I was 25 years old when I arrived in D.C. It was just myself and two people who worked and helped me in the kitchen. I was only cooking for three people most of the time.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I started cooking when I was 18 years old, and now I have restaurants all over the world.
I grew up in D.C.
You know, my parents had a restaurant. And I left home, actually, in 1949, when I was 13 years old, to go into apprenticeship. And actually when I left home, home was a restaurant - like I said, my mother was a chef. So I can't remember any time in my life, from age 5, 6, that I wasn't in a kitchen.
Both my parents worked. So it wasn't like the previous generation where we learned how to cook and bake from our mothers and grandmothers.
Growing up, my dad owned a restaurant in Washington, DC, and food was something I was passionate about. But when I finally got into it, I felt like it was so late in the game; that's why I worked seven days a week at Craft and Mercer Kitchen. I wanted to see how far I could take it.
I left school when I was 14 to work in kitchens.
Everybody in my family cooks, so growing up and being around it... if I was going to spend time with everybody, it was helping them in the kitchen.
I opened my own restaurant when I was 17. I went broke, then traveled around the country, learning about different kinds of foods, had three other restaurants that went broke. It didn't all start just a few years ago!
My grandfather was a politician and lived in Washington, D.C., so as a kid, I used to go to D.C. every other weekend.
I was hired as a sous-chef at a restaurant on the Upper East Side. The chef liked to drink - some mornings we would find him sleeping. Two weeks after its opening, I became the chef. I was 20 years old, and way over my head. I had to hire the cooks and do the menus.