Food unites nations.

Food unites hearts, relationships.

Food is a key expression for me.

Food is my life.

I grew up in Connecticut, in a really small country town called Durham.

Cornfields, cows, and, you know, fresh milk delivered to the door every day.

I grew up in a Dominican home, half Dominican, half Italian.

So obviously a lot of spice of life.

I would say my childhood and my palate was very diverse at a very young age.

You know, I wasn't allowed to eat, like, cookies, or Twinkies.

I had to eat, like, pickled pig's feet, cow's tongue, olive loaf.

Who the heck wants to eat olive loaf when you're eight years old?

You can imagine in a Latino home how much rice we eat, right?

My father would literally just throw down this bag of rice, and it was just... there was so much of it.

And I had to take each grain of rice and sort one by one, picking out, like, all the dirty rice, if there's pebbles in there.

He'd just, like, stand over me and just watch me like this.

Maybe I didn't appreciate it, being a child or being young, but in retrospect, my father was teaching me a great lesson about discipline and being very detailed in what I do.

On the alternative side was my Aunt Carmen, my Tia Carmen, who was my Dominican aunt.

And she was really my salvation.

She really taught me the passion and the love for cooking.

Whereas my father taught me the discipline and the nuances and the details, my Aunt Carmen... really one of the biggest figures in my culinary profession.

You know, I remember driving in the car to Queens to go visit my Tia Carmen.

My brothers and sisters run through my Aunt Carmen's house, bypass the living room, bypass the kitchen, go outside.

Meanwhile I'm literally being tugged in, like a tug-of-war of flavors, aromas, of cumin, bay leaf, bacalhau, green olives, capers.

When it was time to eat and we would sit at this big banquet table, all the food was out.

And I would literally sit right next to her like a dog would sit next to his master, like, just that passion of food just emanated through her heart to me.

So that was the beauty of my Aunt Carmen.

My son is... he's a great impact in my life.

His name is Jacob Elias.

We knew that he would have to have surgery down the line, heart bypass surgery.

And I think that was pretty devastating.

You know, I remember when Jacob came out after surgery.

I couldn't even recognize him.

He had probably over 50 different tubes in his body.

I'm sure he doesn't even know what he's been through.

So if he could endure that, I could endure everything, and I could sacrifice whatever I have to for my son.

And I take him for brunch, and every week we do a different cuisine-- Ethiopian... you know, he's four years old.

Ethiopian, Italian, you know, Thai.

"Here, taste some sriracha, have the spicy chili."

Like, he doesn't understand, but I'm just like, you know, "Try it, taste it."

And all of a sudden, he's taking the water, he's putting it in the orange juice, he's taking the orange juice, putting it in the cranberry juice.

He's like a little mixologist.

And then he's, like, trying to taste it.

Maybe the initial reaction was like, "Stop."

But then I'm like, "Wow, this is just the coolest thing."

Like, he's learning how to balance flavor.

And I'm like, "Oh, that's really cool."

So maybe we have a little chef in the making.