Skip to content
Sign inOpen the app
Artwork for Chef's PSA Podcast
Chef's PSA Podcast · July 10 · 1 hr 1 min

Matt McCallister on Getting Sober, Losing His Restaurant, and Why He Is Going Back Ep. 212

Chef Matt McCallister is the Food and Wine Best New Chef 2014, three-time James Beard Award finalist, and one of a handful of chefs to ever receive a five-star review from the Dallas Morning News. He opened FT33 in Dallas in 2012, followed it with Homewood, and is now opening River Sing, a 24-seat tasting menu restaurant in Fair Park, Dallas, in fall 2026. He has been sober since 2016. This episode is the less glamorous side of the chef world that people do not talk about. How the success of FT33 accelerated access to every vice that was already available, and what that looked like by 2016 The morning he called his business partner's wife two days before Valentine's Day, ready to say something stern, and she answered and said Michael's dead What imposter syndrome actually feels like when you move from being one of the best fine dining chefs in Texas to being a food and beverage director at a casual dining group André Natera and Matt McCallister trace the full arc from FT33's peak to Homewood's collapse to getting sober to disappearing from public view to building River Sing. The conversation covers the intervention, the shame of public failure, what forgiveness actually costs over time, and why he is doing it again. River Sing is named after a line in a Grateful Dead song and his lifelong love of fly fishing in the Arizona mountains. It enters through a courtyard garden. It opens this fall. It is 24 seats. Guest Matt McCallister on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/matthewt.mcallister/ Links Subscribe on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/ Shop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/ Visit Chef's PSA Website → https://chefspsa.com/ Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef

0:00-1:01:12
Play in podnod

transcript

No transcript — this publisher did not publish one.

show notes

Chef Matt McCallister is the Food and Wine Best New Chef 2014, three-time James Beard Award finalist, and one of a handful of chefs to ever receive a five-star review from the Dallas Morning News. He opened FT33 in Dallas in 2012, followed it with Homewood, and is now opening River Sing, a 24-seat tasting menu restaurant in Fair Park, Dallas, in fall 2026. He has been sober since 2016.

This episode is the less glamorous side of the chef world that people do not talk about.

  • How the success of FT33 accelerated access to every vice that was already available, and what that looked like by 2016
  • The morning he called his business partner's wife two days before Valentine's Day, ready to say something stern, and she answered and said Michael's dead
  • What imposter syndrome actually feels like when you move from being one of the best fine dining chefs in Texas to being a food and beverage director at a casual dining group

André Natera and Matt McCallister trace the full arc from FT33's peak to Homewood's collapse to getting sober to disappearing from public view to building River Sing. The conversation covers the intervention, the shame of public failure, what forgiveness actually costs over time, and why he is doing it again. River Sing is named after a line in a Grateful Dead song and his lifelong love of fly fishing in the Arizona mountains. It enters through a courtyard garden. It opens this fall. It is 24 seats.

Guest

Links

links5

more episodes

All episodes