I think that's what being a chef is all about: camaraderie and teamwork. I never feel that it should be so cutthroat that you can't help the other chefs.

Chefs hate desserts. The smartest thing a chef can do is hire a great pastry chef. Cooking savory food is all about feel - you season something, you taste it, you go back in and adjust, more butter, more olive oil, more acid, whatever you want to get it to taste the way you want. Pastries are like a science project. To me, the greatest chefs are the ones who have the greatest feel for food, while the greatest pastry chefs have to be people that are extremely precise.

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.

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

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.

Go to the grocery store and buy better things. Buy quality, buy organic, buy natural, go to the farmers market. Immediately that's going to increase the quality of the food you make.

I'm a firm believer that all this packaged stuff that Americans are buying up in gobs is making them fatter.