LYD Classic. Original publish date: January 14, 2007 (31) as Introducing Rouxbe.
Editor’s Note 2026: January 2007. I stopped drinking years ago, and if you read this you already know why. Sorry again, Mel.
As you may or may not know, I have Asian alcohol red-face syndrome carry a “defective” copy of the gene for aldehyde dehydrogenase. Different pockets of friends have at least one story of me getting plastered off half a beer, me passing out after having a Smirnoff ice on an empty stomach, the tragic story of me “binge drinking” two tequila poppers and then throwing up for three and a half hours on my friends pants. (Sorry, Mel.)
Coincidentally, the night I flew up to Vancouver for my interview with the team at Rouxbe it was also the night of the Rouxbe team holiday dinner. And since Rouxbe is an online cooking website, OF COURSE the food would be fantastic. But first, a delightful glass of blackberry flavored champagne…
See where I’m going with this?
So, I’ve been traveling for the past four or five hours, and I haven’t had a bite the entire day; on the other hand, you can’t NOT have a half glass of champagne, right? To keep up appearances, and everything. And so, we do a delightful toast, I drink the delightful champagne, and we make delightful banter, the kind of banter that one has when you’re drinking champagne.
“Hey, I’m doing pretty good,” I think to myself. My face isn’t red, I don’t feel like I’m going to throw up on any executives. Ten minutes later, I excuse myself to smoke a cigarette outside. I walk outside the house and the freezing air hits my face as I take a drag of my cigarette. “Oh hey,” I say to myself. “I think I’m a little dizzy.”
Three minutes after that, I calmly try to walk into the house. “Oh hey,” I say to myself. “I think I’m going to pass out.”
For the record: no, I did not pass out. I did, however, “turn white while my lips turned black,” according to Ritchie. I don’t remember this, of course, because I’m slowly rocking back and forth with my hands between my knees on the living room sofa, repeating my mantra of “OH MY GOD, I WILL NOT THROW UP IN FRONT OF THE COMPANY I’M INTERVIEWING WITH.” The fact that I’m now dripping in sweat like Bobby Brown in a 20/20 Interview doesn’t help, either.
“Dude,” Ritchie whispers to me. “The washroom is down the hall, eh?” He hands me a glass of water, someone else hands me a piece of bread, and as I come to my senses, I try my best to pretend that nothing EVER happened, and to casually downplay the fact that my shirt collar is DRENCHED WITH SWEAT. And I think I do an okay job at it.
A couple of days later, when I meet up with the company founders for a follow-up interview, Joe starts off with, “So, I guess we should avoid serving you champagne, eh? Ha ha.”
I apologize for the next fifteen minutes. And they still offer me a job position anyway. Good people, these folks are.