What were your favorite foods growing up?
Tuna melts, Lobster Cantonese on Sunday nights

What is your least favorite food?
Yogurt

What is your beverage of choice?
Good pilsener, like Jever or Urquell; diet Regatta ginger beer

What was the most spectacular meal you have ever had?
An 11-course meal at Bernard Loiseau in pouring rain, 1981

What do you eat when you are home?
Frozen chicken quesadillas from Trader Joe's

What is your best cooking tip for a home enthusiast?
Forget the fancy ingredients; use enough salt. And don't overcook your meats.

Where and when did your career in food begin?
Paco's Tacos, Cambridge. Mass.

When did you decide you wanted to open a restaurant/bar?
I thought a tapas bar would allow me to go home at 6:00p.m. I was wrong.

What has shaped your cooking the most over the years?
My partner, Sasa, was the key influence over the last 12 years in getting me to simplify, simplify, simplify. I have matured in terms of caring less about what I want to make and more about what customers want to eat.

What are your favorite culinary weapons in the kitchen?
Twelve-inch cast iron skillet. Five-quart Le Creuset dutch oven. Cheap plastic Benriner. 10" Henckel's chef knife.

What influences your cooking style?
The weather. I go from "grill it and add olive oil" to "braise it for hours" as soon as the temperature drops below 50 degrees.

What is your favorite secret ingredient?
Cumin

Which foreign country inspires your style most?
Italy, particularly Sicily

If I'm trying to watch my weight and I'm eating at your restaurant, what should I order to eat?
The other day one of our chefs, Larry Baldwin, ran a tapa special of seared black bass with shaved fennel and olives that was terrific. Our wild mushrooms with herbed goat cheese tapa is not exactly diet food, but very healthy and filling. When they are in the market we grill razor clams with olive oil, lemon, and parsley, and they are as good as they are good for you.

When you are not eating at your own restaurant, where are you eating?
Somewhere my kids like to go: there's a great Korean restaurant near me that has something for everyone in the family. There's a very nice high-end Italian restaurant in my town that will make split pastas for the kids, as well.

What are some recent dining and culinary trends you have been observing?
People are spending less while looking for the same experience, which has been a plus for our restaurant. The days of having to dress up in order to get the highest quality meal is gone.

What was the most challenging meal you had to make? Why?
I opened a restaurant in New York on New Year's Eve before we had a functioning kitchen, because the owners had told everyone we would be open, and had sold it out. We did 220 covers, at $125 per person including roast pheasant and caviar with blinis, out of two proofing cabinets and a grill that worked because we paid a plumber cash to come tap the gas pipe from the building next door.

What was your worst restaurant disaster?
We had a sprinkler system go off at 4:00 a.m. and stay on for hours before anyone noticed it. It took 24-hours and huge fans to get the water out of every crevice of the restaurant.

What is the one rule or value you try to instill in all of your staff?
Treat customers as if they were guests at a party in your home. Do whatever it takes to make them happy.