At the end of a dinner at my house, my kitchen sink is filled with dishes and there's nothing pretty about the garbage.

I’ve been really fortunate in that I guess I was hired to do A Cook’s Tour, I was already a known quantity, meaning I had written a really obnoxious book and nobody expected me to be anyone that I wasn’t already.

Those places I don't understand, just doing bad food. It takes some doing. Making good pasta is so much easier than making bad stuff. It actually takes quite an effort to make poor linguine pomodora.

My French definitely improves the more I drink, as I worry less and less about absolutely perfect grammar. I do speak and understand the language, just not particularly well.

Recognise excellence. Celebrate weirdness and innovation. Oddballs should be cherished, if they can do something other people can't do.

When do you stop to de-douche?

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.