"I have to tell you that the greatest challenge for me was cooking in Milwaukee," he says. Milwaukee is his hometown, and he owns four award-winning restaurants there with his brother, Joe. "Milwaukee provides you with a very solid common denominator because in Milwaukee you have very affluent people that frequent our restaurants, who are very world traveled and very sophisticated diners. You also have Midwesterners who come from good family values who maybe haven't been to New York, Chicago or Los Angeles; maybe they haven't been to Europe, but on occasion they come into our restaurant and are looking for something new and something at the next level. But they are also very much looking for value."
"Value is a difficult thing to decide, as everyone has a different perception of value. Value to me involves our ability to communicate what products we use, where we get it and why we get it so they understand the preparation of what it took to put that in front of them so that there is a value perception, not only about price or about portion, but about the overall experience they are having in the restaurant. It's very humbling in a lot of ways, but I think it's taught me to be a very good business person."