No matter what it is you are cooking, buy the best ingredients you can afford. I don't care if it's a simple salad or Beef Wellington. A quality product stands alone and won't need any dressing up.

I have a Madonna portrait done in the style of a Russian icon. My mother, the chef Lidia Bastianich, and I bought it together. It reminds me of her.

Essentially, wines are fermented grape juice, so I'm trying to make the point that the wine world is about scores and marketing and kind of creating a scarce resource where they don't really exist.

I'm a baritone. Baritones don't mature until late.

It's one thing to execute dishes on your own time for family and friends, but quite another to perform and be judged in a competition. And that's what cooking in a high profile restaurant is. It's a competition. You're up against every other three-star restaurant in your city, and if you want to stay in business, you'd better deliver.

Cooking for my family is always a pleasure when I'm able to do it. My favorite thing to make is really whatever my kids ask for on any given day. It's more about being with them and doing something together.

After World War II, a lot of people moved to the cities for work and abandoned the old vineyards. Then in the 1950s and 1960s, wineries were paid to produce volume at a cheap price. That's when the Lambruscos and bad Chianti were popular.