhere and somebody told me what to do and I didn't have to be responsible and I didn't have to think for myself, at least for a little while. And I came home in a clear headspace and better equipped, and we're in a place where I had the confidence of those around me. And I opened my first real restaurant, which was Duck Dog Goose, and I made some promises there to myself and to God and my family that fortunately I have yet to break.
Speaker 1:Do you find it difficult to be working in the restaurant industry as someone that's now sober?
Speaker 2:Yes and no, because it is difficult when you see people who are living that act of addiction. When you see people who are living that act of addiction and you see it breaking them down and you see the potential in them and you see how well they could do, and you just see them kind of on that mouse wheel of insanity. That makes it very hard. And it makes it also very hard sometimes to find patients for these people, because you're like, man, there's help if you just get it, there's help. That part makes it hard. But as far as like wanting to get off work and have a drink because everybody else is no, no, I've definitely had my slips and trips along the way. My journey has not been perfect, but anytime that I've had a misstep, it has not been because I felt pressured by the environment around me.
Speaker 2:I think that if you wanna be sober, you're gonna stay sober no matter what. And I think that for me the decision was very simple very early on, where I told there was that conversation had, where it was like, okay, do you need to find a new line of work, do you need to find something else to do? And I'm like, fuck, this is the only thing I've ever been good at. Like how many times am I gonna reinvent myself? I'm now, at the time, 27 years old. I was like no, no, for me my sobriety's gotta mean that I can go wherever I wanna go, do whatever I wanna do. I just can't. I just can't use.
Speaker 1:And do you think that if your mom didn't pull you over on Cordell, that one day, that you wouldn't have put yourself in rehab? Do you think that she was the reason why you finally decided to go?
Speaker 2:I think it was definitely the catalyst. I think that you know we say jailed institutions, death I don't, or even the jail. I tried rehab a couple of times before it stuck. I think that it was definitely the catalyst. I think that I would have ended up getting some help at some point, or dead, I mean to be clear. After we had that conversation I had almost died once already, twice already. So I think that I would have figured it out, or it would have figured me out when we were the other so let's talk a little bit about the opening of DuckDuckGoose.
Speaker 1:So it was vastly different than, say, the first restaurant that you had open, meaning the feel style type of food, everything.
Speaker 2:When I opened my first restaurant which was 4935, I think there was just a lack of direction. Nobody really knew what the concept was, except for me. I mean, I think that unless whether it's anything right, if it's a book, if it's a TV show, if it's a restaurant, if it's business you have to be able to give yourself give the elevator pitch in 10 seconds. I could never do that with my first restaurant. There was a huge lack of clarity. Then, when it came time to me to open this restaurant, I was like well, what do I know how to do? What have I done? What have I seen done 100 times that I know how to do, and it was the Starspeak Strip.
Speaker 2:I had lived in New York and I worked in some of these small brass freestyle restaurants and I knew what worked and I knew what kept those teeth full and I knew how simple it was and how relatable it was. So that was the focus. The focus was no longer Ashish Alpred trying to prove that he was something that he wasn't. The focus was just. It was the concept. Does that make sense? It wasn't rooted my ego, it was rooted in what was the most scalable idea for both client and employee and that's where Duct Up Goose came from, and I think the purchase on the footage is three. Now it's been seven years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're doing very well, so tell me about the openings of your other restaurants.
Speaker 2:That's the wins. We've got some losses. After I opened Duct Up Goose and found some success there, I waited a couple of years and then I transitioned 4935 because I had the money to do it finally into Gorgeous Shophouse and that had started to do really well in 2019 and 2020. And then, unfortunately, we got smacked at the pandemic and we had three landlords, two of which were willing to negotiate our rent and work with us to try to figure out something that worked through the pandemic, and the landlord at Gorgeous Shophouse aka 4935, was not happy to work with us and he felt that he was entitled to the entire rent. We felt differently and sometimes, when it doesn't go well with the playground, the best thing to do is you take your ball and go home. But closing one door allowed a few more to open. So we closed Gorgeous Shophouse and in turn, we opened Duct Up Goose in Duct Bot Circle. That was the third Duct Up Goose we had, one in Baltimore. We were sure you opened it in 2018.
Speaker 2:We opened no Way Rose and then, very shortly thereafter, we signed the lease for Austria-Pirata in the anchor bar. No Way Rose ended up being another failure. We had to walk away from that restaurant, just the bad part of town, wasn't working for our employees, wasn't working for our buy-tiles, so we closed that one. But again, with any of these businesses, it wasn't my ego tied up in it at all when it wasn't working and the writing was on the wall to close no Way, rose, it was a pretty easy decision. It wasn't working.
