A great restaurant is one that just makes you feel like you're not sure whether you went out or you came home and confuses you. If it can do both of those things at the same time, you're hooked.Collection: Home
I grew up in a reform Jewish family in St. Louis. Our idea of Judaism was no bar mitzvahs and a Christmas tree that had a skirt at the bottom embroidered with the names of my grandparents.Collection: Christmas
There are three things that people pick up on the instant they walk into your home on Thanksgiving. They will be able to feel the human energy. They'll smell the food. And they will see, instantly, the table.Collection: Thanksgiving
It's the job of any business owner to be clear about the company's nonnegotiable core values. They're the riverbanks that help guide us as we refine and improve on performance and excellence. A lack of riverbanks creates estuaries and cloudy waters that are confusing to navigate. I want a crystal-clear, swiftly flowing stream.Collection: Business
Human nature doesn't change. When enough people are comfortable enough financially, there is going to be human nature that wants to spend more money on better quality and, to some degree, status symbols as well.Collection: Money
Constant, gentle pressure is my preferred technique for leadership, guidance, and coaching.Collection: Leadership
Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. Those two simple prepositions - for and to - express it all.
A great restaurant doesn't distinguish itself by how few mistakes it makes but by how well they handle those mistakes.
The most important thing you can do is make the distinction between customer service and guest hospitality. You need both things to thrive, but they are completely different.
Restaurants are like kids. You hope you understand their innate gifts, and then you let them realize their aspirations.
It's always imperative to improve and to remain dynamic - or you'll become lunch, as opposed to serving it.
A restaurant is a compendium of choices that the owner has made. If you look around a restaurant, everything represents a choice: the kind of salt shaker that's on the table, the art on the walls, the uniforms on the waiters.
I think that more and more and more really talented restauranteurs and chefs from the fine dining world are going to try their hand at fine casual. They're going to say, 'Why not us?'
Some people are near- or farsighted - I'm thorn-sighted. The thorns on the rose are in really sharp definition for me, the rose petals a little fuzzier.
One great worker equals three not-so-great workers, so it's worth paying terrific people not just for today but to find people that we think have upward mobility to become tomorrow's leaders.
My favorite place is whichever sidewalk is beneath my feet because I am just constantly fascinated by walking and looking and learning. If I've already walked a street five times, then the next five times I walk it looking up, and I learn something about the cornices.
I think that Shake Shack wouldn't exist had it not been for Twitter. I don't think you would have gotten a hundred New Yorkers to stand in line for an hour if they couldn't have made their time really productive and organized snowball fights, ordered free hot chocolate, and, you know, Instagrammed photos.
Earlier in my career, I needed to be the writer, casting director, set designer, leading man, and producer. I've been eliminating a lot of those jobs. I'm an executive producer right now. I still get to pick the best screenplays.
The only thing I hate is when bad food is paraded as something great, and people are charging a lot for it.
I've been in love with Washington ever since renting my very first apartment there many years ago while working as a Senate intern.
Steak and its accompaniments - wine, vegetables, potatoes and generous desserts - is a primal source of pleasure to which many people can relate.
The cooking standards for Italian food are less demanding than for French. All you need are some fried mozzarella and five pastas, and you're in business.
If somebody doesn't want to cook at home or has more family members than they have room for, then it's great to be in a city that's got restaurants that are actually busy on the holidays.
There are a zillion variables to a hamburger. What part of the animal went into it. What coarseness. What temperature.
Museums are like sports stadiums, hotels and hospitals: they are in the category of captive-audience dining.
People who have come to appreciate well-sourced and well-cooked food refuse to pay too much for food that they wouldn't want to pay anything for.