What were your favorite foods growing up?
Chocolate, eggs, and Captain Crunch cereal.

What is your least favorite food?
Calf's liver. I hate it with a passion, but I love chicken and duck liver.

What is your beverage of choice?
Tanqueray and tonic

What was the most spectacular meal you have ever had?
I was in Oia in Santorini. I ordered grilled squid, and they took it out of the water, killed it by hitting it on a rock, cut it open, fileted it, put it back in the Mediterranean water then put it on the grill. It was amazing.

What do you eat when you are home?
Mostly take-out Chinese food and pizza

What is your best cooking tip for a home enthusiast?
Keep it simple, buy great quality ingredients and prepare them as simple as possible.

When did you decide you wanted to be a chef?
It chose me. When I was 7, my mother was ill and couldn't cook. My father was cooking, but he was horrible, so I started to cook as a necessity. When my mother got better, I became her hands in the kitchen. When I was 14, I took my first cooking job and never looked back.

If you didn't become a chef, what would you be?
I would have probably been another Jewish lawyer, and I think the world has enough of them. Maybe I would have become an actor.

Who/what has shaped your cooking the most over the years?
Definitely my mother's holiday dinners helped form me. Professionally, Bobby Flay or David Waltuck, or Bob Trainer. I like the bold use of flavor from Bobby and refinement from Bob, and David was in between the two of them (a mix of both.)

What is more important for a chef- technique or ingredients?
Ingredients and the technique, which is applied to those ingredients.

What are your favorite culinary weapons in the kitchen?
Vitamix blender, spoon, which I use to turn and do everything with. And my knife, I like Japanese knives.

Which foreign country inspires your style most?
Italy. I trained there when I was younger.

What inspired you to write The Diabetic Chef?
When I found out I have type 2 diabetes, I thought my career was over, but it turns out, it was just the beginning. I wanted to give people some hope and let them know that they can still dine on upscale ingredients. I have a second a book coming out.

When you are not eating at the your own restaurant....you are eating at?
Momofuku, Spotted Pig, Allen and Delancey, Bar Milano, Lupa.

What are some recent dining and culinary trends you have been observing?
People are eating more casually. Upscale food in a casual environment. People don't want to be challenged by the environment.

What was the most challenging meal you had to make? Why?
I had to cook a cocktail party for 2,000, a la carte dinner for 350, a private dinner in the wine cellar for 20 and a private dinner upstairs for 50 at Capitale.

What was your worst restaurant disaster?
I had a pizza oven blow up in my face; I was rushed to the hospital. My contact lens melted on my eyes, but they saved my eyes, so I'm glad I was wearing them. Another time when I was boning a leg of lamb, another chef startled me from behind, and I stuck the knife through my hand and it came out the other side (22 stitches.)

What is the one rule or value you try to instill in all of your staff?
Be honest with the food that you cook, be honest with one another, and work as a team. Team work gets food out of the kitchen. Honesty and integrity drive you as a cook.