"Truly near and dear to my heart. My first cookbook serves almost as a yearbook, taking me back to a specific place and time. As we get ready to celebrate our 25th anniversary at The French Laundry, the stories and memories of making that book are as vivid as ever. The book speaks to evolution as well, important for chefs not only in terms of how dishes can take new shapes and perspective, but also in terms of ingredients and technique."

"My favorite French film of this century that wasn’t directed by Gasper Noé. Even though it’s mainly infamous for its three very explicit sex scenes, this is really an intense love story—girl meets girl, girl loses girl—and completely heart-wrenching at times. It’s three-hour length flies by. I easily could have watched another three hours of these absolutely incredible performances. I can’t wait to see what Adèle does next. I could not take my eyes off of her."

"The great Buñuelian diptych on the oddity of the Western social meal ritual, which of course is merely a filter with a distinct mesh dense enough to catch human absurdities big and small, perverse and banal, greedy and self-delusional. Surrealist is such a silly, debased, and inadequate term for full-flower Buñuel; in fact, the best Mexican and French films are birds of paradise belonging to their own exclusive breed. You can put them only in cages with Buñuel’s name on them."

"The great Buñuelian diptych on the oddity of the Western social meal ritual, which of course is merely a filter with a distinct mesh dense enough to catch human absurdities big and small, perverse and banal, greedy and self-delusional. Surrealist is such a silly, debased, and inadequate term for full-flower Buñuel; in fact, the best Mexican and French films are birds of paradise belonging to their own exclusive breed. You can put them only in cages with Buñuel’s name on them."

"Few films have ever satiated my appetite for an experience of pure cinema the way Cul-de-sac did the first night I watched it. It’s a film that doesn’t strictly belong to any one genre but dances between thriller, psychological horror, and comedy. One of my favorite actors, the hugely undervalued Donald Pleasence, turns in a career-best performance as a highly pedantic, sexually frustrated, oddball English husband, while his fiery young French wife is played with dangerous irresistibility by Françoise Dorléac."

"Want a thousand pages of pure romantic anxiety in which the biggest war in our nation’s history is just a mere backdrop for the heartache of a woman who should probably be in Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous? Then this is the book for you! I loved the descriptions of food when I was younger, and also of fashion and French kissing, and it’s a real master class in plot, pacing and how to sew a dress out of window decorations!"