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 almost impossible to teach. It's all about hiring the right people.
Life is a series of waves to be embraced and overcome.
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.
Hospitality exists when you believe that the other person is on your side.
Hospitality knows no gender or race.
Restaurants are like kids. You hope you understand their innate gifts, and then you let them realize their aspirations.
A cocktail done right can really show your guests that you care.
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 gasp for air if I don't get to breathe Italian air once a year.
Union Square Cafe is all soul, not brain.
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.
You can't let challenges argue you out of doing what you know is the right thing.
The only thing I hate is when bad food is paraded as something great, and people are charging a lot for it.
When push comes to shove, baseball is one of my favorite things in the world.
I feel like not knowing Joe Torre is a hole in my New York experience.
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.
Use your time well. Everyone gets time equally. It doesn't matter how much money you make.
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.
What you can do is present existing flavors in a fresh way, in a fresh context.
Festive cocktails mean color, lots of color.
People use restaurants to do business, to do politics, to socialize.
The great thing about capitalism is that it's a system that works.
I don't get to cook in my own restaurant.
I throw 14 parties a week.
Ninety-five percent of all brussels sprouts come from California.
When I was young, I had no choice as to what I was eating.
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.
I couldn't sit in a chair in an office all day.
My dad gave me the gene to enjoy cooking, and to enjoy consuming good food and wine.
There are a zillion variables to a hamburger. What part of the animal went into it. What coarseness. What temperature.
How can you franchise hospitality?
You cannot open a major New York restaurant today and not be aware that showbiz will play a role.
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.
More and more, museums will look at restaurants and chefs differently - as if they are curating art.