As a restaurateur, my job is to basically control the chaos and the drama. There's always going to be chaos in the restaurant business.
If anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it's the restaurant business.
If you're a person who says yes most of the time, you'll find yourself in the hotel business and the restaurant business.
The restaurant business is something that you have to treat like a baby. You have to constantly be there. You can't trust it to anybody else, because no one's going to love it like you do.
My dad was in the restaurant business, but I didn't really think about following him. Had I done better at school, I don't know if I would have been a chef.
I come from the restaurant business; you're talking to a guy used to working 12, 14 hours a day.
In the restaurant business, there's the concept of pivot. Pivot to the stove, pivot to the refrigerator.
I started in the restaurant business at the age of 19 as a waitress. I loved the atmosphere and the camaraderie of the restaurant business. I loved not having to go to an office. I loved making people happy.
A couple of months ago, I was down in Florida for the Food and Wine Festival. And this journalist grabbed me and said, 'How does it feel to be a TV guy? You're no longer in the restaurant business.' And I laughed. I asked him, 'How long do you think it takes me to do a season?' He said, 'Well, 200 days.' And I was like, '200 days? Try 20!'
There are people with otherwise chaotic and disorganized lives, a certain type of person that's always found a home in the restaurant business in much the same way that a lot of people find a home in the military.