I wanted it to look like real cooking in someone's real home or just so out-of-there bizarre that it would be fun.

Food is everything we are. It's an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It's inseparable from those from the get-go.

I'm not going to get off the pony as long as they let me ride it.

I go anywhere I want, do whatever I want when I get there, they let me make self-indulgent TV about that experience, and give me about as much creative freedom as anyone's ever had in the history of television.

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

There's always this assumption that you're going to get everything right immediately. And any professional understands that that's just not so.

I love New York. I'm a guy for whom a New York accent is a comforting thing.