In New York, a lot of people come into the restaurant and it's not that they don't want what's on the menu, they just want to flex a little bit. They want to control the situation. |
It is important to get the zucchini crisp when you cook it; the trick is to move it very little when it first goes into the pan and to work in small batches. |
It used to be that you would go out to the theater and get a bite or you would go to the game and get a bite or go to the concert and get a bite. At this point in our society, the bite is often the main event. |
It was early in the morning, and I had it up to 140 miles an hour on 10th Ave.. But I've got no speeding tickets, not even a moving violation. |
It will certainly be controversial for a couple of weeks, ... With that few restaurants in the two-star category, people will not take it seriously. |
It's fascinating to travel around Italy and realize just how many different ways they make spaghetti. |
It's more interesting to talk about the whole lily family and say, did you know that lily bulbs are also part of the onion family? It's like the stream-of-consciousness way I think about food when I'm just cooking it. |
Kids today want to eat their risotto with curry and shrimp and sour cream, not risotto alla Milanese, like they should, in my opinion. |
My father stopped speaking Italian because his father so badly wanted to be an American. |
My intention is to make sure that we think about it without becoming too intellectual about it. There are pockets of restaurateurs throughout our country right now and in Italy, France, and Spain, who spend all their days figuring out how to confound the customer. |
My partner, Joe, spends a lot of his time in Italy and has grown up in an Italian family, but it's more about what we don't put on the plate to make it feel more Italian. |
Nothing that would be as artistic as any of the four restaurants I have in the city. If I was to do anything in Las Vegas, for instance, it would have to be... idiot-proof. And I still haven't decided if I'm capable of that. |
Once you become an elaborate and well-developed culture, anything from Rome or the Etruscans, for that matter, the food starts to become a representation of what the culture is. When the food can transcend being just fuel, that's when you start to see these different permutations. |
People were tired of eating things they could easily make at home. |
Some things are being destroyed, because the Italians are just as tired of their basic food as the Americans and French were 20 years ago. So they're reinventing to avoid palate exhaustion. |