Indianapolis versus Denver would not be a great one gastronomically.
You have to be generous if you want to spend your time making someone else dinner. Even if you're charging, you're still giving.
When I was in college, I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans.
We need to figure out a 'harvest system' to collect the produce that stores don't put out for customers to buy because it's not perfect looking. Frankly, the stuff left to rot in the storeroom is more beautiful to me than the perfect carrot. I'm a gnarly carrot kind of guy.
All the information you could want is constantly streaming at you like a runaway truck - books, newspaper stories, Web sites, apps, how-to videos, this article you're reading, even entire magazines devoted to single subjects like charcuterie or wedding cakes or pickles.
The Hamptons are usually filled with what I had hoped to leave behind in New York City.
Protein has been intensely over-represented on the plate. Now, the garden should be the main drag for main courses.
If you're going to buy pasta, you should buy dry pasta. If you're going to make it you can make the real thing, but you shouldn't buy fresh pasta.
I like cast iron coated with enamel for longevity and forgiveness if I happen to take my eyes off the prize while pouring Chianti.
I got some media coverage for using the tail, the ear, the oink.
Finishing food is about the tiny touches. In the last seconds you can change everything.
The way the bankers have kind of toppled the way money is distributed, and taken most of it into their own hands, is as good as Stalin or Hitler.
When you taste things in the right order, sometimes they taste so much different than if you taste them out of order. Not that there's a right order, like by rule, but just like in a thoughtful way that makes sense.
Michigan is my antidote to Manhattan. This is where I come to relax.
As far away as you can get from the process of mechanisms and machinery, the more likely your food's going to taste good. And that - that is probably the largest thing I can hand to anybody is let your hands touch it. Let them make it.
I am happiest when I am with my wife, Susi, and our two boys exploring and loving something for the first time.
You sit down at Katz's and you eat the big bowl of pickles and you're eating the pastrami sandwich, and halfway through you say to yourself, I should really wrap this up and save it for tomorrow. But the sandwich is calling you: Remember the taste you just had. So fatty. It's what you want. It's what you are! I've never gotten home from Katz's with a doggie bag in my hand. A pastrami sandwich at Katz's is what's bad and good about food. It's the sacred and the profane.
I really want to be a rock star.
My wife Susi and my kids quite simply are the most fun of all my friends.
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 difference between 'Molto Italiano' and 'The Babbo Cookbook' is that the ingredient lists in 'Molto' are about half or even a third the size. In 'Babbo,' they are very long, they are very real. That's exactly how we make them in the restaurant.
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.
Every Super Bowl, I do different food each quarter from each of the hometowns of the teams competing. So I’m always hoping for cities with a gastronomic soul—not so much Indianapolis or Denver, right? For halftime we have New York hot dogs from Papaya Dog. And at the end of the game I’ve chosen a dessert based on who I think is going to win.
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.
My last meal? The food would be much less significant than the company.
