Do you have any secret tools or gadgets in the kitchen? anything that you could never live without?

My opinion about food changes with every season and so do my gadgets. In the winter, I'm obsessed with deep flavors that you can only get through a low and slow cooking method, so my roasting pans and stock pots are front and center. In the summer, I'm always trying to capture the cleanest flavor possible by doing as little to the food as possible. Vegetables are at their most interesting in the summer so we often present vegetables in a few different ways. For example, we soak radishes that are shaved paper thin with a mandolin in ice water to get that incredible crunch. That would garnish a salad of warm radishes roasted in parsley butter with toasted pine nuts and dungeness crab. Clean, three or four important flavors, tops. So my gadgets in the summer are often the most basic. Good mixing bowls for salads. Sharp knifes for good vegetable cuts, peelers, squeeze bottles for purées and vinaigrettes, and scissors for trimming micro greens that our farmers grow for us. Other than that, the only thing I couldn't live without is the amazing food products that we get in from our tireless suppliers. Quality food is the secret to great cooking, I'm just the middle man.

If you could change anything about your kitchen, what would it be?

Our kitchen at home was built in 1926. It's very well laid out for what it is, but it's a small galley kitchen. So you are ether standing facing one wall and chopping or standing facing the stove cooking. It used to be very difficult to cook with someone else in the kitchen because I would always have my back to the room and would constantly be bumping into someone. We've now put up vintage mirrors like in a French cafe so you've always got an eye line with someone. I love our cottage, but another 500 square feet, enough room for a center island would be a nice addition.

What do you always have stocked in your pantry? Any specific products you always want to have on hand?

My kids love beans... I know it sounds crazy but they love any kind of cooked bean. Chickpeas, lentils, lima beans, black eyed peas you name it. My wife and I always have a bowl of dried beans soaking to make into something healthy. Lentils cooked with a little bit of bacon, roasted vegetables, Parmesan, pasta and olive oil is a huge family hit. I add chopped thai bird chilies to mine.

What's your go-to dish to make at home?

We keep our crisper drawer full of vegetables. We belong to our local CSA program here in Mill Valley. So between our box that we get once a week and trips to the farmers market, we're always loaded with great vegetable options. One dish that is so simple to make, it hardly needs a recipe is Roasted Chicken and Vegetables. Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees. Take a whole chicken and cut into 10 pieces, so that's two legs, two thighs, two wings and the breasts are cut in half so it's the same size as a thigh. Save the rib cage for stock another time. Season with salt and pepper and place skin side up in a roasting pan. Drizzle with olive oil and drop the chicken in the oven on the middle rack. You want to give the chicken a head start while you chop up some yummy veggies. This could be anything - Brussels sprouts, with apples and bacon in the winter or zucchini, tomato and black olive in the summer. Give the chicken a 15-minute head start then pull the chicken out and scatter the vegetables around the chicken. Put the roasting pan back in the oven for another 25 minutes or so. Check it at 20 minutes with a meat thermometer to see if the chicken is about 155 or 160 Internal temperature and the vegetables are beautifully roasted and soft. Baste the vegetables with the chicken drippings. The natural roasting liquids that collect in the bottom are a delicious sauce and make the whole dish really juicy. I really like this without a carbohydrate, but anything works. Pasta, potatoes, grains. Garnish the dish with fresh picked herbs and it dresses up for company very easily. That's my go to dish and it works beautifully year-round.

What was your most nightmarish kitchen situation? Any major catastrophes?

I always tell my guys that it's not about the screw up, it's about the recovery. We are very organized so nightmares don't really happen very often. If we don't get the product in that we're looking for or it doesn't meet our standards, we simply 86 the item. If a line cook can't learn to master a dish, they're fired. No harm, no foul. I think it says more about the choices that a good restaurant makes when it chooses to not serve something that's sub par verses a restaurant that serves a disaster come hell or high water. If all else fails, there is always improvisation. If the filet comes out too rare, look them in the eye and tell them it's carpaccio. They'll love it.

If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?

I get that question a lot as if we chefs hold on to the one thing that's the most special or the most decadent like it's the best bite on earth and were saving for ourselves. The truth is, I would get insanely bored with one thing for the rest of my life. Even if it's something that I truly love, like sushi, or southern fried chicken, briny Beausoleil oysters from the cold water of New Brunswick or that fatty bite at the bottom 28-day dry age ribeye closest to the bone. All of that I would really begin to hate after awhile. Life is a kaleidoscope. I would eat anything if I had to. I always say to myself if I had to listen to one thing for the rest of my life it would be the back side of Abby Road, but after three loops in, I'm done with it. Put it this way, if that hypothetical situation ever happened and food were that scarce, what I would want to eat would be long gone anyway. What I would do is become a farmer and grow my own food.

Are there any foods you can't stand?

Well... ? "Can't stand" is a strong emotion. What breaks my heart is when food doesn't live up to the hype. Whatever that hype is. Per Se in NYC or a Taco shop in San Francisco's Mission district. If it's great, it's great. Those experiences are very special. We Chefs are craftsmen, trades people. If you take pride in your craft and you protect the customer experience at all costs, that shows in the product. Restaurant experiences where obviously no one is paying attention, or even worse, completely incompetent, - that really breaks my heart from an investor stand point. Wasting someone's money, now that I can't stand.

What does home cooking mean to you?

I think home cooking is food at its finest. I've traveled all over the world and the best food I have ever had has come from someone's home. It's real. Probably rehearsed hundreds of times and it's always brag worthy, delicious cooking. We Chefs can muck that idea up because people think that good food has to be fancy or grand. But it's the exact opposite. The spirit of home cooking is what we try to knock off in restaurants. A pure flavor that's boiled down. An experience that triggers an infantile pleasure button that takes you somewhere long forgotten, somewhere deep in your subconscious. That spoon of stewed vegetables that your grandmother made from her garden when your were 7 or plate of pasta you had on your honeymoon prepared by a small mom and pop restaurant in the hills of Tuscany. Those are flavor ghosts that will haunt you for the rest of your life. Those real flavors only come from home cooking.