My relationship with the restaurant means working late hours, holidays, missing out on a lot of stuff outside the restaurant, within your family and friendship circles. It's physically exhausting, and you have to be patient with your 100-plus employees and daily 500-plus guests. But at the end of the day, we do it because we love taking care of people, our employees, and our guests. When we have guests come into COTE for the first time, many have no idea what any of this is going to be. Maybe they've never seen tabletop grilling, experienced Korean barbeque, or ever been to a steakhouse before. For them to come in and have their lives changed after one experience, I think that makes it worth it at the end of the day."

At COTE, I work with many professionals, whether it's professional bartenders, servers, runners, or cooks, and everyone who works here is in it to win it. From a management perspective, it makes my job very easy. I come into work every day, and the people I'm proud to call colleagues are people who want to take ownership and genuinely do their best."

I definitely recommend getting your hands dirty. What's great about the NYU program and any college education is that you learn about business, legal, and structural aspects, which are all very important, however, practical experience you can only get by working in a restaurant. So if you've never done this before, I recommend that you research restaurants and restaurant groups you admire and see what their culture is about and try your best to get a job at any one of them starting at the bottom."