A chef and a restaurateur are different jobs: One is about pleasing people with what's on the plate; the other is about understanding the market. I'm a chef, but I think I'm a savvy businessperson, too.

My kitchen in New York City is in the Richard Meier building on Perry Street, so it's ultra-modern: white, glass and transparent. It's 180 square feet, with an induction stove. Everything's hidden, so you don't see the microwave or the fridge.

I arrived in New York in 1986, when I was 28. The market here was nothing. In the Union Square farmers' market, it was a couple of potatoes, everything from California. So the only place I was comfortable shopping was in Chinatown, because it all came from Hong Kong.

Our best hits are real-estate stories, going back to our first, JoJo in 1991.

I am not from a film family or a Mumbai girl. The probability of getting a second chance is low, and so one has to be more careful.

We are a family that likes to keep things abreast about what's happening in the country so dinner table conversations revolve around Social, political, films... a bit of everything. Films we talk about the least in fact.

I come from a very la-ti-da East Coast intellectual family - or so they think.

Even before the missteps that I've had, I was never going to run for office. My family is adamantly opposed to it, and frankly, my politics don't necessarily work for the primaries of either of our parties.