Matt Bray, executive chef at Alimentari, located in downtown Chattanooga’s trendy West Village, first realized he wanted to be a chef at a young age.
As the oldest of three children growing up in Washington state, he’d often help his mother, who was handicapped, in the kitchen. “If we wanted to eat, that was required,” he recalls.
“The old red-and-white Betty Crocker cookbook was our best friend,” he says of himself and his siblings. “My early teen years were rough, to say the least. I got into drugs pretty early and was not a fan of school. I dropped out halfway through my freshman year of high school and, at the age of 15, I found a job dishwashing at the Calico Cupboard to feed my habits.”
Two years later, he found himself in the kitchen at another restaurant, Country Corner, where early celebrity chef Graham Kerr stopped in.
“I was cooking breakfast there, and Kerr came in one day and told me how great my omelets were. Then my kitchen manager, Kandy Paskowski, and her sister told me who he was, and a dialogue about food history started. I was hooked. I quit doing crack and focused all I could on learning more about food. I struggled with drugs for a few more years, but it would be that seed that would save me.”