Australians are coffee snobs. An influx of Italian immigrants after World War II ensured that - we probably had the word 'cappuccino' about 20 years before America. Cafe culture is really big for Aussies. We like to work hard but we take our leisure time seriously.

I love the simplicity the ingredients the culture the history and the seasonality of Italian cuisine. In Italy people do not travel. They cook the way grandma did using fresh ingredients and what is available in season.

After this I took private lessons in Italian from an elementary school teacher. He gave me themes to write about and some of them turned out so well that he told me to publish them in a newspaper.

I made my drama teacher cry. I only took drama to get out of writing papers in English and the teacher was this thespian Broadway geek and here I was this Italian guy from Staten Island and I would put her in tears.

No account of the Renaissance can be complete without some notice of the attempt made by certain Italian scholars of the fifteenth century to reconcile Christianity with the religion of ancient Greece.

I have a lot of nice Italian winter clothes that make me look like a sophisticated Lebanese professor so my friend Robert and I go around pretending to be experts in Arabic politics. It doesn't work in the summer though. I don't have the right clothes.

Most Italians who came to this country are very patriotic. There was this exciting possibility that if you worked real hard and you loved something you could become successful.

But I'm a hot-blooded Italian by nature. Whatever the situation you present I'm going to make something out of it.

Sydney in general is eclectic. You can be on that brilliant blue ocean walk in the morning and then within 20 minutes you can be in a completely vast suburban sprawl or an Italian or Asian suburb and it's that mix of people it's that melting pot of people that give it its vital personality.

Culture and tradition have to change little by little. So 'new' means a little twist a marriage of Japanese technique with French ingredients. My technique. Indian food Korean food I put Italian mozzarella cheese with sashimi. I don't think 'new new new.' I'm not a genius. A little twist.

Look people have an image of Italians. When I go somewhere in the world I don't care where it is when they look at me it's not about my intelligence. It's who can I beat up.

People have an image of Italians. When I go somewhere in the world I don't care where it is when they look at me it's not about my intelligence. It's who can I beat up.

I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally there are exceptions... the Jewish Italian and Irish humor of the East Coast.

I hope that my government can help change Italian mentality.

I speak Spanish to God Italian to women French to men and German to my horse.

In Italy I had an Afro and a lot of the kids came up and felt my hair. It really was funny. I wish I had understood Italian.

I grew up in a food-obsessed Italian family so food was always front and center in my life. I was a food obsessed person who morphed into a comedian and tried to figure out a way to make fun of my cake and eat it too.

Italian food is all about ingredients and it's not fussy and it's not fancy.

I love making Italian food. And coconut chicken.

I love Italian food but that's too generic a term for what's available now: you have to narrow it down to Tuscan Sicilian and so on.

There's nothing more romantic than Italian food.

St. Louis has a lot of weird food customs that you don't see other places - and a lot of great ethnic neighborhoods. There's a German neighborhood. A great old school Italian neighborhood with toasted ravioli which seems to be a St. Louis tradition. And they love provolone cheese in St. Louis.

Good food and a warm kitchen are what makes a house a home. I always tried to make my home like my mother's because Mom was magnificent at stretching a buck when it came to decorating and food. Like a true Italian she valued beautification in every area of her life and I try to do the same.

My goal is to make Italian food clean and accessible and beautiful and tasty with simple ingredients that people can find at a local grocery store because people don't want to go to a gourmet shop in search of items that will sit in their pantry for years after they use just a teaspoon or pinch of them.