I opened my own restaurant when I was 17. I went broke, then traveled around the country, learning about different kinds of foods, had three other restaurants that went broke. It didn't all start just a few years ago!

I'm a professional cook. I've worked with other cooks from all over the world, but my family is not that way - they're always lived within 25 miles of my hometown!

We didn't do wrong things because we didn't want to embarrass our parents.

Have fun. Do something nobody else had done before, or has done since.

Don't get fancy. Have you cooked an apple pie? You don't know what you did wrong? Do this: Take two or three apples. Put them on a table. Study them.

We had no electricity, no gas. Food was probably our greatest entertainment - the most fun thing that we could do was food.

One of my missions was to teach.