"The night the cooks look forward to most each year at Chez Panisse (and perhaps diners, too), is Parsi New Year, when Niloufer Ichaporia King takes the helm of the kitchen. Parsi cooking is exquisite, existing at the intersection of Indian and Persian, and I can never get enough of Niloufer’s recipes (I adore her Parsi deviled eggs)."

"Bottle Rocket remains my favorite Wes Anderson movie—and I love all of his movies. Dignan was a character I felt I knew from my life but had never seen in a movie, much less as the lead of a movie. “How did an asshole like Bob get such a nice kitchen?” is one of my favorite lines . . . and it’s offscreen."

"The first one with Brandon Lee. The whole set — it was a really cool set — I liked the whole vibe of it with the martial arts. I was a Brandon Lee fan, and that was a fairly bad-ass movie. That whole Hell’s Kitchen vibe in New York — that whole realm just has this cool mystifying vibe. It looked like it would be a fun set."