A hot dog at the game beats roast beef at the Ritz.
I look at each one of my restaurants, and I want my personality to come out. Some are serious, some are intense when it comes to food and wines, some are meat masters supreme. I enjoy all my guests.
Singing in a restaurant is very demeaning and humiliating but you learn from it, because people aren't there for a show, they're there to eat.
Be able to set a table so that you feel like you're dining, not just sitting and eating.
A plate of food hits the table, lands right in front of you. One of two things happens. Either you sit up and look at it and react to it, or nothing happens. If nothing happens then that restaurant is stuck in mediocrity forever.
A successful restaurant makes everything in it, including the patrons, seem a little better than they are.
We sell tea in Starbucks, but I think the experience is very different. I think coffee is something that is quick - it's transactional. I think tea is more Zen-like. It requires a different environment.
Food, like the people who eat it, can be stimulated by wine or spirits. And, as with people, it can also be spoiled.
I like it when a man puts thought into the kind of restaurant we're going to. That doesn't mean it needs to be fancy - some of the best meals of my life have been having a taco on a street corner.
For me, candlelit is the only way to have a dinner. There are always candles at my table. And I like to have Luis Miguel playing in the background.
Bringing out service staff on to the dining floor does change the atmosphere.
