I want to go to culinary school because I love cooking. One day I'd love to open up a restaurant or cafe.
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.
We closed the restaurant in New Orleans and brought the entire staff to San Francisco. But we had to go home.
Working at a restaurant is a tough gig.
I don't like to sit still for long at all, which has probably helped me along the way, and partly why I was drawn to the heat of a restaurant kitchen. The rush of service means that you're always on your toes and keeps a chef pretty active.
No one knows restaurants like a New Yorker - they're incredibly discerning and restaurant savvy.
You go to a restaurant in the States and kids have these game boards at the table. You don't see that in Italy or Spain. It's not because they can't afford to buy them, it's because that's not what eating together as a family is about.
Young adults love to play games and they're thirsty for social interaction, but a lot of bar and restaurant experiences are quite unsatisfactory on the social level. What young people need is a place that has the feel of an unhosted party where they find themselves interacting with like-minded strangers.
My only failure was the restaurant in Myrtle Beach. I kept it open for four years. It was in a tourist town, it was only busy four and half, five months of the year. But the bills kept coming all year.
I was raised by my grandparents, and they always made sure that I had a pencil and some paper, whether we were in the car or at a restaurant. While they were enjoying a nice meal, I would be sitting there drawing funny pictures of the waitress.
I think we'll still be a family restaurant, we'll be contemporary, we'll be lifestyle, we won't be old, we won't be 60 years old in the view of the consumer.
My first memory in life is grilling my thumb to the griddle in our restaurant on Cape Cod.
If you're at a restaurant and someone asks, 'Fresh pepper?,' the answer is yes. When people shake off the fresh pepper, they clearly have no interest in living a full life. Same thing goes for grated Parmesan. Why would you turn that down?
We had an eyeball-to-eyeball agreement at a restaurant before I came back that, if I came back, he would never talk to me that way again or I was simply saying no.
I've never been a hands-on dad. I'm not ashamed to admit it, but you can't run a restaurant and be home for tea at 4:30 and bath and change nappies.
He was a manager, one of the singers, I guess talent coordinator for the local talent in Harlem. His name was Lover Patterson. He was living right across the street from where my dad had his restaurant. I guess he saw a lot of kids come in, a lot of my buddies.
I have the restaurant, too. I serve Southwest, barbecue.
The person I always enjoy having a meal with is Cilla Black. I might not see her for months, but then I'll pick her up at her flat, and we'll go to a restaurant, and it's like I've seen her that morning.
I know this is rather trivial - I will not be very deep about this - but it's great when you call the hottest restaurant in town and ask for a table for five at 8:00 P.M., and they say, 'Okay,' instead of, 'You have to wait two months.'
I think I have the secret of a successful L.A. restaurant, especially now that so many Europeans live there. You have to have a place where they can see out the windows, see the world passing by. Europeans fancy that.
A few years ago no hotel or restaurant in Boston refused Negro guests; now several hotels, restaurants, and especially confectionary stores, will not serve Negroes, even the best of them.
I'm a big fan of doing 'Triple D.' But I don't want to do it forever, don't get me wrong! Travel away from my family, are you crazy? But do you know what it does for these mom-and-pop restaurant joints? It changes their lives forever. I mean, their businesses will never be the same.
When I go to a restaurant, I eat three-quarters of the food in front of me. That cuts my calorie intake by 25 percent.
It's very hard when you eat out every day for a living, and a new restaurant comes along and you haven't got that same vigour that you had 10 years ago.
It's easier to be faithful to a restaurant than it is to a woman.
The great mystery to me is how restaurant critics think they can get away with doing their job without anybody noticing who they are.
My very first kiss happened when I was 6, underneath some desks during 'nap time', but my first real kiss happened when I was 15 in the parking lot at a Mexican food restaurant.
Friends always ask me what the best Indian restaurant in L.A. is. I'm like, 'I don't know, dude. I have an app on my iPhone for that.'
It's tough, you know: I'm a chef first, and a restaurant owner, way before I was ever on Food Network, and it's a tough business.
My favourite restaurant of all time is Mildreds on London's Lexington Street. It's a little vegetarian restaurant and is really fun and healthy, too. It was the first place I went to in London and really liked. That was 20 years ago, and it is still my favourite.
We sit down with the kids every single night, not that I want to every night - sometimes I'd rather be out with my husband having a martini at a swanky restaurant - but we sit down with our kids every night at dinner.
I had a brief experience in the food industry. I was a bus boy in a Mexican restaurant in Arizona, scraping re-fried beans off people's plates. It teaches you a bit of humility and the importance of a good deodorant.
I'm plagued with indecision in my life. I can't figure out what to order in a restaurant.
I was all-state in four sports in New Jersey, but sometimes I couldn't get served at a restaurant two blocks from my high school. There were no job opportunities then... the only thing a black youth could aspire to be was a bellboy or a pullman or an elevator operator, or, maybe, a teacher. There was a time when all we had was black baseball.
Super polished signage is not always a good sign. I'm always looking for places that you have to know about to find. Also, just food-wise, if I'm eating ethnic cuisine - I hate that phrase, but still - If I'm eating Mexican food, I'm looking to see that there are Mexicans in the restaurant. They know if the food is being made right.
Especially in the food business, critics take very seriously how much power they have. They can shut a restaurant down.
