0:04  
Good afternoon, Inspire.

0:08  
Well, I was born in Calcutta, India. Either you did leather or you were in a restaurant business, but there was a lot of street food around us. A lot of rice puffs, a lot of fresh herbs, a lot of spices. So all those little things later on, crept up and it just naturally came out. I want to cook,

0:29  
Carlton Chung opened inspire restaurant four years ago and Markham. He handles the kitchen and his wife, Vanessa manages the servers and administrative work.

0:39  
I did attend culinary, Culinary Management at George Brown. I didn't finish it, I felt in my heart of hearts, you can learn cooking in the classroom. So I took it upon myself to apply it to be like to be in a position in kitchen. So seven years later, I had an idea of what my restaurant would be like.

1:02  
 You call lettuce wrap extra butter straight fire. Jordy one salmon burger please.

1:08  
Colton describes his food as modern fusion. He combines different flavors from around the world to create unique dishes. Some of their most popular dishes are the chicken and waffles, the Inspire burger and the duck tacos. Inspire restaurant has been successful, but not without a few bumps in the road. So I have a baby, he is one years old. And during that time of when I was pregnant to when he when I gave birth to him, I only took maybe two months off in total. A big reason why I came back so early is because I had to be responsible. I so I have to be here you have to put in the hours as the restaurant or you have to. You can't just you know, satellite it from your living room or your bedroom, you have to be here in in the dirty, dirty day in and day out to put in the hours. Another of the reasons not not a pretty reason, I guess is nearly all of my staff left to go work somewhere else and we found that out all of a sudden, two months in my baby was only two months old. And of course, when 90% of your staff leave, that's quite an issue, so I had to come back to work to you know, hold on to the ship basically.

2:29  
It starts from the foundation, which is Inspire One. This is the father of it all and without working hard here, without putting in the effort here, number two doesn't exist, number three doesn't exist, number four doesn't exist.

2:43  
It's like a child I call Inspire my first child. I take care of her like I would a baby. It It has needs that has desires and has things I have to do by being a virtue of being a restaurant or you have to put in the hours. You have to put in minimum I want to say like 10 to 15 hours of your day and the days that you're home, you're spent thinking about your restaurant. 

3:03  
Here you are. Do you guys want any peppers or ketchup with your fries? You're good. All right, perfect. 

3:09  
Now Carlton, and Vanessa are going to Newmarket to open their second restaurant called Inspire Chapter Two. And with a new restaurant comes a whole new set of responsibilities.

3:20  
 What's it like working with my husband? Very, very challenging. We definitely have, I want to say all of our fights, marital wise has been because of this restaurant. But it's very challenging working with somebody that you're close to because it's very hard to divide church and state right? You can't, so for me and him, it's still an ongoing struggle that we try to carve out time now that we have a baby where it's just family. So far, it hasn't worked out in that way, because work gets brought up every every single day, almost every single minute in our life. And that's just the way it is I believe when you when you open up a restaurant, when you open up your own business and you love it, you love it so much you have to talk about it. So the opportunity to open up a new restaurant is very exciting, but also of course very stressful. 80% of restaurants fail. Which means 20% of them succeed and that is a horrible statistic, but we've decided to do besides join the crazy and we just hope that everything works out.

4:17  
I feel like each business is the business owners personality. So I feel like I've put my blood sweat and tears into Inspire. I've put my very my my thought into this because they say we become what we think about right. I feel like this is what I've thought about and this is what it's become.  Why it's been successful is because I've been genuine. A lot of chefs go this route this route, because that's what they're taught and it's not what they will really want to be. Some people want to do like fine dining but it deep down in their heart they want to be they want to cook fried chicken. They want to do burgers, but for me in inspire I feel like I've been blessed with opportunity to do what I kind of want to do. I don't believe in success or failure. I believe in the journey. Don't look for don't look at your bank account. Don't look at your accolades, just obviously you'll get those along the way, but those don't define you. You know, it's like I always say don't guard your reputation guard your character.

5:20  
This is Nicole Peterson for RSJ Radio.