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You have been in the food industry for so long and have achieved so much, what have you taken away from your experiences as a chef? "Well, the good thing or the bad thing with the business, is that they won't let you rest," he laughs. "So you can't take for granted whatever you earn and you have to look forward to the next. It's not about trying to stack up the achievement or the rewards, it's more about how much we enjoy this business and if you're doing it, it better be fun and make people happy with it. Make our staff happy with the work we offer them. It has to be inspiring to our team, to me, and to our customers." Loyalty and trust does not come as easily as it supposedly once did, which makes Daniel question whether millennials can be loyal the way their parents or grandparents were to restaurants and other things. "People used to go on vacation in the same place all their life. Now, people have to change places every time they go somewhere," he laughs. "It's very different… You go to the same place in Europe, Italy, France, it don't matter if you live in Rome or in a small village, you will go to the same butcher, the same cheesemonger, you will go to the same person who will provide you what make you feel good, what make you happy, and the relationship you have with them and all that. I think today, the young generation have to learn, while there's a lot of distractions in the world, you have to have a rhythm of consistency in your life and also a trust... We constantly work very hard at earning trust." Scroll through Daniel's Instagram page and you will realize how much he loves to give back to the community. Daniel tells me that when he began his culinary career in Lyon, France that they had about a dozen bums visit the restaurant he worked at throughout the day, and they would serve them a meal at the back door of the kitchen. Being in New York, he feels that there are so many opportunities to be charitable. "For me, Citymeals on Wheels was the one who is connected to the community; it has been feeding elderly people. In Europe, you take care of your grandmother, you take care of your parents, you take care of everybody. Here, many of them, nobody takes care of them. So, Citymeals on Wheels at least takes care of the eldery, which is very good and it's one I focus on. They serve 18,000 meals every day, and with that warm meal comes a smile, a hello, a connection. There's a lot of volunteers who have a list of people to call every week and talk to them. Talk about nothing, talk about the weather, politics, whatever you want, but keep them active, busy... They have more than 120 people over 100 years old. Citymeals does some good to keep them healthy and alive," says Daniel passionately. What dishes are you most known for? "I don't make those dishes here anymore. The thing is, you almost want to open a restaurant where you put all your specialties in it, so this way, you don't change those recipes ever," he laughs. "For example, there's a dish I created thirty years ago and they are still relevant, they are still famous. If you say to a chef, 'Who did the Sea Scallop Black Tie?' They'll say, 'Daniel Boulud.' 'Who did the paupiette sea bass?' 'Boulud.' They are dishes I carry in restaurant DANIEL for quite awhile. And now, the Sea Scallop Black Tie, we only do it New Year's Eve, around that holiday season. And the sea bass on a bed of leeks, which was basically a dish made of three ingredients [fresh thyme, Idaho potatoes, and butter], that's the dish that will get the most famous, the one with the least ingredients often. The sea bass, you can have at Café Boulud, still served there. The dish was born in '86 so," he laughs, "33 years old the dish is, and it's still relevant. People go and still enjoy it. It was a riot here when the chef decided that we should not cook the sea bass here [DANIEL] anymore, because they felt we were selling too much of it. And that's not good. And I say, 'Yes, you're right, this is not good. Too many people want it,'" he laughs. "You want to attract new customers with new things. And you attract new customers with old dishes, but we felt that we had more to show. So we have created many different dishes since. But that's why we make cookbooks [he has nine], so we can put them in. So they go into the garage," he says with a laugh.