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I lived in Italy for two months when I was in college. And I traveled to Paris. I traveled to Egypt. I traveled to Spain. I just would travel a lot. I remember going to Paris and saying, speaking French, 'I would like some chicken and some fries.' And just the chicken and fries was, oh my gosh, just so amazing. I became intrigued and inspired.

Through my work and travels I have been lucky enough to have been exposed to various eclectic cuisine running the gamut from small local cafes to iconic five-star restaurants.

The type of cuisine I do, especially after being on 'Iron Chef' for several years, is a lot of global cuisine. My strength has always been Mediterranean cuisine across the board from Morocco, Spain, Italy, Greece, France, but I think now I'm doing a lot of very different cuisines all the time.

My grandfather was a chef for a Baron in Sicily before he came to America. I grew up with him. I used to do my homework at one end of the kitchen table while he cooked at the other end.

I spent seven years in France. Then, I went to Asia for five years. I came to London in 1984 and then America in 1985. In 1991, I opened my first restaurant in New York City.

I was fortunate enough to visit a lot of beautiful places around the world. The most astonishing and memorable experiences were my trips to Africa and Australia.

When I first began visiting West Germany in the early 1980s, I was startled by the contrast between Birmingham, where I went to school, and affluent Cologne. My host family, the lovely Schumachers, always had an opulent array of grapes on the table; they were better dressed than anyone I knew in Britain.

In the 1970s, British food was beginning to get good, whereas in France it was just starting its long, sad decline. My most memorable meals, however, have been in Italy.

What a different world it was when I first sailed for Europe in 1930, with my mother, sister, and brother to spend six months abroad.

When France was the only reference for chefs to learn, you could go everywhere in the world, and they would copy dishes directly because they didn't have much expanded imagination or technique or knowledge.