Finding specialty food items was a bit of a challenge in Asia in the early days of getting the Mozza's up and running. Everything is built on relationships, and when you start somewhere new, it takes time to develop that. Staffing can also present challenges.

I prioritize in life. I like to work, I do TV shows, I do a lot of Iron Man training. I enjoy kicking back on a good night and drinking wine until I go to bed, and having fun with my friends. You just have to make time for it and keep it balanced.

The pressure, the heat, the almost impossibly fast pace at which you need work - this is the reality of working in the culinary industry. This is what professional chefs do night after night.

Being frugal, conscious of making money, is not a negative thing. That sensibility of creating value and finding value and reinvesting in those customers is what separates great restaurants from the average ones.

There are certain things that make restaurants work and a certain kind of DNA that people who excel in restaurants need. But it's a lot like life, in the sense that you get out of it what you put into it.

I have a Madonna portrait done in the style of a Russian icon. My mother, the chef Lidia Bastianich, and I bought it together. It reminds me of her.

He brought a sensibility and a hard-edged reasonableness to operating restaurants that had a lasting impact on me and still affects how I run all our restaurants today. The passing of 'Restaurant Man' - the original gangsta 'Restaurant Man,' my father - was the passing of an era. No one can replace him.