I go anywhere I want, do whatever I want when I get there, they let me make self-indulgent TV about that experience, and give me about as much creative freedom as anyone's ever had in the history of television.

If you get an opportunity to work with David Simon, anybody with good taste would.

Get up early and go to the local produce markets. In Latin America and Asia, those are usually great places to find delicious food stalls serving cheap, authentic and fresh specialties.

The Kobe craze really annoyed me. Most of the practitioners had no real understanding of the product and were abusing it and exploiting it in terrible and ridiculous ways. Kobe beef should not be used in a hamburger. It's completely pointless.

For me, the cooking life has been a long love affair, with moments both sublime and ridiculous.

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.

I wish I could play bass like Larry Graham or Bootsy Collins. My God, I'd give up just about everything else for that.