When you meet someone, ask about what hobby they have, not what they do. People always ask me about cooking, but I prefer to talk about tennis or boxing.

Only you can judge your life. You have to live up to your own expectations.

A good chef has to be a manager, a businessman and a great cook. To marry all three together is sometimes difficult.

I grew up so poor in Austria that we never took a vacation with my family.

It was a revolution, but now it is an evolution. People know more ingredients, people know more techniques, and people look for more ingredients they've never looked for before. In the '80s, you couldn't find raw tuna in any restaurant that wasn't Japanese. Now, you can't find any restaurant without it or sashimi.

New Yorkers think they have everything, all the best art and music. But really L.A. is a better place.

One of the things I've found now, not just for television, but in the restaurant, is that you have many anxious chefs, who know how to cook twenty recipes really well, but they don't have a good foundation for other things.