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I started out as a back waiter;
then I moved to the illustrious salad bar
in a restaurant and as a dishwasher.
Slowly but surely, I worked my way up to a cook
and then kind of switched restaurants
and kind of started all over again.
I guess I'd consider myself a restaurateur.
I spend my days bouncing between the restaurants,
making sure that people are gettting things done.
Sometimes when I have to get up at 5:00 a.m., that's hard.
But other than that, it's not too bad.
Restaurants, I think, have historically been a
place where there isn't as much balance.
When I was working in New York,
the chef I worked for, classic French chef,
smoked in the kitchen, ran in yelling at everybody.
His wife came to him one day and said,
"It's me or the restaurant."
And he said, "The restaurant."
You know?
And he's there seven days a week,
lunch, dinner, and it's his life.
And certainly he was successful in one way, but you know,
he really had no life outside of that.
I mean, food, obviously, is so fundamental to us.
Without it, a few days and then that's it.
I think as a country, certainly,
we've lost sight of its importance in our life.
We're okay if we eat fast food for breakfast and lunch, and then
dinners are in front of the TV.
All of these things around food—it almost
gets to a point where we feel like food is the enemy.
We eat it, but there's really nothing behind it.
You're going to get something you don't get anywhere else.
Some call them pineapple tomatoes.
The tomato, once ripe, is vivid yellow with red streaks.
It's this experience that you just can't get anywhere else.
A bigger problem with shipped tomatoes is, one,
they're picked unripe, but two,
they tend to refrigerate them also, which kills flavor.
We get these straight from him and keep them outside.
It's unbeatable, really, the flavor you get.
We need to get down and bring you to the restaurant,
you know, have some pizza?
All right, take care.
When we really take time to kind of pay attention
to what we're eating and who we're with,
I think we have more of an opportunity to have
an experience that makes our day better, ultimately.
We have chances to have ex- periences that'll make us
happier. Maybe they come in here
and have a meal and realize, "Man,
I really do like hanging out with my husband or wife.
We should do this more often."
Maybe they start cooking at home, or
maybe they're going to the farmers' market now.
You know, it's just kind of this whole domino effect.
You know, if you think about your life,
there's a finite amount of things that you'll eat—
a finite amount of bites you'll actually put in your mouth.
Whether it's a million, a million and a half, who knows?
Every single bite you take is one less bite
that you'll take in your whole lifetime.
So for us it was kind of like a call to arms
in terms of like, "Let's make each one of these bites count.
Let's not let them go to waste." You know?
I'm a restaurant owner. I love all things food.
My name's Colton Soelberg, and I'm a Mormon.