When I started to work in Paris in fine dining, the passion really kicked in, and I knew that I would not, for the rest of my life, do anything else.

When you serve lobster, you've taken a being's life away. Therefore if you create a recipe, you have to be very dedicated to elevate the lobster, to make it good and tasty of course, but at the end of the day it's a matter of paying homage.

I love eggs. When it's the season of truffles, scrambled eggs with truffles, and I'm happy. I'm smiling like that.

For me, food is about memories, feelings, emotions, and so is Le Bernardin, and that's why it's not just a restaurant.

If I go to a nightclub, even if the music is good, if the sound system is not, I don't stay.

Just walking in the kitchen (and we have three kitchens at Le Bernardin), I exercise quite a lot. I also walk in Central Park for 50 minutes from my house to Le Bernardin every day, rain, shine, snow.

California is lucky, the East Coast is lucky because we get great seafood and a lot of produce from Florida, locally in good weather, but in the winter we have to buy it.