If I hear something's not quite going right, then I'm there quicker than if I hear something's going wrong.

I think Tabasco brings me pure heat and Southern kind of familiarity, along with the vinegar and the barrel-aged spices.

Find something you love, because if you love what you do, you'll never spend a day at work.

What I like to do when I go out is enjoy my friends and the food around it. If we have to stop and give five minutes to the chef, then I'm down with that. But if the chef has to interrupt every course to tell us how important this new revolution that's happening is, then I'm not so much interested in that.

I would challenge any American cook, regardless of what they've learned from their mom, to operate a restaurant and not have spent any real time in Italy.

You sit down at Katz's and you eat the big bowl of pickles and you're eating the pastrami sandwich, and halfway through you say to yourself, I should really wrap this up and save it for tomorrow. But the sandwich is calling you: Remember the taste you just had. So fatty. It's what you want. It's what you are! I've never gotten home from Katz's with a doggie bag in my hand. A pastrami sandwich at Katz's is what's bad and good about food. It's the sacred and the profane.

If I hear something's not quite going right, then I'm there quicker than if I hear something's going wrong.