When it comes to his cooking, Campanaro said the best approach is to keep things simple.
"Don't try to razzle dazzle," he said. "When you choose ingredients, choose ingredients that will speak for themselves and just be that vehicle."
Campanaro said that part of going to the market is knowing what's available. Most of his menus are dictated by the season.
"In December you're not gonna buy asparagus from Chile, so I do the best I can to get things that are local," he said. "But most of the things that I get, if I get them from the green market or if I get a produce market to get it for me, they're getting it from the same place."
Though Campanaro has done well for himself as a chef, it wasn't the career he initially dreamed of. Cooking, he said, was just a "natural" part of life.
"I always wanted to be an architect," he said, adding that his desk in high school was a drafting table. "I have a little bit of a background and a major interest in it, so I get to design all my restaurants with my architects."
Architecture also comes in handy, he said, when figuring out the logistics of setting up a kitchen.
"There is a book of architectural minimums that I had to break out many, many times to design this kitchen -- it's 7 feet deep," he said. "I've worked in restaurants that were 1,100 seats … so the organizational layout, logistics of where things go. Having an architectural interest or background has definitely helped me in that."
But making the food is much more emotion than structural, he said.
"I think, if it is structured some things just don't work out. And you have to be able to color outside the lines and you know that's where the patience comes in," he said. "'OK, this didn't work out, don't berate yourself up over it, just try it again.' And I try to teach the people that cook with me the same relaxed mentality where the food -- food made from an angry chef isn't going to taste as good as food made with love."
Eventually, Campanaro hopes to open a restaurant in his home city with his brother Louie, calling it one of his "lifetime dreams."
"Hopefully, hopefully we can get it together," Campanaro said, "and I would look out for it soon."
