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The Viennese wash everything. Where else in the world does the government hire public servants to wash public telephone booths and the glass over traffic lights? Every time I see someone doing these things, I smile like a child.

Whether it's destiny or fate or whatever, I don't think I could do a French Laundry anywhere else.

Before I left Russia in 1999, I was living in a very poor factory town with my family and friends, and nothing was ever going to change.

I was writing my Ph.D. in the late 1980s and was keeping an eye on what was happening in the world. It became obvious to me that Russia couldn't live without computers. I think I worked this out a year before anyone else. I started looking for people who could help import them.

We don't do laundry because that requires a lot of water, and water's at a premium up here. Plus, it'd be pretty complicated, I think, to make a space washer, although I guess you could do it.

When I lived in New York, I discovered these Russian & Turkish Baths in East 10th Street. Great for a platza treatment - plus, you'll run into the world and his wife there.

Here, you go to the supermarket and you have wipes to clean your hands before shopping. No, we don't have that in France, but we recycle.

I was a dishwasher at one of those Japanese places that cook on your table. Not too fun.

I would like to raise my glass to friendship between Russia and the United States.

We buy the most expensive grain available growing on the best part of Russian land called black soil. We also play close attention to the purity of the water - we get it from Lake Ladoga. We store it ourselves to specific conditions. We carefully manage distillation at my distillery in Moscow.