The American Dream is ownership … a house, a car, a vacation home and, even better, your own business

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.

The Chinese five-spice works really well in the quantity that I used. It makes it almost imperceptibly just a little bit sweeter without making it really sweet or really even that Asian flavored.

The tradition of Italian cooking is that of the matriarch. This is the cooking of grandma. She didn't waste time thinking too much about the celery. She got the best celery she could and then she dealt with it.

We need to figure out a 'harvest system' to collect the produce that stores don't put out for customers to buy because it's not perfect looking. Frankly, the stuff left to rot in the storeroom is more beautiful to me than the perfect carrot. I'm a gnarly carrot kind of guy.

Jimmy Fallon and I play regularly at the Bayonne Golf Club in Jersey. He's eighteen holes of fun. Any time we play he has moments of brilliance, but also moments of utter catastrophe.

Michigan is my antidote to Manhattan. This is where I come to relax.