I've been a model for 15 years, and I've been on 'Top Chef' for eight seasons, and before that I had other cooking shows, so I've learned a thing or two about how to camouflage certain areas and how to draw the eye to a preferable area of the body.
I have a chef who makes sure that I'm getting the right amounts of carbs, proteins and fats throughout the day to keep me at my max performance level.
My reasons for becoming a chef are somewhat of a cliche. I always loved to eat but it was watching my parents cook that really served as the impetus for my career choice.
When I was in India, I felt like being a full-time chef was a very unique career path. It was quite the contrast from the traditional fields like engineering and medicine and not necessarily considered a full time profession.
One day, a chef moaned that he was too hot, so I took a carving knife in one hand, held his jacket with the other, and slashed it. Then I slashed his trousers. Both garments were still on his body at the time.
The summer after college, I got a job as a chef at Conscience Point Inn in Southampton. I spent the summer on the water and cemented my expertise with seafood. I've always gravitated toward places that do seafood.
Generally, I cook from the soul and measure by eye, throwing in this and that along the way. But I want to be a certified chef. That's one of my goals.
I think every chef, not just in America, but across the world, has a double-edged sword - two jackets, one that's driven, a self-confessed perfectionist, thoroughbred, hate incompetence and switch off the stove, take off the jacket and become a family man.
I train my chefs completely different to anyone else. My young girls and guys, when they come to the kitchen, the first thing they get is a blindfold. They get blindfolded and they get sat down at the chef's table... Unless they can identify what they're tasting, they don't get to cook it.
As a soccer player, I wanted an FA Cup winner's medal. As an actor you want an Oscar. As a chef it's three-Michelin's stars, there's no greater than that. So pushing yourself to the extreme creates a lot of pressure and a lot of excitement, and more importantly, it shows on the plate.
I am a chef who happens to appear on the telly, that's it.
If you want to become a great chef, you have to work with great chefs. And that's exactly what I did.
I'm a decent cook; I'm a decent chef. None of my friends would ever have hired me at any point in my career. Period.
I was a journeyman chef of middling abilities. Whatever authority I have as a commenter on this world comes from the sheer weight of 28 years in the business. I kicked around for 28 years and came out the other end alive and able to form a sentence.
Don't dunk your nigiri in the soy sauce. Don't mix your wasabi in the soy sauce. If the rice is good, complement your sushi chef on the rice.
Every chef I know, their cholesterol is through the roof. And mine's not so great.
I made a point of eating so fast I never kept the other people waiting who generally ordered only chef's salad and grapefruit juice because they were trying to reduce. Almost everybody I met in New York was trying to reduce.
I love 'Iron Chef' and I love 'Chopped.' I watch both of them. I think it is crazy what those chefs go through.
I'm not a celebrity chef. I'm a chef that happens to have television shows and a chef that happens to do media.
Sometimes, early in their careers, chefs make the mistake of adding one too many things to a plate to get attention. If a chef is just coming up with wiz-bang gimmicks on their plate, that has nothing to do with bringing real pleasure to people.