It's not always possible to sit down and eat at home in this day and age of fast-paced living, but if you are going to eat out, do so as a family and support all the great local places in your areas. I'll still eat at the same diner I did as a kid with my parents.

As the competition goes further along, you start to see who's rising and who's falling.

I'm a firm believer that all this packaged stuff that Americans are buying up in gobs is making them fatter.

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.

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.

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.

I'm lucky that my restaurant partners are my wife Liz and Doug Petkovic. We opened our first restaurant over 15 years ago. And we didn't open up our second restaurant for almost ten years. So that gave us a good foundation of employees.