When I go to a restaurant, I eat three-quarters of the food in front of me. That cuts my calorie intake by 25 percent.

In the end, your creativity -- perhaps even your outrageousness -- will determine the final result.

I wasn't passionate about food until I'd been cooking for a while. I started long before food became part of the mainstream media. I just wanted to cook, period.

When I’m hiring a cook for one of my restaurants, and I want to see what they can do, I usually ask them to make me an omelette.

One of the things that happens in my house on the holidays is after dessert, we sit down to a very ambitious men-versus-women game of Trivial Pursuit. It's brutal. And there's a trophy.

Today, when I hire, I look for people who want to be trained and molded.

In those days, the main requirement to be on the Food Network was being able to get there by subway.