Being a chef requires that hands-on instinctive approach and discipline. It's like being a woodworker; you can read all you want about how to make a boat from wood, but until you actually go do it, it's not really feasible.

I can cook a dish, but it doesn't matter if I can cook it. It matters if the cooks, who are going to be cooking it every single night, know how to cook it.

We don't want restaurants to continue in the way that they were. So, No Goodbyes was kind of a way to say we're not saying goodbye, but we want to welcome people back into something new, something different, something that is going to be sustainable for the future.

I hate the word concept because No Goodbyes isn't necessarily a concept. It's not like, ‘Let me get some investors, let me pop up a couple of these all over the United States, and then I'll go to Tokyo, and then I'll go to Vegas.’ It's not one of those things. It's a way of thinking and cooking.

When you cook in a way that's fixated on the landscape, it's a way of thinking. What is the best possible way that I can cook this food to number one, make it delicious, number two, make it nutritious for the guests, and number three, return as much value to the local food economy as we can?