Norman Mailer described the desire to be cool as a "decision to encourage the psychopath in oneself, to explore that domain of experience where security is boredom and therefore sickness and one exists in the present, in that enormous present which is without past or future, memory or planned intention.

Tokyo would probably be the foreign city if I had to eat one city's food for the rest of my life, every day. It would have to be Tokyo, and I think the majority of chefs you ask that question would answer the same way.

As incisively pointed out in the documentary Food Inc.," an overwhelmingly large percentage of "new," healthy," and "organic" alternative food products are actually owned by the same parent companies that scared us into the organic aisle in the first place. "They got you comin' and goin'" has never been truer.

The cookbooks I value the most in my collection are the ones where you hear the author's voice and point-of-view in every recipe.

Cream rises. Excellence does have its rewards.

A good, stinky French cheese or a good Stilton. These are things I really, really love. Dessert I can obviously live without.

My house is run, essentially, by an adopted, fully clawed cat with a mean nature.