LOS ANGELES—In the middle of the most prolific and successful run of his long career in the adult entertainment industry, Drew Sebastian recognized that he needed to make changes in his life. And when the pandemic hit last year, he had no choice.
“I was living in L.A. when COVID started happening. We were all kind of going into lockdown, and I just felt like going to Palm Springs. My friend had a house there and I had just had hernia surgery,” he says. “It was just easier to be in Palm Springs while I was recovering for six weeks. During that time, I was so bored. Obviously, no studios were filming at the time, and I was like, ‘What can I do to make money?’”
And he wasn’t the only one. Sebastian’s predicament was something that many of his porn peers were struggling with.
“People are like, ‘What am I gonna do? I’m struggling! Everything sucks!’ And we’re smart people, we can figure this out. I keep trying to be encouraging and tell people that whatever you do, just pivot and try to figure out what you can do now. We’re all survivalists, and a lot of my porn friends have gone back to whatever they’ve done for a living before porn or during porn. You’ve got to figure it out, and that’s been happening for a lot of people.”
For Sebastian, the answer was easy: He permanently moved to Palm Springs late last year and started a business that allowed him to rediscover his love of the culinary arts.
“I’ve been a chef and I’ve done meal prep for individual clients and some celebrities, and I thought, ‘How about I just throw a menu out there and see who would want some homemade meals?’ So I started doing meal prep here in Palm Springs, and a lot of my friends—and lot of their friends—started to order from me. It turned into a full-fledged thing.”
He became so overloaded with orders that he has started to look for a commercial kitchen, and also has someone help with cooking.
“I’ve been wanting to do a meal prep business for a long time, at least for 10 years. When I was in San Francisco, I had some people that I cooked for, and I did some extra meals for my friends and stuff. And they were like, ‘You should make a business out of this.’ And here I am.”
Ragin' Cajun
Originally called Healthyish Meal Prep, Sebastian’s business was recently rebranded to Andy's Bites. He focuses on whole grains and wholesome ingredients with no preservatives or processed sugars, with Keto, gluten-free, paleo and vegetarian options also available. He also prints nutrition labels for his offerings (“I have a program that I calculate everything on, so it’s like legit,” he laughs). Every week, he updates the menu on AndysBites.com, with a local pickup window on Mondays and limited delivery on Tuesdays.
“For now, I’m just doing what I can handle locally. I’ve been driving some to L.A. to deliver the meals, but mostly Palm Springs is where I’m focusing. Eventually I’ll spread out into L.A., and then I’ll do nationwide shipping,” he says.
“It took off really fast. So many people are like, ‘Your food is so good, I want to tell my friends!’ And I’m like, ‘Hold off!’ I can’t do much more, but I’m hoping to add a second day of the week, so I’ll be cooking and delivering twice a week.”
Some of Sebastian’s specialties include a pistachio-crusted salmon, Cajun jambalaya, lamb meatballs with golden raisin pesto, a roasted chicken and onion quiche/frittata, a Philly cheese chicken bowl with brown rice and kale, Cajun crab cakes with remoulade, Vietnamese chicken bowls, a pesto chickpea soufflé and a ciabatta breakfast sandwich with prosciutto.
“I’m part Puerto Rican, part French, and part Native American, although I haven’t really explored a lot of Native American cuisine,” he says. “My family is all from the south—the Bayou area—so that part of me comes out a lot. I think my family is from France, and then they went to Canada, and then they came down to New Orleans and Mobile, which is I think a normal pattern for a lot of the French people down there. So that’s what I grew up cooking and knowing. We made excellent gumbo, we always went crabbing, we always did lots of shrimp.”
Sebastian honed his craft nearly seven years ago at cooking school, and when he was working at restaurants in New Orleans, he learned a lot about Creole and Cajun cuisine.
“Creole would be the fancier stuff, and Cajun was more the down-and-dirty version, kind of cheaper ingredients—but it’s all super-flavorful. I could talk about food and nutrition all day long. Don’t get stuck on an airplane beside me.”
