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I was born and raised in New York, but my family on both sides is of Italian descent.

In the New York metropolitan area, you can find Jews from just about every Jewish cultural community in the world.

I grew up in New York where there is such a different variety of people.

You go to Los Angeles or New York or Miami or Chicago, and you see Latinos everywhere; they are involved in every part of American society. That's why they have to start being represented in Hollywood, because an 'Americano' can't walk down the street and not see a Latino.

My own grandparents came to the United States as immigrants in 1912, and they lived for some years in Italian ghettos in New York. Most immigrant groups start in ghettos somewhere, and many of them never get out.

I've lived all over the world, but Harlem is very special to me, and when I decided to open a restaurant near my home, I didn't want it to be business as usual.

My family were Conservative Jews. My parents were both born in this country, but my father grew up on the Lower East Side, and my mother was born and raised in Harlem when there was a large Jewish 'colony' there. Eventually, they moved to Jersey City to get away from New York.

Most American Jews came from the lower middle classes, and therefore they brought with them not a lot of Jewish culture. The American Jewish story starts with Ellis Island, and the candy store in the Bronx.

My father's best friend, Georgie Terra, was an Italian guy. The children and the cousins and nieces and nephews were children of the Mafia. Those were the children he grew up with. If you want to go to a safe neighborhood, go to where the Mafia is.