Jerry Falwell

You make your first album, you make some money, and you feel like you still have to show face, like 'I still go to the projects.' I'm like, why? Your job is to inspire people from your neighborhood to get out. You grew up there. What makes you think it's so cool?

Tisch has a great film program and a great acting program, but they are segregated; you don't really intertwine. My peers knew I liked acting, so they'd be like, 'Go get that guy Gubler. He'll be in your student film.' I was in the same building. I became their go-to guy. So I left NYU having been in probably one thousand short films.

Around the time I opened my second restaurant, Etta's, I had just finished judging at the Jack Daniels World Invitational BBQ Championship in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Back home in Seattle, my goal was to recreate the sweet and smoky taste of that BBQ using our local wild king salmon instead of pig.