americanwhatgoingeatingnextyeardecidedchefsconsensuspotbelliesseasonplatethinkgoodbecauseknowobviouslyfood
What you're going to be eating in the next year is decided by chefs. If the consensus is that pot-bellies are in next season, that's what's on your plate. And I think that's a good thing, because we know, obviously, about food.
I try to very hard to avoid a situation where I would be eating cat or dog; I've managed to gracefully avoid that. It's hypocritical of me and an arbitrary line, but one that I have managed to avoid crossing.
I'm not Ted Nugent. My house is run, essentially, by an adopted, fully clawed cat with a mean nature. I would never hunt. I would never wear fur. I would never go to a bullfight. I'm not really a meat and potatoes guy.
In college, I think I probably positioned myself as an aspiring writer, meaning I dressed sort of extravagantly and adopted all the semi-Byronic affectations, as if I were writing, although I wasn't actually doing any writing.
Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me. The perfect meal, or the best meals, occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself.
Tokyo would probably be the foreign city if I had to eat one city's food for the rest of my life, every day. It would have to be Tokyo, and I think the majority of chefs you ask that question would answer the same way.
You'd have a hard time finding anything better than Barcelona for food, as far as being a hub. Given a choice between Barcelona and San Sebastian to die in, I'd probably want to die in San Sebastian.
Big stuff and little: learning how to order breakfast in a country where I don't speak the language and haven't been before - that's really satisfying to me. I like that.
I always entertain the notion that I'm wrong, or that I'll have to revise my opinion. Most of the time that feels good; sometimes it really hurts and is embarrassing.
I'm not searching for hard news; I'm not a journalist, but I'm interested in pushing to boundaries of where we can do the kind of stories that we want to do. I mean, it's a big world and CNN has made it a lot bigger and they haven't flinched.
I've seen zero evidence of any nation on Earth other than Mexico even remotely having the slightest clue what Mexican food is about or even come close to reproducing it. It is perhaps the most misunderstood country and cuisine on Earth.
'Kitchen Confidential' wasn't a cautionary or an expose. I wrote it as an entertainment for New York tri-state area line cooks and restaurant lifers, basically; I had no expectation that it would move as far west as Philadelphia.
The cooking profession, while it's a noble craft and a noble calling, 'cause you're doing something useful - you're feeding people, you're nurturing them, you're providing sustenance - it was never pure.
At the end of the day, the TV show is the best job in the world. I get to go anywhere I want, eat and drink whatever I want. As long as I just babble at the camera, other people will pay for it. It's a gift.
Doing graphic novels is cool! It's fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.
I like telling stories, and I tell stories that interest me. It would be boring to have to go to nothing but the best restaurants. That would be a misery to me.
I'm not besotted with the notion of being on CNN to the point that I'm going to suddenly morph into Anderson Cooper or Christiane Amanpour. I'm not a foreign correspondent.
I'm sure that at no point in my life could I ever have shown the kind of focus and discipline and commitment necessary to work a station at elBulli or Le Bernardin. No. That ain't me.
It just seems there's better things to do in your life than be on television if it's not interesting, if it's not challenging, if it's not fun. You know? When it stops being those things for me, I'll stop making television.
My brain and body and nervous system, they see a plane ride, a long plane trip, as an opportunity to sleep with nothing coming in, nothing to do. I just go offline the minute I'm on the plane.