After working for chef Paul Bocuse, he joined chef Louis Outhier, who sent him all over Asia, whose cuisines inform most of his menus today. While working in Bangkok at age 23, he was given profit-and-loss statements to expose him to the business side. He learned more at the Drake Hotel in New York because the Swiss owners, he said, demanded that. At age 32, he took a restaurant-business course at Hunter College in New York before opening JoJo with Phil Suarez, who is still his business partner.