Close your eyes and place your finger on a map. Wherever it lands, that's the theme of the evening. So many times we settle for routine dishes. This forces you to try new cuisines.

I'm a big fan of featuring all of the local shellfish and seafood provided.

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.

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.

The idea of having dinner together every day with your family removes the pressure from trying to explain everything. You tell us the good parts about your day, but you also tell us the bad parts about your day. And at the end of that, because you're in a ritual, you remove the pressure of admitting you had a failure that day. And it also takes the wind out of having a great day. I mean, it makes you a little bit more normal all the time. That moment of therapeutic sharing is something that happens in food, that doesn't necessarily happen when you're watching TV.

If I hear something's not quite going right, then I'm there quicker than if I hear something's going wrong.

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.