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New England oysters are better than Chesapeake. But Chesapeake blue crabs are unbeatable.

No oyster in the world tastes as good as a Gulf oyster.

Shellfish is better to buy live. In the U.S., because we eat oysters and clams raw, it is very important that they are alive before we prepare them. It's important to look for a closed shell. If a clam is alive, the shell will be closed. Never buy clams if the shell is open.

California is lucky, the East Coast is lucky because we get great seafood and a lot of produce from Florida, locally in good weather, but in the winter we have to buy it.

I really like oysters, and I won't eat them alone. They're just a weird thing to eat by yourself.

In the springtime, we have softshell crab from Maryland, which I'd never had until I came to America. In the summer and early fall, we have striped bass, 'stripeys,' which come all the way up the Hudson River but mostly gather in the sound at the tip of Long Island, off Montauk.

If you go back in American history, oysters were the food of poor people. New York was filled with oyster saloons in the 1800s.

I'm not crazy about oysters and offal and brains and stuff like that. It's vegetables that I really like. I worked in the River Cafe restaurant when it first opened, and I used to eat the leftover vegetables on the plates. They were so delicious.

I think oysters are overrated, and I don't love the texture.

Ten percent of the big fish still remain. There are still some blue whales. There are still some krill in Antarctica. There are a few oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Half the coral reefs are still in pretty good shape, a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet. There's still time, but not a lot, to turn things around.