With four-appetizer, four-entree menus, it's like, give me a break. That's not a restaurant, that's a dinner party.

Pasta is the one food I can't live without. It's the food I eat to fuel my running.

Maitre d's are at the financial spigot of the restaurant, meaning they control who gets in and who doesn't, but aside from that, they don't do anything. And yet they get paid as much as the highest-paid people in the place.

When I stopped looking at food as a reward or a celebration and began looking at food as energy to fuel my athletic ambitions, that really kind of changed the whole world for me. That was the real 'aha!' moment.

I come from a family that loves to eat, not exercise. Being fat made even walking hard.

I think a lot of people overlook the importance of the menu as a marketing tool and a way of communicating to the customer what the ambition of their restaurant is. Not only the typeface and the design, but what is it printed on? Is it cheap-looking? Is it the right kind of paper for that restaurant?

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.