When I cook, I generally stick with what I know, what I'm comfortable with, and what I feel I've paid my dues learning, and am good at.

I think fine dining is dying out everywhere... but I think there will be - and there has to always be - room for at least a small number of really fine, old-school fine-dining restaurants.

I think it's a universal truth that most chefs I know are happiest eating simple, unadorned good things.

Never try to get your kid to eat anything she doesn't already want to eat. Just eat interesting stuff in front of her while completely ignoring her. Never, ever suggest "try it." Never say those dreaded words "try it, it's good." Or worse, "It's good for you." That'll poison the well.

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.

I need the anesthetic qualities of the local fire water.

Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life - and travel - leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks - on your body or on your heart - are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.