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.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Life in the restaurant business can provide a start in the working world for young people or a stable living for many Americans and their families.
Restaurants are like kids. You hope you understand their innate gifts, and then you let them realize their aspirations.
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.
Although the skills aren't hard to learn, finding the happiness and finding the satisfaction and finding fulfillment in continuously serving somebody else something good to eat, is what makes a really good restaurant.
Restaurants are like having children: it's fun to make them, maybe, but then you have them for good and bad. You are going to have to raise them and if something goes wrong when they are 30 years old, they will still be your little boy.
One of the things I really love about restaurants is that in many ways, they are the ultimate democratic institutions, where you get to walk in the door, plunk down your money, and for however long that you're there, you can be anyone you want to be.
People use restaurants to do business, to do politics, to socialize.
Unfortunately, some people go to a restaurant, and they aren't really there to enjoy themselves. They're there because they think they deserve to be there or because they can just afford it.
When you look at a kitchen, you tend to see that the people who are doing really well are those who have worked with the same chef or stayed in one restaurant for a significant amount of time.
Working in a restaurant means being part of a family, albeit usually a slightly dysfunctional one. Nothing is accomplished independently.