As they say in Italy, Italians were eating with a knife and fork when the French were still eating each other. The Medici family had to bring their Tuscan cooks up there so they could make something edible.
For two years I would just make that. I would concentrate on making the perfect omelet... It was important to me to be able to make a perfect omelet with nothing in it.
D.C. is a complicated market that I don't understand very well. The restaurant business is a slippery slope, and it gathers speed very quickly when it's going downhill.
It used to be that you would go out to the theater and get a bite or you would go to the game and get a bite or go to the concert and get a bite. At this point in our society, the bite is often the main event.
Cooking in France and Italy has a particular high resonance, and it's hard to say how or why it developed other than that they've been smarter and there longer.
A lot of these people I'm traveling around the country and meeting speak Italian at the house. Third- or fourth-generation, and they're still speaking Italian.
