I travel 250 days a year. There are chef friends who I only see every couple of years. By conventional standards I'm a bad friend. I'm not there to remember your birthday or to offer you words of support through Twitter. I'm not up on what you're doing in New York because I'm not in New York. I'm not what people call in parenting circles "present."

You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together.

I'm definitely looking forward to the day when I stop working - if I ever stop working. I like the idea of keeling over in my tomato vines in Sardinia or northern Italy.

The biggest empty space, the biggest gap in what should be a premier and always vibrant food scene in America is that we don't have hawker centers like they do in Singapore, basically food courts where mom and pop specialists can set up shop in fairly hygienic little stalls all up to health code making one dish they've been doing forever and ever.

That without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive, moribund.

I'd love to play bass with Parliament Funkadelic, but I can't play bass, so I don't think that's going to happen.

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