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I want to expand my cuisine to this country. I love America. I have been here 22 years.

I eventually settled in Washington, where my partners and I have been fortunate to build a restaurant business that now employs thousands of Americans across the country.

I studied cooking in Spain after college.

I cook all the time, and I cook all different kinds of things, but never Mexican at home. That's my work.

I like to cook Puerto Rican food. That's what I grew up on: rice, beans, meat, some Italian-American food. I know my way around the kitchen.

I'm a terrific Mexican cook, and I just love Mexican food. And I love cooking Mexican food.

I came to America to make it my home, and I did.

I always had a lot of fun in America, with much more freedom than if I had tried to cook in France. I wouldn't have the same motivation or inspiration, and I wouldn't have cooked for the same kind of people in France, so it wouldn't have given me this edge I had in America.

My family came from Spain in 1725, and if people want to consider me Hispanic, they can, but I didn't advertise that way, and I'm an American first.