You've always got to work to your highest ability level. When times are great and restaurants are jamming, that's when some restaurants get sloppy and take things for granted. Never take things for granted.

With all the hybrid stuff and things like that, I think that's a fabulous direction to go with cars in that sense. As someone who grew up around muscle cars, I'll never not be able to not love a muscle car. Not that I don't care about the environment, that's not it. But I adore muscle cars.

I think that's what being a chef is all about: camaraderie and teamwork. I never feel that it should be so cutthroat that you can't help the other chefs.

In Cleveland, I'm so fortunate that we're surrounded by farms with an endless variety of beautiful vegetables. For me, I always eat very tightly with the season, even if the season is only six weeks.

Never let the pressure get so big that you stop cooking and being who you are. I'm going to win or lose doing my food. Because when the pressure's on, you need to do food that you're very comfortable with.

My restaurants are never opened on Thanksgiving; I want my staff to spend time with their family if they can. My feeling is, if I can't figure out how to make money the rest of the year so that my workers can enjoy the holidays, then I don't deserve to be an owner.

As a chef and someone who's been in the restaurant business for almost thirty years now, if there's one thing I learned early on: Never eat at a buffet. I don't want to eat yesterday's food and whatever they're trying to get rid of from their cooler for my lunch, dinner, or breakfast, thank you very much.