If you're buying tomatoes pick them up and smell them-they should have a lovely perfume. They need to be kept at fifty degrees or above, particularly during the growing season, because that's when they develop their flavor.

We are so bemused by our own petard, that we are unable to look at things objectively.

Cooking may be a creative art, but it's also a wonderful full-time hobby.

Cooking is one failure after another, and that's how you finally learn.

I don't use the word gourmet. The word doesn't mean anything anymore. 'Gourmet' makes it sound like someone is putting sherry wine in the corn-flake casserole.

The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.

It's simply a very romantic place. Just one look at any of those streets, and you couldn't be anywhere else - it's so beautiful, and there's that location, and the sense of the free spirit. Who couldn't become ravenous in such a place?