"Ah, now that was a very important introduction! I would never have gotten along without it," he insists with a laugh, stretching a bite of mozzarella cheese that refuses to break.

"So, an Italian dish is one of the most widely eaten in America. I think that's wonderful. I think it's wonderful that anybody can get any sort of food they want from almost every country. I saw some of those menus-- Indian? Ethiopian? Thai? That's unheard of in my time. The most foreign food we can get in Berlin is probably chop suey."