Speaker 1:And so what restaurants do you now have open?
Speaker 2:So we have the three Duct Up Goose. We've got Baltimore, but it says the Choupon. We've got the anchor bar, which is also in Baltimore. We've got Austria-Pirata, which is also in Baltimore, and then we have a ghost kitchen concept which we're looking to maybe turn into a brick and mortar, which is called Good Ducking Burger, which is like a fusion of the American slash burger and some pretty saun Indian flavors, which is starting to go really well. So we'll see how it plays out.
Speaker 1:So, after all these successes, what is your relationship now like with your parents?
Speaker 2:You know my relationship with my father is totally different now. My father ended up getting sober in 2014 or 15, I think, and you know I say this every time I speak about my father, publicly or otherwise. My father was who he was and now he is who he is, you know. So you know everybody's cancel culture is a thing right, and I haven't canceled my father yet, so I'm not ready for anybody else to. I don't see him much anymore. He lives overseas but my father's sobriety, I think, gave me the gift of sobriety.
Speaker 2:If there's one person in this world that has been my biggest cheerleader, it has been my father and I will never thank him for that. My mother, we have an amazing relationship. I'm able to help her out a little bit with her business from time to time and she's also one of my biggest stands all the days that I don't want to do it anymore. You know we open three restaurants in one calendar year, pretty much, and that takes its toll financially, physically, emotionally. And you know she is a ball buster and you know she's five foot three inches of get up. Go do it again, get up. Go do it again, get up, go do it again. Nobody told you to be get up, go do it again. So we have a beautiful relationship. Now I know I can count on her and she's very certain she can count on me.
Speaker 1:Now is family something that you see in your future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I hope so. I mean, this business takes a lot of my time, takes a lot of my effort and sometimes there's just not a lot left. Even if I can close the briefcase, proverbially, even if I can close the briefcase at the end of the day, sometimes there's just not a lot of me left to give someone, and I think that the fear of that makes it difficult to want to commit to something. And for me, I have certain ideals and aspirations of how I would want my family unit to operate and for all those things to. I mean, nothing ever goes to plan right. You write a plan and God says, yeah, go fuck yourself. Yeah, I'd like there to be. I think that what use is everything that I've been through if I can't share my experience and strength and love with somebody else?
Speaker 1:Now there's gonna be a lot of younger men and women that are listening to this podcast and listening about your story. If there's anybody that say was in the same type of circumstance that you were in as a young adult, what would your advice be to them?
Speaker 2:My advice to them is if you think you have a problem, you probably have a problem. You know, I think a lot of people skirt the issue where they're like well, you know, I'm not as bad as this first dad or I'm not sitting on the side of the road with a paper bag. I'm not, you know I'm. I rent a fade and I have a job. But if you think you have a problem, you probably have a problem, and that and this is not like a one size fits all thing I think sobriety. A lot of times people get scared off because they think that it's an all or nothing sort of thing and really it's just for today thing. There's no hard and fast rules to any of this. You know, nothing is as hard as you think it is. Nothing it's as hard as you think it is, and nothing's usually nothing's really ever as bad as you think it is. There's help if you want it.
Speaker 1:And then, before I let you go, how do you envision your future to look like?
Speaker 2:I think the restaurants for me if things go the way I want them to go, the restaurants for me are have become more of a pedestal for me to do something on my own than they are a place for me. Or how do I explain this? The restaurants have helped me build a platform for myself. So I think that now that things are starting to come together you know I've got a book in the works, got a couple of different TV opportunities of the works that it'll be interesting to see how all of that comes together and, depending on how that comes to the other, it'll kind of determine the future of the restaurant. So I think that you know to tube my word a little bit I think I have single-handedly built some brands that is scalable and that is buildable for the right people and you know, when the time comes, it's time for me to keep it and I'll keep it. And if it's not time for me to keep it, then I will keep it. Fortunately I'm not like tied down over it yet.
Speaker 1:Well, al, I want to thank you so much for coming on and talking with me and talking about your story and how you've become such a. You know, I would say now you're kind of a celebrity chef, but I love to say I'm like, well, I knew him before everyone else did. I knew him before the Today Show. I knew him before we see him on all of these talk shows. I really do appreciate everything that you do for us and everything that you do for so many people, and I think that you're going to help a lot of people by telling your story, thank you. Thank you so much for listening to our Vanishing Father series and please make sure to subscribe so you don't miss any further episodes.