From fine dining to casual and late-night options, the best restaurants in Atlantic City are at Borgata and The Water Club. A key reason for securing such  prestigious reputation is ‘Iron Chef’ Geoffrey Zakarian, The Water Club’s Culinary Lifestyle Consultant. We sat down with the celebrated chef to discover his keys to success.

Zakarian’s taste, style, and passion for fine cuisine have defined his career, which has spanned more than 20 years. An accomplished chef who has presided over some of the country’s top kitchens, he travels the world on a never-ending quest for new ingredients, techniques, and challenges. In addition to being the Culinary Lifestyle Consultant for Borgata’s signature hotel, The Water Club, Zakarian opened The Lambs Club at New York’s Chatwal Hotel and The National at The Benjamin Hotel in the fall of 2010. Recently, Zakarian emerged victorious in the 4th Season of Food Network’s “The Next Iron Chef, Super Chefs.” He now appears regularly on Food Network’s “Iron Chef America,” “CHOPPED,” and “The Best Thing I Ever Ate.”

HOMBRE: How do you feel being at Borgata after ten years?
Geoffrey Zakarian: I started in 2007 and I opened the Water Club with Bob Boughner, who was then the CEO and chairman. It’s been an amazing ten years. These are really special people, and it’s a special place here. This is the best place in Atlantic City. It’s always been the best. The quality has been the best. Through thick or thin, it was still the best.

H: What do you enjoy most about the Savor Borgata event happening in November?
GZ: Well, selfishly, all the guys are my friends. Wolfie (Wolfgang Puck), Michael (Schulson), Michael Symon, Bobby Flay, all the chefs here. We’re all friends from New York City. So, when we get here it’s like a vacation getaway for us. It’s just a very special slice of life here. There are not a lot of places in the country where you have the grouping of so many really incredible chefs as Borgata. It’s almost impossible to find.

H: What would you say is the key to the success of Borgata’s restaurants, and yours in particular?
GZ: Borgata starts with the best. Their hotels are the best, they treat their guests the best, their gaming is the best, their retention is the best with their gamers, so they wanted the best restaurants. We just feed people who really love what we do and they come back all they time. They just keep coming, day after day, after day. We have people that come for four days and come to our restaurant for three of those. That’s why this is so great. It’s almost like a closed little unit, our own little world, but it’s a really good world.

The Sunroom

H: As busy as you are with multiple projects, how involved are you with your restaurant and the culinary program?
GZ: I’m here once a month. We started this restaurant ten years ago. We run The Sunroom and The Water Club, all the bars, the food and beverage, all the parties and all the room service. We were here when the building was going up. We’re very involved. I’m here once a month and my team is here when I’m not here.

H: When somebody looks at you and all the success you’ve had and wonders, ‘how can I reach that level,’ what advice can you offer?
GZ: (Laughs) It’s a lot of subjective judgments in that statement. I work, I’m a worker. I’ve been working since I was sixteen. I worked two jobs in high school. I worked two jobs in college. I just work. I don’t vacation. I love what I do. If I have the opportunity to work, I work. So, I would say to people, you have to do what you love. Find what you love to do and work as hard as you can. Everybody that surrounds me are the same. We work. We don’t stop working. We’re always working, we’re always looking for the next level, we’re always trying to get better. We love what we do, it’s not really a job for us. So we are lucky that way, but we don’t shut down. There is no saying, “you know we’re going to go away.” We don’t put a voicemail on the machine that says, “I’m out of the office.” You’ll never hear that from us. We’re always in the office.

H: What’s your motivation?
GZ: Motivation? Relevance. And Children. Setting my kids up for the next one hundred years. What else is there?