A Quote by Grant Achatz
Growing up as a young kid, I was in a restaurant. So, you know, I always had a very good understanding of the nuances. And in a way, that was a bad thing. Because it kind of programmed me to believe that if you're going have a restaurant, this is what you need to do, and this is the way it's going to be run.
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I'm a leader at the restaurant. If I do this, the people at the restaurant will try to do better. I believe in that, and that's the way it is.
I was raised in restaurants. My parents opened their first restaurant, Buonavia, in Queens when I was just 3. This business has always been my way of life. As a kid, home was reserved only for sleeping. After school, you could find my sister and I helping out at the family restaurant.
I had no inkling I was going to run into this kind of luck I experienced. It's all happened and it's all turned my life around overnight; opportunities have knocked on my door and I'm just making use of them. I don't want to do anything and everything. I want to be a brand that every time I leverage my name I want people to feel sure that it's going to be something good - so whether it be my movies, my perfume, my restaurant, my musical, it'll be good work, good food and good everything.
The way I write is very much without kind of a goal. I have something I'm interested in and then I decide I'm going to explore it. I don't know where the characters are going to go, I don't know what the movie is going to do or what the screenplay is going to do. For me, that's the way to keep it alive.
I had a couple of investments that didn't go my way. That's why I laugh at guys who say, 'Oh, I'm going to open a clothing line. I'm going to start a restaurant.'
I remember going to a theater once, and there was a stairway that wound its way out to the back. And I was very young, a small child, and I said to my mom, 'Why are those people going up those stairs?' And she said, 'You know, I don't know how to tell you this, I don't know how to explain it, but it won't always be that way, because it's wrong.'
Rude staff, bad lighting, and dirty bathrooms are all signs of a bad restaurant and a good reason to leave a restaurant!
When I started at Puma, you had a restaurant that was a Puma restaurant, an Adidas restaurant, a bakery. The town was literally divided. If you were working for the wrong company, you wouldn't be served any food; you couldn't buy anything. So it was kind of an odd experience.
If everything always went perfectly, I would feel like, When is the ball going to drop? Because good things don't always last. Maybe I'm a pessimistic person. When something just seems too good, I can't believe it. I come from a background where I was never told that I couldn't do something, so I'm very stubborn. I don't know if I believe in fate or destiny, but it kind of feels that way sometimes.
I'm just a bit frustrated that in London we make such an effort to ape the New York restaurant scene. I have good friends who ape the New York restaurant scene and do it brilliantly. None of them would claim that the primary reason for going to their restaurant was the food.
I think a lot of people overlook the importance of the menu as a marketing tool and a way of communicating to the customer what the ambition of their restaurant is. Not only the typeface and the design, but what is it printed on? Is it cheap-looking? Is it the right kind of paper for that restaurant?
I felt pretty good growing up. I didn't feel a lot of prejudice or racism. But I do remember, if there was going to be a movie or a television show with Asian characters, I would go out of my way to avoid them, because they portrayed all Asians as either ridiculously good or ridiculously bad; you know, the whole Charlie Chan-Fu Manchu thing.
Guys that are young in the league. Guys that you get to teach them your way. It's not a bad thing. It's actually a good thing. It's working for them. Teach them that way, and I guarantee they aren't as stubborn and hard-headed as I was, which sometimes is good, sometimes is bad. But like I always say, I'm not going to change who I am.
When I was 11 or 12 - a young boy in Japan - one of my older brothers took me to a sushi restaurant. I had never been to one, and it was very memorable. Back then, sushi was expensive and hard to come by, not like today, when there's a sushi restaurant on every street corner and you can buy it in supermarkets.
I felt pretty good growing up. I didnt feel a lot of prejudice or racism. But I do remember, if there was going to be a movie or a television show with Asian characters, I would go out of my way to avoid them, because they portrayed all Asians as either ridiculously good or ridiculously bad; you know, the whole Charlie Chan-Fu Manchu thing.
I wanted to work in a restaurant. Le Cirque was looking for a chef and they approached me. I was excited to be able to be part of this restaurant with an amazing reputation, but not a good one for food at the time. I made it clear that if I was coming to Le Cirque it was going to change.
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