I've been lucky enough in 20 years in the media to have a nice soap box that put me in a position to describe to an American viewership that Tuscany is different from Umbria, and it's different from Emilia-Romagna and, not that that was news, but it was never presented to them in a way that was, "Hey, look. This is a different plate from that different place." And although we all think of "spaghetti, lasagna, ciao," as what Italy is all about, there's all of this great stuff... I was merely an interpreter. I wasn't the developer of the content.

Recipes are just descriptions of one person’s take on one moment in time. They’re not rules.

It's fascinating to travel around Italy and realize just how many different ways they make spaghetti.

The hardest part of anything is making a dish consistently great - you order it seven years later, if it's still on the menu, and it's still as good as what you remember.

I'm pretty confident that the seafood from the Northeastern Atlantic is one of the most delicious and unique in the country, so that we can represent that in a way that the Italians like to represent things.

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.

Protein has been intensely over-represented on the plate. Now, the garden should be the main drag for main courses.