The Way I Was Always Supposed To Be

A note about what this is. And what it’s finally becoming.

When I came out, a neighbor pulled me aside not long after and said, very matter-of-factly:

“We all knew. We were just waiting to see when you were going to figure it out.”

I’ve been thinking about that sentence a lot lately.

Because I think some of you might say the same thing about this newsletter.

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I spent twelve years as a chef on private superyachts.

Cooking for people who had already bought everything on land, so they took their tantrums to sea.

Guests who asked the crew if we could make the ocean a little quieter.

People whose emotional support labradoodles ate hand-seared Wagyu out of crystal bowls.

The standard was “perfection or unemployment.” There was no middle ground where you could just have a bad Tuesday.

And it taught me how to see things most people miss.

The restaurant bathroom with a layer of dust on the baseboards that tells you exactly how much the chef stopped caring about the walk-in.

The gluten-free menu that’s less about health and more about how much the kitchen staff is currently mocking your “allergy” behind the swinging doors.

The “market price” fish that’s been frozen so long it has freezer burn and a mid-life crisis.

I learned to read a room, a plate, a place, with the kind of precision you only get when someone’s paying you to be perfect and you have no choice but to deliver.

It was demanding. It was often brutal. Some of those people were genuinely unbearable.

But I also saw the world.

I walked into a port in Greece and realized that my grand plans for a “classic American brunch” were dead on arrival because baking soda is a myth in that village and the local produce looks like it was grown in a beautiful, sun-drenched fever dream that doesn’t include iceberg lettuce.

I had to stop shopping like a tourist and start cooking like a local who actually respects the dirt.

I had to sweat through Italian, Greek, and French techniques on a moving target, mostly because a billionaire’s mistress decided she needs a specific brand of Tahitian vanilla while you’re anchored off a cliff in the middle of the Ionian Sea.

It made me better. A better chef. A better observer. A better judge of what actually matters versus what just costs more.

And then I left.

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For years, I let the bad parts bury the good parts.

I started writing. Memoir pieces. Personal essays. Honest stuff about reinvention and ADHD and the long road of figuring out who I was after the yacht.

I was polite. I was serious. I was careful.

I didn’t want anyone to think I thought I was an expert.

So I left out the one thing I actually am an expert at.

The problem with those “earnest” essays? They left out the guy you’d actually want to grab a drink with.

The one who’s funny, energetic, a little dramatic, definitely performative in that gay kitschy way, and absolutely will not pussy-foot around if something isn’t what it claims to be.

I say please and thank you. I’m respectful. I won’t be mean. I’ll be honest.

But if you dare me to break a rule, I probably will.

If you tell me “we couldn’t possibly do that,” I’ll say “fuck that, yes we can”.

And if you hand me a napkin at the end of a good meal, there’s a non-zero chance I’ll teach you how to fold it into a penis.

That guy has been in here the whole time.

I just wasn’t letting him write.

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Starting next week, this publication has a new name.

This is Ungarnished.

It’s a chef’s term. Nothing added that doesn’t belong. No pretension. Honest.

It’s food, travel, the destination, and the substance versus the smoke.

Hotels, restaurants, airlines, food trucks. Written by someone who spent twelve years cooking for people who’d eaten everywhere, applied to everything from fine dining to a hole-in-the-wall dive.

The personal writing isn’t going anywhere. The memoir, the ADHD, the marriage, the road, the reinvention. That’s all still here.

What’s changing is that the most interesting thing about me is finally part of the story.

And I’m done being polite about it.

For the next couple of weeks you’ll see both, the overlap, the transition, the settling in.

After that, it’s one publication. One voice.

The one I should have been using all along.

We all knew. I just had to figure it out.

–R. Michael

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R. Michael is a former luxury yacht chef, a food and travel writer, and a reliable source of opinions nobody asked for. This is Ungarnished.

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