I think any way of getting people into the field by lowering the threshold of the cost to get them to play, is great. That said, there's all these restaurants around that are very popular that have one menu. And they don't even have tables, and they don't even have backs on their chairs. It's not really the experience I'm after, but I'm happy they exist.

I come from an Italian family. One of the greatest and most profound expressions we would ever use in conversations or arguments was a slamming door. The slamming door was our punctuation mark.

Everyone makes pesto in a food processor. But the texture is better with a mortar and pestle, and it's just as fast.

When you use Tabasco in the marinade, it kind of infuses everything.

When we opened Babbo, we were an indie band. Now we're kinda Apple. We have 19 restaurants and 2,800 employees, we are no longer perceived as the indie band although we think of ourselves as the indie band, and we operate our restaurants as individual indie bands.

I just signed to do my next book with Ecco Press, a new primer or encyclopedia. This will be my take on what classic Italian cooking is.

The way the bankers have kind of toppled the way money is distributed, and taken most of it into their own hands, is as good as Stalin or Hitler.