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Restaurants are a wonderful escape for me. And are for a lot of people.

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.

I only have the restaurant. If I do other things, it's only to do with the restaurant.

The part that I know I enjoy most is the restaurants. You can't do everything, you know? For me, the priority has been being deeply involved in my restaurants and figuring out different ways to make them run better.

I take apart restaurant menus everywhere I go. I kind of tick off a lot of chefs in restaurants because I'll say, 'You can keep all of the sauce, keep all of that garbage - just give me that piece of fish. Forget the salad dressing, I don't need all of that extra stuff. Just give it to me straight up, and I'll eat it.'

I am a chef through and through. Everything I do - whether it is cooking for kids in Harlem or cooking in a fine dining establishment - all my days are consumed by food.

I would work as a cook, get a little money, then open another restaurant.

I ended up wanting to be a cook and hold my own in a restaurant.

There are certain things that make restaurants work and a certain kind of DNA that people who excel in restaurants need. But it's a lot like life, in the sense that you get out of it what you put into it.