[Long Island] is buoyant, it's on the outskirts of Manhattan, and so they have access to phenomenal restaurants.

Making pasta, cooking pasta and baking bread are two essential ideas to create a little bit of excitement, and you learn the basic, and then evolve it. Flavor the bread, flavor the pasta, go to a fish, go to a meat sauce and take it to another level.

If I relaxed, if I took my foot off the gas, I would probably die.

I don't like looking back. I'm always constantly looking forward. I'm not the one to sort of sit and cry over spilt milk. I'm too busy looking for the next cow.

When you're a chef, you graze. You never get a chance to sit down and eat. They don't actually sit down and eat before you cook. So when I finish work, the first thing I'll do, and especially when I'm in New York, I'll go for a run. And I'll run 10 or 15k on my - and I run to gain my appetite.

If a chef says to you that he sits down and eats dinner before service, then it's bulls***. And if they do, then I'd tell them that they are a fat f***! You shouldn't indulge, because you need to keep your palate on edge, and keeping it on edge is all about small attention to detail and tweaking along the way.

I was a naturally aggressive left-back, a cut-throat tackler.