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When I first started to cook, I would cook these elaborate meals, but I rarely cook at home now.

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 think my cooking these days is a lot more relaxed from when I was working in professional kitchens. Spending time in people's kitchens made me realize that people want to eat healthy meals that are easy to prepare, with minimal ingredients that can be made on a budget.

Don't put too many chefs to work. Sometimes they get too involved in the ingredients and are of no help.

I do have a chef, but I still go out. Sometimes I can still blend in, and sometimes I get a little bombarded. It's the best of both worlds.

Cooking at home is easier than cooking in the restaurant because you don't have to write a menu or try to please everybody.

Chefs are nutters. They're all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them.

The exposure from 'Iron Chef' has been helpful, but at the end of the day your product and your service determine whether you get customers or not. If people decide to eat out less during a recession, the first restaurants that they will cut out are the ones that don't do a great job.

It's very important to me that people who are actual chefs and other professionals in the culinary world, understand that I'm not, and have never held myself out as being, like a CIA trained chef.