There is no other place on earth even remotely like New Orleans. Don't even try to compare it to anywhere else.

For a dinner date, I eat light all day to save room, then I go all in: I choose this meal and this order, and I choose you, the person across from me, to share it with. There's a beautiful intimacy in a meal like that.

Naturally, I'm misanthropic. But the Negronis are helping considerably.

The Italians seem to have a better attitude with kids and the food is great!

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.

These pharmaceutical company executives are dope dealers and they should be treated worse, and more roughly than dope dealers. When you're talking about millionaire and billionaire executives at pharmaceutical companies, these are people with something to lose if threatened with jail. Frog-march them out of their door in suburbia, handcuffed and surrounded by DEA officers, with their children and neighbours watching.

The journey is part of the experience - an expression of the seriousness of one's intent. One doesn't take the A train to Mecca.