I came literally to the table with a wealth of kno...

As a restaurateur, my job is to basically control the chaos and the drama. There's always going to be chaos in the restaurant business.

You have to stick out the toughness of the business and form relationships with the people in it.

Be curious, learn and read as much as you can about food. Don't worry about making money. Focus on learning at various venues before you settle down for a steady position.

I'm at the age where food has taken the place of sex in my life. In fact, I've just had a mirror put over my kitchen table.

My inspiration was my mom. She's a great cook, and she still cooks, and we still banter back and forth about cooking. Growing up in a mostly Portuguese community, food was important and the family table was extremely important. At a very young age I understood that.

We incorporated new tastes and flavors into our kids' diets from a very early age, which helped to develop their palates and prevented them from becoming picky eaters. We don't buy junk food and give them options of fresh fruit, yogurt, raw almonds, or dried whole grain cereals for snack time.

I've always felt that sexuality is a really slippery thing. In this day and age, it tends to get categorized and labeled, and I think labels are for food. Canned food.

The really frightening thing about middle age is the knowledge that you'll grow out of it.

If repression has indeed been the fundamental link between power, knowledge, and sexuality since the classical age, it stands to reason that we will not be able to free ourselves from it except at a considerable cost.

We are approaching a new age of synthesis. Knowledge cannot be merely a degree or a skill... it demands a broader vision, capabilities in critical thinking and logical deduction without which we cannot have constructive progress.

We live in an age of instant knowledge. And there's almost a sense of entitlement to that.