Being a cook doesn't necessarily mean you are a competitor.

America has been conditioned to think of pasta as the never-ending pasta bowl and Olive Garden.

The pressure, the heat, the almost impossibly fast pace at which you need work - this is the reality of working in the culinary industry. This is what professional chefs do night after night.

'MasterChef' is the search for America's culinary amateur talent, so this is a search for the best home cook in America, and it's our job to figure out who that is.

Restaurant Man is kind of the story, an unabridged story of what happened in my life, the good bad and ugly. Some people might glean some life lessons. It is honest, not written as a press release.

Although I love all the great foods of the world, my death row meal would have to be cooked for me by my mother and grandmother (they live together and this happens on most Sundays). More than satisfy our hunger, these dinners nurture the soul.

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.