Everything important I learned, I learned as a dishwasher.

I think there's a great storytelling tradition in the restaurant business that tends to attract people with an oral tradition of bulls - ting and bollocking. Creative people, people for whom the 9-to-5 world is not attractive or impossible. It seems that way. There are a lot of stories in the business, and a lot of characters - and it seems to attract its share of artists and writers and people who hope to do something creative in their lives.

My tastes in what I eat at home would be very familiar to most people who cook for families. I just organize those things a little bit differently.

As I see it, fast food outfits have targeted small children with their advertising in a very effective way. You know, it's clowns and kid's toys and bright colors and things like that.

But I do think the idea that basic cooking skills are a virtue, that the ability to feed yourself and a few others with proficiency should be taught to every young man and woman as a fundamental skill, should become as vital to growing up as learning to wipe one’s own ass, cross the street by oneself, or be trusted with money.

I couldn't imagine a more unreliable, more unprofitable way to make a living than writing. My advice? Show up, do the best you can. Keep your day job. If you get a lucky break, don't f*** up. It was helpful to be older because I had made all the really stupid mistakes already.

Big stuff and little: learning how to order breakfast in a country where I don't speak the language and haven't been before - that's really satisfying to me. I like that.