The best pastas are cut with bronze dies that give them a rough texture and allow the sauce to cling.

I was raised in restaurants. My parents opened their first restaurant, Buonavia, in Queens when I was just 3. This business has always been my way of life. As a kid, home was reserved only for sleeping. After school, you could find my sister and I helping out at the family restaurant.

Beans are a real go-to for me.

As a restaurateur, my palate is one of my most important tools.

Carbs - especially pasta - are the fuel my body needs to maintain an athletic lifestyle.

Being frugal, conscious of making money, is not a negative thing. That sensibility of creating value and finding value and reinvesting in those customers is what separates great restaurants from the average ones.

He brought a sensibility and a hard-edged reasonableness to operating restaurants that had a lasting impact on me and still affects how I run all our restaurants today. The passing of 'Restaurant Man' - the original gangsta 'Restaurant Man,' my father - was the passing of an era. No one can replace him.