The celebrity chef admits he “hit rock bottom” in 2020.

George Calombaris has revealed how losing his $3 million business led to a private addiction to alcohol.

The former MasterChef judge was at the peak of his career when he was embroiled in several scandals. In 2017, the 46-year-old was involved in an altercation with a fan at the A-League grand final, and in 2019 he admitted to underpaying approximately 500 of his current and former employees over a six-year period.

Speaking on The Ouzo Talk Podcast, the celebrity chef said after he left MasterChef in 2020 he found himself at rock bottom.

“After Covid hit, I’m suddenly sitting in Melbourne, which is shut for now two years, sitting with my pyjamas on… looking at my phone going there’s no emails, there’s nothing to do (and I) start drinking daily,” he said on the podcast.
Credit: Instagram.
George said it all came to a head when his brother found him drunk in his car one night.

“I’ll never forget three months down the track I lost it one night. I got in my car, drove down the road, I don’t know where [I was]. My brother found me pissed as a fart,” he said. “And that was a moment, he really slapped it out of me and went enough is enough.”

The celebrity chef has since paid back the $7.8 million that was owing to his former staff. He was also fined $200,000.

“We love in Australia [to] never let the truth get in the way of a good story,” he said in a statement at the time. “The truth of the matter is that we overpaid and underpaid 51 per cent of our crew and 49 per cent of them, we had 550 team members and we found the problem.”

“We went to Fair Work, we owned up and we paid.”
Credit: Instagram.
Around the same time the wage scandal broke, the then MasterChef judge was seen shoving a 19-year-old fan at the A-League grand final. He has since had his conviction overturned on appeal.

“It was six months of pain you know, I had to go in and out of court three times, hire one of the best KC’s of the time,” he said on the podcast.

“I reckon it cost around three million bucks that, in loss of endorsements… Ridiculous, stupid, I would have rather taken that three million and given it to charity.”

In an intense sit-down interview with ABC’s 7.30 host Leigh Sales in 2019, George spoke candidly about the toll that period of his life took on him.

“It takes a long time to build a reputation, in your case 25 years of work, and you can lose it in a week,” Leigh Sales said to George, before asking, “What has been the toll of that on you?”

“I love this industry, I really do, and I love every opportunity that it’s given me,” he said, his voice shaking.

“I’m not here to blame anyone,” he said. “I take full responsibility for this. I’m sorry.”

The celebrity chef told the program he was devastated to find out that his business had failed his staff.

“I won’t forget that afternoon in 2017 when we sat there with my new business partners after we’d done a full audit for the business and discovered the underpayments,” George told 7.30.

“The thing about 13 years ago, you’re a young chef, 26 years of age, you want to open your first restaurant, you get together with three other partners at that point, and you open the first one, then the second one opens, the third one, the creativity is flying, the ideas are flying, the dreaming is there,” he explained.

“But the sophistication in the back end wasn’t there.

“There was no CEO, there was no people culture manager, there was no elite finance team like we’ve got now, that can make sure that mistake that we made will never happen again.”