“Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.”

I’m not going anywhere. I hope. It’s been an adventure. We took some casualties over the years. Things got broken. Things got lost. But I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you.

I learned to recognize failure.

I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once.

That without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive, moribund.

And chicken is boring. Chefs see it as a menu item for people who don’t know what they want to eat.

Selling out is getting a job.

Good food and good eating are about risk.

Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one’s life.

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.