There are pockets of great food in Spain, but there are also pockets of very mediocre food in Spain, and the same in Morocco and the same in Croatia and the same in Germany and the same in Austria. |
There's a battle between what the cook thinks is high art and what the customer just wants to eat. |
There's not a speck of fruit by the time March or April rolls around. Citrus is gone, and there's not a berry in sight. You're stuck with passion fruits and pineapples. Which isn't bad, but it's a tough time of the year, and chefs need to know how to work through it. |
They have what's called the cooking school bloc, which is in the afternoon between 1 and 5. It will be interesting to see how my show, which is travel and food tied together, goes across America. |
Think of American food. In my generation, growing up in the '60s and '70s, Banquet Fried Chicken and TV dinners were the thing. Now people are back into roasting their own chickens, and TV dinners are a point of kitsch. It will be interesting to see what survives another hundred years. |
Think of the cooking of the Southwest: Arizona, anything on the border of Mexico, the rich chili culture, the unbelievable stews. |
This is food that can be made at home without too much shopping, |
This is what we think is missing in New York City. A luxurious and comfortable Italian restaurant expressing everything we know about Italian culture in a slightly rarefied atmosphere. The food is to be elegant and simple without losing the essential heart of the Italian purity. As a gastronomic experience it's everything I have to offer. |
To eat the boiled head of a pig sliced like salami is very strange. It may seem cutting edge, but it's actually a lot older than any of the other traditional salami. |
To get to New York, I was actually on my way to Brazil to help someone open a restaurant and stopped in Florida and met an old college buddy of mine who had a restaurant called Rocco. I came up to open that and I've been in New York for 11 years. |
Twenty years ago if you were going to be a cook, it was because you didn't make it in the army. It was the last stop before you were on the street. |
We would load up the yellow Cutlass Supreme station wagon and pick blackberries during blackberry season or spring onions during spring onion season. For us, food was part of the fabric of our day. |
When I go out to a restaurant, I definitely order dishes that I know take either a long time to make or are difficult to source. Unless it's a really special steak, there's no reason for me to go out and eat that. |
When I got to college age, my parents suggested, why don't you go to cooking school instead of going to a traditional college? I said that's not for me. That's ridiculous. |
When I talk about a great dish, I often get goose bumps. I'm like, whoa, I'll never forget that one. The Italians are just like that. It's not all about food. It's part of the memory. |