The exposure from 'Iron Chef' has been helpful, but at the end of the day your product and your service determine whether you get customers or not. If people decide to eat out less during a recession, the first restaurants that they will cut out are the ones that don't do a great job.

Things are going to go wrong. The great chefs are the ones that don't let it fluster them. They just move through it.

I make no bones about it. I have no understanding of pastry.

When it comes to cooking and eating, I always try to preach that life is about moderation. Even if I'm having beef for dinner, it's probably going to be a 3-4 ounce portion with heaps and heaps of vegetables.

Some of the greatest chefs in the world aren't classically trained. Thomas Keller - probably the greatest American chef ever to walk the earth - never went to culinary school. You know?

When I met my wife 20 plus years ago, she was a vegetarian, so I was the closest thing to the devil that she had ever met.

Whats more important than recipes is how we think about food, and a good cookbook should open up a new way of doing just that.