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.

Food is everything we are. It's an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It's inseparable from those from the get-go.

I need the anesthetic qualities of the local fire water.

I think it's important if you're going to write a cookbook, it should sound like you talking - it should be things you actually believe, otherwise I'm not interested.

Big stuff and little: learning how to order breakfast in a country where I don't speak the language and haven't been before - that's really satisfying to me. I like that.

Italy is good in the sense that when you bring a child to a restaurant in Italy, they're happy to see it. The waiters will say "complimenti" and welcome you and dote after the kid. They don't treat you like you just brought in this horrible probably soon-to-be-squealing creature who's going to be difficult.

If I'm in Rome for only 48 hours, I would consider it a sin against God to not eat cacio e pepe, the most uniquely Roman of pastas, in some crummy little joint where Romans eat. I'd much rather do that than go to the Vatican. That's Rome to me.