What were your favorite foods growing up?
My mother's brisket, her breakfast casserole, and raw radishes for some reason.

What is your least favorite food?
Black licorice

What is your beverage of choice?
Budweiser. Patron Silver or Negroni on the rocks, if I'm feeling fancy.

What was the most spectacular meal you have ever had?
I had a lunch omakase at Masa. It changed my life.

What do you eat when you are home?
My girlfriend and I will usually just eat some cheese, and then, we will have something quick and simple like stir-fry or pasta. Occasionally, we'll have a nice piece of fish or meat with a simple vegetable and a salad. Generally root beer floats for dessert.

What is your best cooking tip for a home enthusiast?
Break away from the recipes. Buy the best-looking products at the market and work backwards. Chances are you have the skills to make a fantastic meal with what's available.

When did you decide you wanted to be a chef?
It had been in the back of my mind for a few years, but I wasn't convinced of it until I opened the French Laundry Cookbook for the first time.

If you didn't become a chef, what would you be?
No clue...miserable or maybe a filmmaker

Who/what has shaped your cooking the most over the years?
The products, mostly. There's nothing like coming across a new spice or protein or vegetable and learning different ways to prepare it. Also, developing different ways to prepare the more common ingredients.

What is more important for a chef- technique or ingredients?
Technique. If you put a pair of Air Jordan's on my feet, I'm still a horrific basketball player. Does that make sense? Sure, there are a few things better than a spread of gorgeous vegetables and cheeses and meats, etc., but trapeze artists can put that together. A chef knows how to attain and present great ingredients, but more importantly, he/she can manipulate and give the right kind of love to the ingredients that aren't so great on their own.

Which foreign country inspires your style most?
I'd have to say Japan. Never been there, but I really enjoy researching the foods from the street vendors to the great sushi chefs.

What are your favorite culinary weapons in the kitchen?
My knives, my saucing spoon, and a good small spatula

What are your signature dishes at Bobo?
In the dining room, I'd say the crab salad with celery, cashew butter and crispy capers. In the den, I'd say the bone marrow dauphines with spiced ketchup.

If I'm trying to watch my weight and I'm eating at Bobo, what am I ordering to eat?
There are always a couple of raw fish dishes that are very light and clean, like a coriander-crusted kampachi with marinated radishes and watermelon jus. For the entree, probably a seared daurade with snap peas, asparagus, miso consommé and ginger butter.

When you are not eating at your own restaurant... you are eating at?
Haven't gotten out much, but generally it's to Blue Smoke, Ssam Bar, or Mary's Fish Camp.

What are some recent dining and culinary trends you have been observing?
I feel like people are going more towards off-cuts of meat. It seems that I hear the question, "Do you serve filet?" less and less, which is a very good thing.

What was the most challenging meal you had to make? Why?
I developed a menu for a 33rd birthday that was palindrome themed-it was the same forwards and backwards. I found palendromic music for the room, had gougères with truffle mornay for canapé, profiteroles with truffle ice cream for mignardise. The courses went 1-2-3-3-2-1 in terms of their components and plating. We'd even pour Rolling Rock for the toast (with the '33' behind the label.) Unfortunately, it never happened - I got stuck in an airport.

What was your worst restaurant disaster?
When I was in Boston, the walk-in cooler went down in the middle of February. We lost tons of products, and what we saved, we kept in a refrigerated truck lent to us by our seafood purveyors in the back parking lot until we got a new walk-in.

What is the one rule or value you try to instill in all of your staff?
I challenge them to develop their "cook's conscience." Maybe it's from my years of Catholic guilt, but essentially, I want them to be their harshest critic. The voice in their head when a dish is not seasoned properly should be much louder than the chef's.