When I was 16, I met Greg Duda, who was a professional chef, and that was the moment I decided, “That is what I’m going to do.” So I graduated from high school in three years and hightailed it down to Chicago. I got on the waiting list to get into a chef school that was part of a trade tech school on the South Side – with plumbers, pipe-fitters, wall paper hangers and auto mechanics! I started right when I was 17 and went straight through two years – working at night, always, in French restaurants.

I moved to France when I was 20. I really wanted to learn to cook and I felt like that was the right place to go.

I worked in one restaurant, d’Olympe, with a woman chef, Dominique Olympe Nahmias [now Olympe Versini]. She’s very talented. It was a Michelin 2-star restaurant, a great place for me to learn.

The guy I was working for at Le Perroquet was an elegant, Yugoslavian restaurateur in Chicago – very well known – Jovan Trboyevich. He told me he would help me find a job in Paris because he went there all the time. So I sold everything I owned, which was not much [LAUGHS], and I took the money to Paris during one of the times when he was going to be there.

He took me out to lunch and dinner every day at a 2- or 3-star restaurant, but at the end of the week we still hadn’t found a job for me! We had one more lunch the next day, and we were kind of worried because he had to go back and run his restaurant in Chicago. But at that last lunch, I was hired on the spot! So it all worked out, as life does sometimes.

Just a year. At the same time, Susan [Milliken’s business partner, Susan Feniger] was down in the south of France. We had met at le Perroquet. During our stint in France, even though I was in Paris and she was in the south, we were talking on the phone about opening a restaurant some day together when we got back – even though we were both broke and had no idea how that could happen.

After we had come back to the US – me in Chicago and Susan in L.A. – Susan called and said, “There’s this little cafe that’s fledgling, struggling, and they’re willing to have us just come and make it our own, because they don’t know how to run it. Why don’t you just come out and do that!” And I did.

Well, Susan and I were there every lunch and every dinner, six days a week, with a lot of passion and having a great time. It was pretty infectious. And L.A. was really ripe for a great neighborhood, gourmet, really hip, cutting-edge spot. We also had great, great support from our customers – they just were really encouraging, they’d eat anything, and they loved what we were doing, so we just fed off each other.

It’s great! We’ve had an incredible 30-year relationship of sharing the restaurants and the food. We’ve done TV shows, we’ve written five cookbooks together, we’ve done so much. We’re both very true-born collaborators, we love to brainstorm and problem-solve in a group setting.

I think they do. It takes a certain kind of temperament, a certain kind of ego and a certain amount of generous spirit – that you don’t have to be the king of the mountain – you can share. I don’t know that that’s particularly common in people who are so driven and so creative.

At City Cafe, we were doing food from all over the world – just cooking whatever we loved. We found a location to expand, and we had to figure out what to do with the little cafe. We loved, loved, loved all the food that the Latino guys we worked with in kitchens would make for staff meals, so we decided to open up a taco joint. But what happened was, we went down to Mexico and drove around in a VW bug for two or three weeks while the place was getting renovated. We just fell in love with so many different kinds of Mexican food that when we came back, the menu wasn’t a taco stand at all. It was a much more full-blown Mexican restaurant.

Well, I guess I would say versatility. I don’t think I’ve let myself get locked into any one thing – so versatility in terms of the different kinds of food I’m interested in and can cook; and versatility in terms of the way I work. I can be completely detail-oriented, but also I force myself to take a very broad look. Wearing a lot of hats, too. Not just being a chef, but a pastry chef, plumber, HR person, financial person and a fabulous dishwasher!

I’m addicted to traveling and all my travel notebooks are filled with ideas. It’s a great time for me to step away and soak up other cultures and ideas and ways of doing things – food-wise as well as business-wise.

I think getting out of your normal day to day grind is really important – to be able to step back and see what needs to happen in your restaurant. That’s one thing I think a lot of my colleagues have a tough time doing, because it’s such an intense business.

