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I'm not a food critic, and I'm not really an authority to write anything on food.

You can be a decent critic if you know about food, but to be a really good one, you need to know about life.

I wanted to write a food book, but I'm not a chef or an expert on culinary matters, to put it mildly.

I wasn't that great a chef, and I don't think I'm that great a writer.

I love food. I'm not a great cook, but I love to cook, and I like how different it is from writing.

I'm engaged in food on so many levels, and I love that. So my work, my craft, is around food, and writing is one aspect of it; communicating a narrative, cooking online is one aspect of it; solving the food chasm that we have in Harlem and finding a farmers market is another one, and all of them are equally exciting for me.

However, I was a restaurant critic at Chicago magazine before I worked at Esquire, and I've been a really enthusiastic home cook for a long time. It's just something I'm passionate about.

I am a chef through and through. Everything I do - whether it is cooking for kids in Harlem or cooking in a fine dining establishment - all my days are consumed by food.

I'm a very improvisational cook. I sort of like to make things up as I go along. I'm quite creative in the kitchen.

I'm always in the kitchen, cooking and experimenting - I love it. And every now and then I think, 'I should write a cookbook' or, 'I should write for food magazines.' And then I get drawn back to writing fiction again.