One thing I can't afford to get sucked up in is the trend formation of restaurants here. I've invested heavily. We have a ten-year lease. More importantly, the style, the feel and the décor of the dining room is vibrant.

My mum doesn't enjoy sometimes listening to me tell staff off, and I say to my mum, it's a kitchen, not a hair-dressing salon.

They say cats have nine lives. I've had 12 already and I don't know how many more I'll have.

Everything I learned and didn't do in New York I would put into place here in the London West Hollywood. It's fascinating, when you look at the critics' reviews, and we had a great one in the New York Observer and all that, and then the New York Times came and it was a devastation; two stars out of four. They said that I played safe because it wasn't fireworks. Then they judged the persona over the substance that was on the plate.

You don't come into cooking to get rich.

One thing I can't afford to get sucked up in is the trend formation of restaurants here. I've invested heavily. We have a ten-year lease. More importantly, the style, the feel and the décor of the dining room is vibrant.

I've had a lot of success; I've had failures, so I learn from the failure.