In Cleveland, I'm so fortunate that we're surrounded by farms with an endless variety of beautiful vegetables. For me, I always eat very tightly with the season, even if the season is only six weeks.

As a chef and someone who's been in the restaurant business for almost thirty years now, if there's one thing I learned early on: Never eat at a buffet. I don't want to eat yesterday's food and whatever they're trying to get rid of from their cooler for my lunch, dinner, or breakfast, thank you very much.

On 'Chopped,' the time goes down a bit and there are several ingredients, usually one that makes no sense whatsoever with the rest of the ingredients. So it gets you out of your culinary comfort zone a little bit. Like we had octopus and cheese paired up with each other.

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.

I think that any city created to be that over-the-top tends to be slightly inspiring, if not frightening. Vegas is all about people being amped up and winning or losing. With all that energy comes additional pressure.

I always tell my employees, the busier it gets, the slower you should cook. When you run around like a crazy person, that's when things go wrong.