“Food had power. It could inspire, astonish, shock, excite, delight and impress. It had the power to please me .”

Cream rises. Excellence does have its rewards.

What’s the opposite of suck? Un-suck?

An ounce of sauce covers a multitude of sins.

Few things are more beautiful to me than a bunch of thuggish, heavily tattooed line cooks moving around each other like ballerinas on a busy Saturday night.

Don’t lie about it. You made a mistake. Admit it and move on. Just don’t do it again. Ever.

This, I knew, was the magic I had until now been only dimly and spitefully aware of.

Our movements through time and space seem somehow trivial compared to a heap of boiled meat in broth, the smell of saffron, garlic, fishbone, and Pernod.

Don’t touch my dick, don’t touch my knife.

I’ve long believed that good food, good eating, is all about risk.

I lurched away from the table after a few hours feeling like Elvis in Vegas – fat, drugged, and completely out of it.

Skills can be taught. Character you either have or you don’t have.

Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life—and travel—leaves marks on you.

You have to be a romantic to invest yourself, your money, and your time in cheese.

The way you make an omelet reveals your character.

Your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.

Frightened people become angry people – as history teaches us again and again.

Music is the fourth great material want, first food, then clothes, then shelter, then music.

I grew up with that farm-to-table dining before it was sweeping the nation. I do think there’s some value to really throwing yourself into food and embracing where it comes from.

Prana is more powerful than just about anything – food, exercise, skin creams, and Spanx.

If you have an Ina Garten-level roasted-chicken recipe, it’s a game changer. I bring that to dinner parties and make a lot of friends.

Food makes travel so exceptional, because you get to taste what it’s actually supposed to taste like. To eat the real Pad Thai or finally have a proper curry is something pretty amazing.

I do think there’s some value to really throwing yourself into food and embracing where it comes from.

Community means that people come together around the table, not just to feed their bodies, but to feed their minds and their relationships.

Jesus Christ—who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death, and rose bodily into the heavens—can now be eaten in the form of a cracker