Recovery One Recipe at a Time
Ottawa chef dispels addiction demons through food
As professionals will tell you, what distinguishes an excellent chef from one who merely goes through the motions comes down to visceral passion for the craft, and a hunger to learn more.
You’ve either got it, or you don’t. And no textbook can teach what someone feels in their gut.
A recovering alcohol and drug addict, Jay Barnard, 30, found the ultimate motivation when he realized his tortured lifestyle of almost two decades was taking him straight to ruin — and quite possibly, death.
Today he’s clean and on the path to professional and personal success. For almost two years, he’s worked as a cook at Delta Ottawa Hotel and Suites on Queen Street.
Barnard is engaged to be married, he has a career, he’s teaching cooking classes at Loblaws, he’s working on creating a potential television series, and he has motivation to succeed because the alternative is much, much worse.
“In the past I made bad decisions that sent me to a place I would not wish upon my worst enemy,” Barnard says softly. “Today I live one day at a time, but by doing that my goals, my expectations and my dreams are real.
“When I stay true to myself, I can just be as real as I am.”
Barnard’s is a compelling story of addiction going back to age 10 when he was growing up in Kenora, Ont., a small community about 400 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay. Even then he felt comfort in food, eating sugar-laced junk that ballooned his weight to 200 pounds.
Alcohol came first, he says, before he was even a teenager. Then marijuana. “My lifestyle spiralled downward from there. I started selling marijuana in junior high school at age 14 to make money to support my habit.
“And it continued onward and downward with cocaine, crack. I got kicked out of Grade 11 at age 18, by then a full-blown addict.”
His job as a pizzeria’s line cook was just a hideout for him to sell drugs.
One thing led to another. Jail and a $7,000 fine for stealing a truck. Busted in 2004 for pushing dope.
“I was very well-known in Kenora, which is not a big town, as the go-to guy for drugs. The surprising thing is that I didn’t get busted earlier.”
He moved to Sudbury, where he found a job selling everything from kitchenware to computers door-to-door for three years. He was actually pretty good at it, and received an outstanding achievement award from his employer as top salesman.
But the demons followed him as door-to-door sales took him with the same company to Oshawa, Hamilton and Toronto. “In Hamilton I got into crack and heroin. I was stealing from anyone, anywhere, even on the street. Finally the company said I’m going nowhere if I don’t clean myself up.”
But the message didn’t quite sink in. He was nailed by police in Barrie for driving under suspension. He sunk deeper into addiction, got into more trouble, and was jailed in Penetanguishene in Simcoe County.
“It wasn’t until I was 26 that I started to wonder what I wanted to do with my life,” Barnard confides.
“I wasn’t going anywhere, I had no friends, I pushed my family to the point they couldn’t trust me or put up with my crap anymore.”
Back in Kenora, the Ontario Works program through the Community Learning Centre in Kenora put him through a four-month cooking program at Confederation College.
A light in his head started to flicker — he really enjoyed cooking — and he landed a job in the kitchen at the local Best Western. He also connected with a rehab counsellor who knew of a place in Ottawa — the Anchorage Addiction Recovery program at the Booth Centre, run by the Salvation Army.
So he moved to the capital, checked himself in, and has been clean since Feb. 10, 2008. He remembers the date precisely, a major moment in his life just as others may readily recall birthdays and anniversaries. Seven months later, Barnard found himself in the cook’s apprenticeship program at Algonquin College, where he found his niche (and, incidentally, his fiancée, Sarah Barry, whom he plans to marry in two years).
Algonquin instructor and chef, Scott Warrick, recalls Barnard’s turnaround took some concerted effort by faculty who made it a team project. “To be honest,” Warrick says, “he started off a little rough coming from rehab, so it was a lot of work to get him back into the school routine.
“But by the end of second year he was a first-class student and on his way to becoming a first-class chef.
“His motivation was to get himself out of the gutter and he used the culinary field to do it. He never missed a class, he was always there for volunteer functions.
“I can tell he’ll succeed because he loves the work and, after everything he has overcome, becoming a chef is pretty easy,” Warrick says. “He has the passion, and that makes the difference.”
Through Algonquin, Barnard met part-time instructor Kenton Leier, then executive chef at the downtown Delta.
“He was very serious,” recalls Leier, now executive chef at the Westin Ottawa. “He’d come in early for class, he was always very engaged where others may have had troubles focusing. He asked lots of questions and was very hands-on.
“I got to know him and when he told me his story something clicked with me. I have a lot of respect for someone who can turn himself around like that.
“He proved to me he was capable, so I thought I’d give him a chance and he’s doing well. He’s got the determination and drive to do it.”
These days Barnard is working to brand himself as ‘Chef Recovery,’ a handle he invoked on a recent TV appearance on the popular Rogers Daytime show. He’s working on a potential TV series, but is keeping details under wraps until it comes together. Meanwhile, he’s made a series of YouTube videos that he uses to enlist viewer feedback (go to YouTube.com and search jaybarnard2406).
“For me, food is expressive and when I’m pleased with the results then I’m really pleased,” Barnard says.
Each recipe is an instrument of recovery; a personal expression of his tortured journey. “I picked up the name Chef Recovery halfway through Algonquin. What I do is take words that mean something during my recovery and match them with appropriate food.”
Which explains why his recipes come with such catchy titles as Kenora’s New Begging Chili-Crusted Cornish Hen, Jay’s Forever-Sobering Apple Slaw Shrimp, or Chef Recovery’s Addictive Chocolate Delight.
“Recovery for me is dynamic,” Barnard says, “and the names reflect that.
“The recipes are very simple and are not complicated, which is how I have to manage my life. If things get too complicated then my life becomes unmanageable.”
A simple motivation, perhaps, yet utterly effective. The potential for personal ruin can focus the rehabilitated mind rather brilliantly.
Says Warrick: “We have a number of culinary graduates here, but it’s the ones with passion who go on to really succeed.
“Passion is the key ingredient we cannot teach, but it makes all the difference. This guy has it.”