I opened Union Square Cafe when I was just 27 years old, and my first hope was simply that it would stay in business. My higher hope was that in its lifetime, it might grow to play an essential role in the lives of its stakeholders.
Whole Foods has been brilliant at changing the way food is produced because they just won't buy it if it doesn't meet their standards.
You wouldn't have the same art on the walls at every restaurant or the same waiter uniforms. Neither should you have the same service style at every restaurant.
A restaurant is a compendium of choices that the owner has made. If you look around a restaurant, everything represents a choice: the kind of salt shaker that's on the table, the art on the walls, the uniforms on the waiters.
People use restaurants to do business, to do politics, to socialize.
My favorite place is whichever sidewalk is beneath my feet because I am just constantly fascinated by walking and looking and learning. If I've already walked a street five times, then the next five times I walk it looking up, and I learn something about the cornices.
