My mom, who's been in the restaurant business for 40 years, is the number-one influence in my life. But I look up to a lot of people in the industry. Tops on my list is Mario Batali. My mom and Mario taught me the same lesson: Food is love. ↗
In some of the countries where we operate, there is a tradition of corruption, in which the political elites work with business in the framework of unsavory relationships. ↗