"In America, I would say New York and New Orleans are the two most interesting food towns. In New Orleans, they don't have a bad deli. There's no mediocrity accepted."

"As they say in Italy, Italians were eating with a knife and fork when the French were still eating each other. The Medici family had to bring their Tuscan cooks up there so they could make something edible."

"Are we Darwinists - where we live and let live? Or are we nurturing as a society? There has to be a standard of living that we decide to support."

"I was at a party, and some squiggly looking dude with a bow tie came up and said, 'How'd you like to be on TV?' Turns out he was the programming guy at the Food Network. They had me come into the office, and I did a 'Ready, Set, Cook' with Emeril Lagasse, I believe."

"The problem is that borrowing money to pay back more borrowed money that will oblige you in the future to borrow even more money doesn't sound kosher. Because it isn't."

"For me, French is so rich and so sacred that learning it is like learning a foreign language."

"A rich man told me recently that a liberal is a man who tells other people what to do with their money."

"If I had been on 'Bowling for Dollars,' I'd wind up owing them money."