For me, the restaurant business is not just a way of making a living, it's a way of living. I grew up in the industry. My Dad was a restaurant man. That's what he called it. He wanted to be a restaurant man. My parents opened their first restaurant on Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills, Queens, in 1970. It was called Buonavia and it started as a typical seventies red-sauce joint, with velvet wallpaper and fake paintings of Venice.

I learned the business the old fashioned way. Full immersion. That's the Harvard MBA in restaurants. You learn from the ground up. Volume, margins, make it work. That's where the rubber hits the road.

In the early days I did everything, just like I learned from my Dad. I bought a big old Chevy Suburban. I'd get up, buy two packs of cigarettes and two cups of coffee-this was before Starbucks so they were fifty cents each-and get in the car and drive out to the meat market, cruise the produce market for the loading dock skid specials, which is produce that is one-day bad so they pretty much give it away. That's where the battle of margin begins, dealing with these guys out at the market. So we'd have palettes of asparagus and raspberries, and you'd have to pick through it to get to the good stuff, and it would be great, ripe and perfect, but it takes a little bit of work. Then we'd see Sal who ran the Broccoli rabe mafia-he's the only guy you could get it from. Then the fish market a few days a week. You have to pick out fish one by one. You have to know what a bad fish looks like, and you have to love the nervous energy you get in your stomach when you get a good deal on a 300-pound swordfish and you're taking it at four bucks a pound. You have to know that even if you are selling fifty portions a day you are going to just get through it before it goes bad, but you know you are going to make so much money on it. It's a risk-reward scenario. But really it is all about making a good deal on good product and making your customers happy. It's about providing a place where you and your customers can enjoy life with friends and family.