When I visited these properties, most of the people I interviewed with liked me. A week into my search, every hotel on the strip had turned me down. They definitely didn't care that I had a wife and two young children to support, and that I'd spent the last of our savings on a one-way ticket to the desert hoping to restart my career. They didn't care that I'd proven myself in some of L.A.'s best kitchens or that I really could cook. I hadn't been jobless this long since I'd left prison, and my prospects of landing a position hadn't been so bleak since then, either.Įvery potential employer I met with seemed only interested in the fact that I was a convicted felon.
I was on track toward running my own restaurant when a political kitchen battle suddenly left me begging for someone to give me a chance to start over. I had busted my ass in the five years since my prison release, rising from dishwasher at a small restaurant to sous-chef at one of the most prestigious kitchens in L.A. By the time I showed up in Las Vegas, I'd been looking for work for more than a month.
