When you've got a great business going, you go open another and take the risk of losing the whole thing. It's fun!

After failing four times and after working for other people and realizing that nobody paid attention to the food like they should have, we wanted to just pay attention to the food and service.

I opened my own restaurant when I was 17. I went broke, then traveled around the country, learning about different kinds of foods, had three other restaurants that went broke. It didn't all start just a few years ago!

I'm a professional cook. I've worked with other cooks from all over the world, but my family is not that way - they're always lived within 25 miles of my hometown!

In '71 or '72 I returned to New Orleans and stayed there. I started cooking Louisiana food. Of all the things I had cooked, it was the best-and it was my heritage.

It's the sense of what family is at the dinner table. It was the joy of knowing mother was in the kitchen making our favorite dish. I wish more people would do this and recall the joy of life.

My mother would put me on a wooden box at the stove and tell me to call her if certain things would happen. Like if the steam turns blue, that is danger!

One of the problems of our youth is that the family unit is broken up. When we'd sit down to dinner together as a family, we'd learn about each other. We had something people don't get today.

The bad part about being recognized is that when I walk into a restaurant and sit down, I've got to eat everything on the plate, whether it's good or bad. People would take it as an insult if I did otherwise.

We trust something in a grocery store and assume it's good. We don't learn about the most precious thing in life-the food we put in our body. Educate yourself!

You don't need a silver fork to eat good food.

I think the most wonderful thing in the world is another chef. I'm always excited about learning new things about food.

Creole is New Orleans city food. Communities were created by the people who wanted to stay and not go back to Spain or France.

I'm just here and I'm doin' the best I can. If you don't understand that, then what can I do?

Cajun is country food by farmers and fisherman that arrived in Louisiana from Acadiana, Canada.

Don't get fancy. Have you cooked an apple pie? You don't know what you did wrong? Do this: Take two or three apples. Put them on a table. Study them.

Have fun. Do something nobody else had done before, or has done since.

I believe in America. I'm one of those silly flag wavers.

I didn't want to do just another set of recipes. I think that's useless.

I don't think life is to be taken too seriously. Take it too seriously, and it'll getcha.