When it ceases to be fun, I'll stop and just stay in my restaurants.

My office in New York is overflowing with all kinds of cookbooks, and in New Orleans we have a huge culinary library. So yeah, I guess I'm a little bit obsessed.

I ended up turning down a full scholarship of music at the conservatory to pay to go to cooking school.

You gotta have good olive oil. You should have a cooking olive oil and you should have a finishing olive oil, like an extra-virgin olive oil.

I'm pretty actively involved with the military because I think they're incredible human beings. If I can give back to them for what they're doing for us, it's a good thing. And I think to have happy soldiers, you need to feed them well.

When I want to kick it up, I like to add hardwood chips or chunks to the grill; it adds bold smoky flavors. The most common woods are hickory and mesquite, but you can find alder, apple, cherry and, my personal favorite, pecan.

My family... always had the value of the family table and these cultural influences of growing up.