In the restaurant industry it's a known fact that great restaurants are built on regulars. The customers who love what you do so much they need to come back for more. They're not following a viral trend, or trying to tick you off of a list. They know what you're offering and they want more of it. Running a great restaurant is more than getting guests through the door, it's about creating an experience that's so incredible they can't wait to come back for more.

When it comes to making plates for those restaurants, those same rules apply.

I know I can make plates that look nice, I know how to sell them to chefs, and I can put together a decent reel every once in a while to show them off. But for a chef, it's not until the plates get put to the test in a real professional kitchen that they find out if they're functionally sound and durable enough to really stand up, if they want to come back for more when the time comes.

When Chef Andy Quinn and Cedric Nicaise came to me to make all of the plates for their first restaurant The Noortwyck it was an incredible opportunity. Knowing the caliber of restaurants they both came from, I knew I was going to have my work cut out for me to create a line of plates that would live up to the food and atmosphere they were trying to create.

The Noortwyck quickly became my wife and I's favorite spot to eat. Any opportunity to sit at the corner of that bar, sip a cocktail and try whatever new thing Andy had on the menu, we took it. I still drool thinking about those sweet corn agnolotti. It's the kind of spot that makes you want to be a regular.

So, 4 years later when they came back to me to make the plates for Oriana I couldn't be more excited. Restaurant number 2. A new location, a new concept, new designs, new aesthetic. New plates. The cool thing about it was that it wasn't, 'give me a new round of the same stuff we use at The Noortwyck.' It was an opportunity to collaboratively design a whole new line of plates. I'm pretty proud to be a part of it.

Oriana has immediately become one of the hardest reservations to get in NY. Which is a problem, cause I have a feeling we're going to want to be regulars.