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

I don't put cream in any pasta noodles ever. I would use a little butter, but I don't ever use cream.

My last meal? The food would be much less significant than the company.

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 might use milk if I was using a touch of milk to make like a lasagna or a baked pasta. But cream? That is totally not the way they do it in Italy, and it's not a very good thing. It's kind of a blanket for flavor.

The passion of the Italian or the Italian-American population is endless for food and lore and everything about it.

I can teach a chimp how to make linguini and clams. I can't teach a chimp to dream about it and think about how great it is.