Waffle House is my childhood thing. We used to go there on Sundays or weekends every now and then with my family. It's just good, Southern, home-cooked food, and that's what I love.
I started cooking seven years ago for real, and I started with pasta, and lasagna and roast chicken. Very normal American dishes. When I turned on Food Network, or any sort of cooking channel, that's what people were making. So that's where your education comes from.
For many years now, my source for salvific chicken soup has been the Sanamluang Cafe on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Kingsley Drive: crystalline broth, flecks of fried garlic, and a moist, steamed bird nesting on thick rice noodles and bean sprouts has stanched many a misery.
When you travel so many weeks a year, it's always nice to have a home-cooked meal.
When I'm dining out privately, I tend to avoid fine-dining venues; I like things to feel casual.
My mother is my favorite cook and she does all cuisines really well. I eat the delicacies made by her whenever I find time.
That was one thing my mama instilled in me: to be well trained in the kitchen. Growing up, I was always in the kitchen with her. You name it, I make it: red beans and rice, lasagna, chicken, pork. I am the queen of cooking.
I learned the first night that IHOP's not the place to order fish.
There's still nothing like a home-cooked meal. Absolutely not.
I have an affinity for the old Seattle coffee shops, places like the Green Onion and the Copper Kettle, the classic kind of coffee bar - little places that served breakfast, lunch and dinner and have pretty much disappeared.
I do most of the cooking at home, and both my mom and my mother-in-law are excellent chefs. However, I wouldn't call myself a chef.
I've always liked home-cooked meals.
The kitchen was the center of our household. I spent all of my time there growing up.
I love home cooking, and I'm not a great one for fast food.
My father's diner, the Jefferson Coffee Shop, was a simple, 27-seat affair in Washington D.C., open for breakfast and lunch - coffee and eggs in the morning, cold cuts and burgers in the afternoon.
Mel's Diner in L.A. - they are my favorite hamburgers. I could eat there every day. They are ridiculous.
There's a restaurant I go to whenever I can called The Richmond Cafe. It's a little Thai restaurant owned by a group of Thai women - I think they're all a family, and they're just really, really nice, and they make amazing massaman curry.
I would have my last meal at my home in Oxfordshire.
I sometimes think the chef end of cooking is not the real end of cooking. Cooking is all about homes and gardens, it doesn't happen in restaurants.
I am not a fancy cook or an ambitious cook. I am a plain old cook.
I need my fill of Indian home cooking.
For my first restaurant, I wanted to do something very special and close to my heart. Nashville felt like the place.
You look at the Barefoot Contessa or Lydia Bastianich, and it's just like watching your mother cooking.
My mother always cooked, every day, proper food. We didn't have fast food. It was probably pretty much meat and two veg, but as time went on and new things came into the culture, she embraced all of that. I grew up with mealtimes and sitting around the table with proper cooking and eating.
Certainly, cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest.
