I think there's a great storytelling tradition in the restaurant business that tends to attract people with an oral tradition of bulls - ting and bollocking. Creative people, people for whom the 9-to-5 world is not attractive or impossible. It seems that way. There are a lot of stories in the business, and a lot of characters - and it seems to attract its share of artists and writers and people who hope to do something creative in their lives.

Being a vegan is a first-world phenomenon, completely self-indulgent.

In America, there might be better gastronomic destinations than New Orleans, but there is no place more uniquely wonderful.

New Orleans is a glorious mutation

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.

When you're training for jiu-jitsu, particularly if you're training for a competition, you have to be pretty prescribed in the variety of what you eat.

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