I grill, therefore I am.

Seriously. I'm not very bright, and it takes a lot for me to get a concept - to really get a concept. To get it enough that it becomes part of me. But when it happens I get real excited about it

The kitchen's a laboratory, and everything that happens there has to do with science. It's biology, chemistry, physics. Yes, there's history. Yes, there's artistry. Yes, to all of that. But what happened there, what actually happens to the food is all science.

My college degree was in theater. But the real reason, if I have any success in that milieu, so to speak, is because I spent a lot of years directing, I spent a lot of years behind the camera

I've learned that you shouldn't have preconceived notions about anybody.

'Outlaw Cook' was a revelation. Folks like Jeff Smith and Marcella Hazan got me interested in cooking, but John Thorne pushed me into the path that I follow to this day. This is the only cookbook I've ever read that understands how men really eat: over the sink, in the dark, greasy to the elbows.

Although I don't take myself very seriously, I do take my work extraordinarily seriously.