Real talk: Musings of a serial restaurateur.

• Author: Cucci, Justin

The next time you think, "We are a "chef-driven restaurant" or an "ingredient-driven restaurant," you might want to start with being a "guest-driven restaurant." To quote Mahatma Ghandi: "A small body of deter-mined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history." Or, how about: "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."

Me, I fell in love with this lifestyle and followed my heart.

I learned to walk in my grandparents' well-known New York restaurant, Ye Waverly Inn. I worked there from 8 years old to age 27, when it was sold, and I never looked back. During those formative years, in hindsight, I feel lucky, because their was no Food Network or restaurant reality shows (."Kitchen Nightmares," anybody?) to taint the purity of loveable dysfunction, hardship and grit, which I grew to love in this business. I grew up with no false hope that a certain charismatically dimpled, ginger chef, as well as Mexican food culture thief, and exploiter of Americans' weakness for all things sweet--could run a restaurant on those qualities alons. And reality TV? Now, that'll rot your teeth--and brain--faster than all the sweet treats I could possibly serve. These staged spectacles are crafted to evoke common-denominator reactions from the most mediocre part of your brain. (The real reality is you WILL examine your existance weekly, because you'll have no more to give, you'll feel like If you go to sleep you'll never wake up, if you can sleep at all, and you'll revel in the exhilaration of that busy service, of the loud din of a busy restaurant.)

Nevertheless, there remain countless wannabe chefs and hopeful restaurant-owners who dream a little dream. For those of you with a kernel of interest, hope or foolishness to commit your life to this art, the base of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, consider the following:

You might be a restaurant-neck if...You have what you do, but you do it because you love it.

What good is passion when the name of the game is consistency? Is anybody really passionate about consistency? What good is passion, when it's 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration? No industry embodies the mantra, "Success is stumbling from one failure to the next without the loss of enthusiasm," better than the restaurant business. We all know the numbers: 90 percent of restaurants close in the first three years, right? I call BS. The number is closer to 60 percent. Still...