My daughter takes pride in showing up with stuff that other kids envy or are freaked out by, so I send her to school with grilled octopus.

If I'm in Rome for only 48 hours, I would consider it a sin against God to not eat cacio e pepe, the most uniquely Roman of pastas, in some crummy little joint where Romans eat. I'd much rather do that than go to the Vatican. That's Rome to me.

My love of soft, runny cheese - it's impossible to resist.

If you have a good experience in a restaurant, you tell 2 people. If you have a bad experience, you tell 10 people.

The Kobe craze really annoyed me. Most of the practitioners had no real understanding of the product and were abusing it and exploiting it in terrible and ridiculous ways. Kobe beef should not be used in a hamburger. It's completely pointless.

Always entertain the possibility that something, no matter how squiggly and scary looking, might just be good.

As Americans, we tend to look at Mexican food as nachos, which is not Mexican food really - they don't eat them.