The great mystery to me is how restaurant critics think they can get away with doing their job without anybody noticing who they are.

It's very important to me that people who are actual chefs and other professionals in the culinary world, understand that I'm not, and have never held myself out as being, like a CIA trained chef.

I had a little epiphany when I was a writer at 'Chicago' magazine. I sat down to dinner at the Ritz-Carlton. Somebody poured a white dessert wine with chocolate cake. It was a wine I would never have expected to make sense. The idea of any wine tasting fabulous with chocolate cake was fascinating to me.

Not to sound too much like Christopher Guest in 'Waiting for Guffman,' but on Thanksgiving you're putting on a show!

One of the smartest things you can do on 'Chopped' is to take one of those ingredients and make a pickle out of it, because almost every dish benefits from that. I'm feeling like those intuitions are becoming more natural.

Well, we don't take money from people and then show the product. It has to be a product that we like anyway, and that's true for all five of us, which is one of the really nice things about the way we make the show.

People want honest, flavourful food, not some show-off meal that takes days to prepare.