I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

I like telling stories, and I tell stories that interest me. It would be boring to have to go to nothing but the best restaurants. That would be a misery to me.

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

We know, for instance, that there is a direct, inverse relationship between frequency of family meals and social problems. Bluntly stated, members of families who eat together regularly are statistically less likely to stick up liquor stores, blow up meth labs, give birth to crack babies, commit suicide, or make donkey porn. If Little Timmy had just had more meatloaf, he might not have grown up to fill chest freezers with Cub Scout parts.

In America, there might be better gastronomic destinations than New Orleans, but there is no place more uniquely wonderful. ... With the best restaurants in New York, you'll find something similar to it in Paris or Copenhagen or Chicago. But there is no place like New Orleans. So it's a must-see city because there's no explaining it, no describing it. You can't compare it to anything. So, far and away New Orleans.

I could do nothing but Brooklyn shows for the rest of my career, and I could die ignorant.

The roots of creativity of cooking are hungry people trying to figure out how to take something that's not particularly fresh or tender and transform it into it something delicious that everyone will love.