BURN NOTICE

TV’s Wildest Chef Comes Clean About His Drug-Fueled Past

Netflix’s newest chef says Michelin-starred food wasn’t all that he cooked.

Matty Matheson, the celebrity chef host of Netflix’s newest cooking show, Just a Dash, is spilling the shocking stories that have kept him from joining Food Network.

“I don’t know if anybody ever took acid at 7:30 in the morning on their way to a lacrosse tournament, but I know that me and my homies did,” Matheson, 43, told Obsessed: The Podcast’s Kevin Fallon.

Matheson, who launched into stardom for playing the handyman Neil Fak on Hulu’s Emmy-winning restaurant show The Bear, has been building a following as the bad-boy chef successor to Anthony Bourdain.

His chaotic show, which previously aired on YouTube, centers on Matheson’s attempts to cook just one dish—oxtail pho, sticky toffee pudding, Cincinnati chili—before all hell breaks loose.

“It is a stream of consciousness,” Matheson said. According to the Canadian chef, the show is about people who “hate doing what they’re doing in certain moments.”

In one episode, a fly entered the kitchen dereailing the entire episode as a shirtless Matheson and his producers chased it around the set.

“We’re all kind of forced into this moment of trying to make a dish. And sometimes we make them, sometimes we don’t,” Matheson said.

The show, now in its third season, has an entirely hand-made feel, enhanced by Matheson’s off-the-cuff discussions of his first bump of coke in 11th grade, or other drug-fueled escapades that led to a heart attack when he was just 29.

He said his acid-fueled lacrosse story, like all the others he tells on his new cooking show, is an effort to relate to his audience.

“I think people being themselves and being able to talk the way they want to talk, that’s how people relate with each other,” Matheson said.

For Matheson, cooking shows and books that focus solely on food miss the point.

“Even with cookbooks that say ‘This soup is nice on a rainy day.’ What the f--- are we talking about?” Matheson lamented. “Talk about something. That’s the thing that’s so frustrating.”

Matheson, who has built his chef reputation through YouTube and VICE cooking shows, said the stories that brought him his audience are the same ones that kept him from being a Food Network personality.

“I don’t think I ever could’ve been on Food Network,” the Canadian chef said. “Well, I know that I could never have been on Food Network. I’ve had enough meetings to know that I could never have been on it.”

But Matheson said he has no regrets.

“I don’t regret who I am, you know. I went pretty far down, and over the last 12 years, my life has changed considerably. I’ve changed considerably,” Matheson told Fallon. “I’m glad I got it all out of the way at such an early age—being a chef and drinking and drugging at a young age."

In the 13 years since, Matheson has been sober and is working to clean up his life.

“This world needs connection. This world needs people identifying with each other and letting people know that it ain’t perfect. And, you know, never in my life did I think I would be anything,” Matheson said.

Matheson owns six restaurants in Canada, where he lives with his wife Trish, whom he started dating in high school, and his three children.

His cooking show, Just a Dash, is streaming on Netflix.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch new episodes of ‘Obsessed: The Podcast’ every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And follow our feed to listen to the show the next morning on your favorite podcast platform.

Owen Mason-HillEditorial intern, Obsessed

Obsessed: The PodcastPodcast

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.