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.

I'm a big lover of fish. Cooking fish is so much more difficult than cooking protein meats, because there are no temperatures in the medium, rare, well done cooking a stunning sea bass or a scallop.

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

I quite like that jeopardy, those up-against-the-wall odds. I don't like it when it's over-comfortable, too easy, something that can be done in two or three weeks. I like a challenge.

The pressure on young chefs today is far greater than ever before in terms of social skills, marketing skills, cooking skills, personality and, more importantly, delivering on the plate. So you need to be strong. Physically fit. So my chefs get weighed every time they come into the kitchen.

There is a level of snobbery and fickleness in L.A.

Being assertive and somewhat really firm has to be backed up with being fair.