I would love to eat a really great burger, but it doesn't exist in our part of the world.

But when spring and summer happens, it's intuition. Everything is based on intuition. There's not too much time to overthink, over-complicate. Those wild strawberries, they might be there for two days.

I had turned down other head chef jobs. I didn't want to take over someone else's cuisine. I wanted to start from scratch.

When you start at catering college, nobody prepares you for a book tour or public speaking.

I can't crack jokes because I don't have any.

21 years ago when I started cooking, to be a cook meant that you were going to stay in the basement. Being a chef, you would never be on a book tour. You could never dream that 20 years later on you would be on a book tour. It wasn't a part of your dreams because it was just totally unrealistic. When did cooks - restaurant cooks, not cooks that have 15,000 television shows - when did cooks become part of pop culture the way they are?

I only have the restaurant. If I do other things, it's only to do with the restaurant.