Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Gratitude is the attitude. That's the thing.
I like being the people's champion when it comes to dining.
You can change your spouse, your friends but never your club.
I thought maybe I would be everyone's favorite dude-food friend.
A good spicy challenge strikes a balance between flavour and fear.
If I had Sirius FM and fire-breathing in a giant puppy dragon, I'd be golden.
To go from hating the way I looked to being a 'Cosmo' centerfold is a profound honor.
I've long struggled with my body image and have worked hard to achieve a healthy weight.
Did you see The Never-Ending Story? That's one kick-ass dragon. It's basically a giant puppy dragon.
There are soccer athletes that are known the world over except in the U.S. Thierry Henry, for example.
Man V. Food is the highest-rated show in the Travel Channel's history, so clearly there's going to be a correlation.
People believe what they want to believe. You have to run your race and be proud of the person you see in the mirror.
If something is nice about you, usually one or two people will tell you. If something is foul about you, everyone will tell you.
Shaq is Shaq. I did an episode of The Soup with Shaq, and he shook my hand, and I felt like I was a Ken doll, like I had no hand.
I think that in terms of who is known the world over, I would wager that it's probably someone like Mark Wahlberg or Dwyane Wade.
'Man v. Food' was the biggest career-defining opportunity. I went from anonymity to someone of note with access to amazing eateries.
Back in the day, I used to watch 'The Cajun Chef' with Justin Wilson. His mixing would go one way, and his stomach would go the other.
The first Mardi Gras I went to, I stayed at the Tulane AE Pi house on Broadway. Slept on a pool table one night, slept under it the next.
The first one that I went to with my friends was with my buddy Michael - and we actually cut class to get tickets - was INXS at the Garden.
People also respected my culinary acumen and my intelligence, and that was their whole thing. They flew me over, and it was this immersive experience.
I do feel that, generally, people will see me and go, "He knows where the good food is," which is an awesome correlative. It's an awesome simplification.
When Lollapalooza started, and I was really into Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jane's Addiction, Soundgarden. I went to that Lollapalooza tour twice, I think.
I was logging 15-hour days, sampling food every minute. I had access to these amazing dishes, and it was easy to lose sight of how quickly the bites added up.
It's weird because people think the biggest guys are the biggest eaters, but fat doesn't expand as much as muscle, so you want someone with a big frame who can expand.
I remember my late father, who was the biggest football fan I have ever known, used to stress when I was younger that, win or lose, you always have to compete with honor.
I love that you can pick up your phone at a hotel and have something to eat in your bed. I love home, but there are amenities at a hotel that you simply don't have at home.
These $40 burgers with foie gras and truffles and all of that flies in the face of one of the most proletarian foods around. It's overpriced, overdone and just not worth it.
I've always been a massive Beastie Boys fan, so if you look at their style aesthetic on Check Your Head, that was the headspace I was in for a minute. Whatever that was, that was me.
In a day and age when there are so many culinary competitions - ranging from contests of taste to those of technique - The World Food Championships will be the ultimate food competition.
If it's a question about stuff that matters to you personally, like favorite food, favorite piece of knowledge, favorite animal, it's hard not to have an opinion and want to quantify things.
I always hated watching cooking shows where the chef would use ingredients that I couldn't get my hands on, cooking implements that I couldn't afford, recipes that I could never have access to.
In the early '90s I was floating somewhere between the Brat Pack/Andrew McCarthy/James Spader/Pretty In Pink kind of stuff and the alterna-pop look, crossed with a very distinct grunge sensibility.
In L.A., I love the L'Ermitage in Beverly Hills. Also, the Beverly Wilshire, where they make great huevos rancheros. I also love Shutters on the Beach, where I walk around everywhere in a bathrobe.
People follow me on social media, and they can tell I have varied interests. I think in the U.K. people perhaps know me for some other stuff because of my involvement with soccer and support of Tottenham.
I'm a big soccer fanatic, and although I support a team called Tottenham Hotspur in London - I love that team, I wear their symbol around my neck on a chain - I've always had a soft spot for this little club.
The Travel Channel had success with their 'Food Paradise' series, '10 Best Places to Pig Out' and those types of specials, so they knew there was a market for comfort food and wanted to develop a show around it.
Actually, I am loathe to admit, but I also remember freshman year of Emory - and I'm so sorry to have to admit this - but there was a Domino's Pizza in Emory Village, where I went to college, and I was ordering a pizza.
If you're a guy who's always been the fun-to-be-around teddy bear, then all of a sudden people are viewing you as sexy, it's nice. It's great not having to be the plucky best friend or the comic relief anymore - I love that.
My most memorable food challenge was probably the Big Texan in Amarillo. All the big executives called me because it was such an iconic challenge, and a victory in that would be a legitimizing device for myself as much as for the show.
One of my great personal triumphs is, because I stay vigilant about my health, I was never going to give my detractors the satisfaction of not feeling well, or allowing my health to falter while eating rich and indulgent food all over the world.
I knew what I was getting into: 72-ounce steaks, shakes by the quart, atomic wings. When I landed 'Man v. Food' in 2008, I accepted the fact that my weight would fluctuate. But instead of stressing about the scale, I made my long-term health a primary concern.
There is no right way to go on an edible journey. You can never tell what is going to be great, so you have to try everything. If you become doctrinaire about sticking to lowbrow foods or epicurean delights, your just being an extremist, and it won't do you any good.
I realized that I didn't need nearly as many calories as I'd grown accustomed to. I ate 100 to 200 calories every two hours or so, consumed healthy proteins (yogurt, lean meat, turkey jerky), and drank a gallon of water a day. And as my weight dropped, my energy soared.
To combat the monotony of gym workouts, I started playing soccer. I looked at workouts as training sessions. My soccer training includes squats, pushups, resistance-band work, and sprints. Ninety minutes of running became part of my love of the game rather than a chore.
There's no way that I could have known about a 72-oz. steak challenge in Amarillo unless thousands upon thousands of locals and travellers alike had attempted it. I guess if 'Man V Food' is me paying homage to these legends, then I suppose 'Man V Food Nation' is the legacy.
I'm not a plumber who accidentally blew up or a math professor who accidentally backed into notoriety. I have a master's from Yale drama, and I auditioned for this. So obviously I want to be in the limelight in some capacity, or I want to be in entertainment in some capacity.
We were filming in Greenland, and I treated my crew. It's 24 hours of pretty bright daylight there right now, and I always try to do something nice for my crew every trip or in every other city. So I greeted them with a midnight cruise, but it looked like two in the afternoon.
Natto, Japanese ferment bean paste, will never cross my lips again. Spam Musubi, on the other hand, is something I love. I used to have a roommate of Vietnamese descent, and he would eat it all the time. It looked gross, but I finally had it - wrapped in seaweed and rice - it was terrific.
I went in for a checkup, and when my doctor had me stand on the scale, even he was surprised. Seeing that number (which I'll take to the grave) was a turning point. I knew I needed to make a change. I cut out white flour and starches and worked with my doctor and a nutritionist to develop a plan.
That was another incredible thing: the opportunity to be in Greenland, a place I had read about in NatGeo a decade before. Suddenly I was staying there and hiking there, and we took a mini iceberg out of the water and chipped it up and used it as ice cubes and made cocktails with it. It's surreal.