Welcome to Hillstone, America's Favorite Restaurant

The only way a company can grow, stay true to its soul, and remain consistently successful is to attract, hire, and keep great people

My appreciation of the power of hospitality and my desire to harness it have been the greatest contributors to whatever success my restaurants and businesses have had. I’ve learned how crucially important it is to put hospitality to work, first for the people who work for me and subsequently for all the other people and stakeholders who are in any ... See more

Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio called the illusion of restaurant prosperity “smoke and mirrors” in a recent interview with The Daily Beast, and predicted that, as a result of the underlying precariousness, only 25% of restaurants in the U.S. will survive this crisis. He himself announced on March 14 that he was closing all of his restaurants in New Y... See more

My fear is the restaurants that survive are going to be the big chains, and we’re going to eradicate the very eclectic mix that makes America and going out to eat so vibrant and great. And there is a lot of feeling that even in good times, if chefs can’t make their numbers, they’re going to lose everything, so imagine what they must be feeling now.

“One thing that consumers have been trained to understand is that menus don’t need have to have 12 entrees and 12 appetizers,” he says. “They need to have six really good ones. And that’s enough.”