I’m much more about flavor than about how a dish looks. Once I get the flavor I want, then I’ll try to figure out how to make it not look like “slop on a plate.” [LAUGHS] I don’t really mind that it looks like slop on a plate, as long as it’s delicious! I’m not particularly fond of many, many layers and squirt-bottle sauces and dots of flavored oils. I’m interested in really straight-forward, amazingly delicious, delightful, surprising flavors and combinations and textures. I get inspired most by ingredients.

It was actually a really fun thing for me to do from the standpoint of total, intense immersion in my world, where I didn’t have any distractions – nothing else on my mind for 23 days straight. I stayed in a hotel, and I didn’t have to worry about my 13-year old’s homework or whether my husband was getting enough attention. It was just cooking the whole time, so that was pretty special.

Actually, I did it because my staff really, really wanted me to do it. I had said “no” to the first, second and third series and Susan said it was the hardest thing she’d ever done, in season two. But then, I just felt that I should probably do it!

Well, that’s nice! My whole goal for my appearance on the show was not to be “bleeped!”

It’s just the same, simple things that everybody says: No one will do it for you. You have to set your boundaries and stick to them. If you’re a good manager of people, you can probably figure out a way to manage your time and take responsibility for creating your life. If you’re creative, you can create food – and you should be able to create a life that you love. I think it has a lot to do with believing that you are in control of your future and your destiny. You have to really want it, and then take control of it.

The world has changed a lot. It’s more complicated in every possible way than when I started. My ability to adapt to those changes has been really helpful to keep us current – using social media, learning where our seafood comes from, where our meats and cheeses and vegetables come from.

There just are so many layers of detail now – about life, really. I don’t think it’s just the food industry. So there’s a lot to pay attention to and to be constantly adapting and discarding old behavioral modes that aren’t working anymore and embracing the new.

Like the Health Department thing. It wasn’t a big deal when I was growing up, and I can talk till I’m blue in the face about what a bunch of...of...

Exactly! But to be honest, it’s the world we live in and we have to all be really diligent and understand how to keep our customers safe and healthy. I try to embrace it as a challenge.

A bunch of fresh vegetables from the garden and roasted squab. I love birds. Just grilled on a simple wood fire with butter and thyme, salt and pepper.

Then: Le Perroquet (Chicago), Restaurant d’Olympe (Paris), City Cafe, CITY Restaurant (LA)

Limelight: Top Chef Masters, Iron Chef America, Food Network’s Too Hot Tamales and Tamales World Tour series, radio shows

Pubs: Five cookbooks, including Cooking with Too Hot Tamales, Mesa Mexicana, and City Cuisine

Mentors: Jovan Trboyevich (Le Perroquet, Chicago), Greg Duda (Let Them Eat Cake bakeries, Chicago), Alice Waters, Julia Child

Favorite restaurants: Fergus Henderson’s St. John and St. John Hotel (London), April Bloomfield’s John Dory (NYC), Lotus of Siam (Las Vegas), K-ZO (L.A.)

Age: 53

Grew up: Michigan

Education: Washburne Trade School now Washburne Culinary Institute), Chicago

Now: Co-chef/Co-owner (with Susan Feniger) Border Grill Restaurants (Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Las Vegas), Border Grill Trucks and Border
Grill Stop

Then: Le Perroquet (Chicago), Restaurant d’Olympe (Paris), City Cafe, CITY Restaurant (LA)

Limelight: Top Chef Masters, Iron Chef America, Food Network’s Too Hot Tamales and Tamales World Tour series, radio shows

Pubs: Five cookbooks, including Cooking with Too Hot Tamales, Mesa Mexicana, and City Cuisine

Mentors: Jovan Trboyevich (Le Perroquet, Chicago), Greg Duda (Let Them Eat Cake bakeries, Chicago), Alice Waters, Julia Child

Favorite restaurants: Fergus Henderson’s St. John and St. John Hotel (London), April Bloomfield’s John Dory (NYC), Lotus of Siam (Las Vegas), K-ZO (L.A.)

Age: 53

Grew up: Michigan

Education: Washburne Trade School now Washburne Culinary Institute), Chicago