Sitting down for dinner not only helps you learn, but also teaches you how to listen - which I feel is the most important skill to have. I remember as a kid going around the table listening to everyone's day. It was hard to have the manners not to interrupt back then.

I think that any city created to be that over-the-top tends to be slightly inspiring, if not frightening. Vegas is all about people being amped up and winning or losing. With all that energy comes additional pressure.

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.

If you learn a recipe, you can cook the recipe. If you learn the technique, you can cook anything.

Things are going to go wrong. The great chefs are the ones that don't let it fluster them. They just move through it.

The great thing about chefs as celebrities is it gives you a larger stage to let people know how important great food is. You're able to reach a nation. The hardest thing about being a celebrity chef is you go from working 18-hour days in your kitchen to it pulling you out of your kitchen here and there. I used to be in my kitchen six or seven days a week, and for ten years I never even took a vacation.

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.