When you use it in cooked foods, it changes [the Tabasco flavor] a little bit; it loses a little bit of the bright acid that you love on it, but you get that more cooked heat and chile flavor down.

You sit down at Katz's and you eat the big bowl of pickles and you're eating the pastrami sandwich, and halfway through you say to yourself, I should really wrap this up and save it for tomorrow. But the sandwich is calling you: Remember the taste you just had. So fatty. It's what you want. It's what you are! I've never gotten home from Katz's with a doggie bag in my hand. A pastrami sandwich at Katz's is what's bad and good about food. It's the sacred and the profane.

You have to be generous if you want to spend your time making someone else dinner. Even if you're charging, you're still giving.

Chefs don't actually say 'That's a spicy meat-a-ball,' except to indicate that there's a bomb threat in the restaurant without alarming the customers. Terrorism is the spiciest meatball there is.

Passion is what adds so much value to life. And if you think about the things that you do, there's so much juice potential for them if you do it.

I was at a party, and some squiggly looking dude with a bow tie came up and said, 'How'd you like to be on TV?' Turns out he was the programming guy at the Food Network. They had me come into the office, and I did a 'Ready, Set, Cook' with Emeril Lagasse, I believe.

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