Michael Voltaggio on Fatherhood with New Baby 20 Years After First Kids (Exclusive)

In June, former Top Chef winner Michael Voltaggio became a dad for the third time — and for the first time in two decades.

A lot has changed since he welcomed his oldest child in 1999 and, at 45 years old, he tells PEOPLE that he’s embracing a new approach to parenting while juggling a full slate of work projects.

He also can’t help but compare it all, a bit, to his long career with brother Bryan Voltaggio in the restaurant business and on cooking competition shows, from Top Chef season 6 to Bobby's Triple Threat and more.

“To be able to take everything that I've learned and now apply it to this situation — and I don't want to say be better at it, but having had that experience and getting to love them and being able to do that again now much older — it’s very similar to everything we're talking about with the restaurants, Bryan and I’s partnership and everything,” Michael says during a sit-down interview with his brother at their Voltaggio Steak House at the MGM National Harbor in Maryland, where they’re debuting a new menu.

“You're better prepared for it,” Michael adds of being a parent to his newborn daughter, Echo, with wife Bria Voltaggio, so many years later. “You sort of approach it, I guess, slightly differently than you did the first time.”

He also admits he’s been getting some candid advice from his now-grown daughters, Olivia, 25, and 20-year-old Sophia, whom he shares with ex-wife Kerri Voltaggio-Trout.

“I listen to what [they] tell me that I did right and wrong with them,” Michael says. 

“All that feedback is important because I don't want to make the same mistakes again,” he says. “And so I consult my daughters, I talk to them about how it was for them and how I could have done better so that I can do better now.”

One thing Michael says he's realized is that when “I thought I was doing a lot more for them by going and working super hard … the reality is they just wanted my time. And so to be completely honest, I regret not having that time with them.”

“Time was more valuable than material,” he says. “And I think that's the biggest lesson that I learned."

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He and Bryan, 48, remain busy in the kitchen, with the Italian restaurant Vulcania in California, and another hotel-related project closer to their roots in Maryland that is still taking shape.

But his brother, a father of three, agrees with the importance of keeping the focus on finding that work-life balance as a parent. 

“My oldest is 17, my youngest is 11, and so I'm right in the thick of it right now,” Bryan says of raising son Thatcher and daughters Ever and Piper with wife Jennifer. “And so they need support. They want my time.”

Bryan continues: “When we have our time, we have our time and we tune everything out as much as we can. We shut off phones — even though it's hard to get them to do it.”

A little more than a year ago, he says, his family relocated to a more expansive property in Frederick, Maryland, outside Baltimore. 

“There's a little bit more land around there,” he says. “And honestly, during the [COVID-19] pandemic, it was fantastic because we got to get that time to really spend with 'em. So I learned a lot. I think that's where it switched for me, because I was given the gift of time.”

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