The difference between 'Molto Italiano' and 'The Babbo Cookbook' is that the ingredient lists in 'Molto' are about half or even a third the size. In 'Babbo,' they are very long, they are very real. That's exactly how we make them in the restaurant.

[If] we can celebrate that in a way that celebrates our love for New England as well as our love for the Italian culture as well as the American culture, then we've done something that's really good and supporting these fishermen who are doing the right thing in sustainability . . . paying attention to make sure we don't overfish our world.

My wife Susi and my kids quite simply are the most fun of all my friends.

Food is much better off the hand than the fork.

Breakfast is the best time for me to figure out what my kids are doing. Right after you wake them up at breakfast, you pepper them with questions. You can get in there because they're not protecting what they thought was cool: "What happened yesterday?" "Oh, Matthew stole my book and ran away and it was really annoying..." That wouldn't happen after lunch, because their defenses are up. In the morning, if you lull them into a comfortable place, you get more honesty, and that's without being a detective.

There are pockets of great food in Spain, but there are also pockets of very mediocre food in Spain, and the same in Morocco and the same in Croatia and the same in Germany and the same in Austria.

Are we Darwinists - where we live and let live? Or are we nurturing as a society? There has to be a standard of living that we decide to support.