Family Style
Sebastian’s love of food—as it is for many people—is permanently tied to his childhood and family.
“When I was a little kid, my mom bought me a cookbook. I still have it. I must have been 6 years old. It was for kids, and in that cookbook, I learned to make no-bake oatmeal cookies, and cinnamon toast sticks. I still look at that book, and whenever I do, I see those dirty pages—they’re all stained with chocolate drops and whatever else from when I used to cook that stuff,” Sebastian laughs.
“My mom started making pastries and cakes, so I was that little kid that would want to be in the kitchen and help her. I started decorating cakes, and we would do catering. I remember sitting in the back of the station wagon, and I would hold the wedding cakes when we delivered them.”
But there was soon another purpose behind his passion.
“My mom had some heart issues when I was like 15, so we had to start eating healthier for her. I kind of liked that—I understood more about nutrition from that age on. And then I’ve been in restaurants my whole life. My family used to have some restaurants, and I also worked in restaurants—front and back of the house, waiting tables and then cooking. I was like, ‘This is really cool.’”
Among Sebastian’s many favorite dishes came around the holidays.
“My favorites were Thanksgiving—sweet potato casserole, with the crunchy walnut or pecan topping. That was a holiday where I would sit in the kitchen with my mom and we would cook together. And I was also that kind of weird kid that liked to make something different for Thanksgiving, so I would bring Cornish hens or a new side item that I found, like oyster stuffing.”
Sebastian has no shortage of favorite foods and cuisines, from Italian and Mexican to French and American.
“I also love to try to make things healthier. I don’t want to be that super-strict dieter, especially when I’m feeding other people. I want everyone to enjoy everything. When people order food, they can order it healthier if they want it like that. But whenever I cook for my friends, it’s usually something like pasta carbonara or pasta bakes. They love my lasagna—I make a Bolognese, and then I layer it with ricotta, goat cheese and then Jack, parmesan and mozzarella. I put herbs in that filling, and then I put some extra cheese on top. Then I put some Italian seasoning on top of that, and I bake it. It’s beautiful and delicious. The goat cheese is what really makes it special.”
Pop-Up Shot
About 10 years ago while living in Seattle, Sebastian was cooking for friends—who were so impressed they encouraged him to pursue it professionally. He soon graduated from one of the renowned Le Cordon Bleu culinary schools—and has been a private chef ever since.
“A lot of people who encouraged me to start the meal prep business were eating fast food for every single meal, or they were just going to the store once and buying all kinds of junk. They were like, ‘Please help!’” he laughs. “And I didn’t want to do diet food, so that’s why it’s ‘healthyish.’”
Over the years, Sebastian has also catered for crew members on Raging Stallion shoots—a studio he has frequently filmed with.
“We collaborated so that I could help them eat. They’re usually there for a couple weeks at a time filming, and they don’t always have access to all the food that they’re used to. So every once in a while, they’ll ask me for some food. I’ve also cooked for Trenton Ducati and Brian Davilla. I cook for a lot of these people. We’re all friends, so they’re helping me out, and I’m happy to keep them healthy. Palms Springs is like the new gay mecca.”
Sebastian has also cooked for restaurants and bars—including a recent engagement at Chill Bar in Palm Springs—gaining a wider audience for his food and earning more potential customers and fans.
“They hosted me for a pop-up, and it went really well. I did the pecan chicken tenders, the pistachio salmon, and I do chorizo nachos. In Palm Springs, bars can serve alcohol only if they also serve food. Chill Bar has been serving food for a while, and a lot of bars here serve food anyway. But now because of the COVID ordinance, they have to serve food—at least one thing on the table—whenever somebody comes to drink. So they’ve been opening up the restaurant during the daytimes for chefs from all around town. It was my first time, but they have invited me back. It’s a good chance to get my name out there, and for a little bit of variety with the food.”
Sebastian also did pop-ups in San Francisco, including for Lookout bar and Truck, which closed in 2015 (“I’ve been doing this for a minute,” he laughs). But he’s grown accustomed to his new home.
