What were your favorite foods growing up?
My grandmother cooked beef tongue. No one else at home cooked and that was one of the few things we ate at home aside from TV dinners. I liked the chicken one. When we went to restaurants, I ordered pizza. I grew up in Milwaukee and there were lots of thin crust pizza restaurants.

When did you decide you wanted to be a chef?
I opened the Quilted Giraffe intending to be an absentee owner. I decided to be the chef after seeing the hired chef constantly screw something up and not handle the ingredients properly.

Where and when did your career in food begin?
My career began in 1975 in New Paltz, New York, when I decided to open a restaurant in a house I owned, but had just moved out of. The original plan was for an instructor from the CIA to own and run the restaurant. He backed out of the deal when the restaurant was almost completely built. I took over.


If you hadn't become a chef, what would you be?
If I hadn't opened the restaurant I might still be a lawyer. I had some cases where someone was suing because the horse they bought was older than the one they had bargained for.

What kind of consulting do you do?
I am a restaurant consultant, maybe even more so, a consultant for owners of important buildings. I advise the owners on the kind of restaurant they should have and then find the right operator for that kind of restaurant. I do not get involved in telling the restaurant owner how to run his or her own restaurant or what and how to cook.

Who/what has shaped your cooking the most over the years?
Everything I saw in the restaurant world shaped my views of cooking and how to run a restaurant. The goal was to be better, more innovative, more entertaining, and more true to the concepts of quality and hospitality than anything I was seeing.

How would you describe your cuisine at the Quilted Giraffe?
We used local seasonal ingredients before it was the trend and had the best table top in America. Because of our cooking system, we wanted everything to be able to be cooked in less than 10 minutes. Consequently we cut things in pieces that could cook that quickly. The coordination in the kitchen was extraordinary. Everything was cooked to order. We served tasting dinners early on. The idea was to match the tasting to the customer--including the dishware. If you were sitting next to another table that was having a tasting, you would have an entirely different menu.

What influences your cooking style and particularly the menu at your restaurant?
I cook from ingredients, not from recipes.

What are your favorite culinary weapons in the kitchen?
I love wood burning pizza ovens.

What is your favorite secret ingredient?
Water is my secret ingredient. I add it to most things while they are in the pot or the pan.

What qualities do you look for when hiring cooks for your restaurant?
I always hired cooks who didn't have a lot of cooking experience. I didn't want to have to untrain their bad habits. I wanted them to have an open mind. Things were different then and most cooks looking for jobs in a luxury restaurant were coming from a French kitchen. Today things are different.

What was the most challenging meal you had to make?
I cooked a 7 course meal for Madonna when she came to dinner with Warren Beatty. He had one menu and she had another--totally vegetarian, made up on the spot. I was also following Warren's instructions that I should help him seduce her.

What is your least favorite food?
I don't like canned tuna or canned salmon.

What are some recent dining and culinary trends you have been observing?
Obviously, the less expensive, more casual but well executed sexy restaurant is the current trend if you are talking about a meal that isn't a hamburger or fried chicken. The special dinner where 8 or 10 people get something like a couple of fried chickens or a whole pork butter, a half a pig seems to be a popular trend at the moment.

Where are your favorite restaurants to dine at?
I eat at La Grenouille, Minetta Tavern, Locanda Verde and some Japanese restaurants I am not going to tell you about.

What was the most spectacular meal you have ever had?
My most spectacular meal was at Freddy Giradet in Switzerland in 1979. It opened my eyes to originality and to making a restaurant like theatre.

What do you eat when you are home?
I love making pizza at home. I have a pizza oven. I make great chicken soup too and I like to make unusual things and make them into ice cream in a Paco Jet.