“It’s just been really good for me. So many people have moved here from L.A., Seattle and San Francisco, so a lot of people that I’ve known in those places in the past 10 years, we’re all back together—we’re all friends again. L.A. is so close, and I’ll visit a lot. But honestly, once I started staying here, I started developing kind of a support system and a community. It’s just been really good to get into the groove here and form some friendships, even with people I didn’t know. I have lots of friends in L.A., but everybody is always on the go, and it’s hard sometimes just to meet up with all those people. They’re always so busy, and here it’s a little bit slower. It’s a little bit easier to have friendships and hang out and stuff.”
Saving Grace
That connection has been crucial for Sebastian’s mental health, especially in the last year.
“It’s been…weird. I never thought that we would see this. We all took history lessons in school and heard about plagues and stuff, and even in the 20th century we had some things come up. I had heard about yellow fever a lot, because it hit New Orleans really hard. So I always knew it could happen, but I never thought it would happen to us in our lifetime. But here it is. It’s kind of surreal.”
The pandemic forced the performer to confront a demon that was exacerbated last year.
“I took this time to get sober. I’ve really been working on myself and trying to get my mind right. I do a lot of meditation and gratitudes. I kind of had to with COVID and being isolated. That’s how I am getting myself through—and of course the cooking has really been kind of a life safer, because I’ve got something to do and I’ve been delivering to people.”
Sebastian first started delivering meals less than two months after the lockdown started, and didn’t anticipate how emotional it would become.
“I would run into people when I would drop the food off, and they had not seen another person—or they had not been close enough to another person to give them a hug—in a long time. So there was that weird kind of situation; we wanted to hug each other, but we didn’t know if we could. It was making me feel like I had been feeling this whole time, that I had been needing some interaction with other people,” he says.
“Thankfully, I’ve had the porn studios that I could do some stuff like that with, because that was the only sex I had for a while—and they took all the precautions. I still don’t have a lot of sex now because it’s not safe. Those are the things that have really been hard.”
But Sebastian has been happy with the progress he’s made.
“I’m happy to talk about sobriety. We don’t need to go into details, but it’s been something I’ve battled with for most of my adult life, and I’ve tried several times to quit. Alcohol was the thing that was a big problem. I was waking up during COVID, drinking and then falling asleep before 6. What else was there to do, you know? Then I just decided to get control of that.”
He went to Alcoholics Anonymous for help.
“I’ve tried to quit drinking and drugs and stuff a hundred times before, but I’ve never tried AA before in my life. It goes back to what I said before—I found a support system. I found people who I can be around, who I feel I can trust, and we all kind of support each other. I have also found a few people to help me with my business who are also trying to stay sober or become sober. It’s kind of like this weird universal thing is happening, where once I stared to work on myself, then I’m also able to help other people. It’s really cool,” he says.
“The people I’ve been talking to in the meetings, they talk about how many of their friends have been sober for 25, 35 years—and during COVID, they got drunk again or they’re really spiraling and they fell out of their sobriety. With this COVID situation, everything is so turned upside down.”
And that’s why cooking has been Sebastian’s saving grace. His success has prompted a desire to write a cookbook, just like the beloved one his mom gave him when he was a kid.
“I’ve collected a lot of recipes over the years, and a lot of what I want to do in my cookbook is tell people little tricks. Sometimes on Facebook when somebody would recommend me to host a gay cooking show or something, there’s always that nasty queen that’s like, ‘Didn’t he do porn videos?!’” Sebastian says, mocking a judgmental tone. “And I’m just ready for it. I’m going to be like, ‘Yeah, I did. And my fans love it. And they love my cooking.’ And also, I’ve traveled the world a lot being ‘Drew Sebastian,’ so who else would know better about keeping yourself in shape and eating right than someone who has been a porn star for over a decade?”
Go to AndysBites.com to see more of Drew Sebastian’s culinary craftsmanship.
