Title: Chef/owner, Nick's Crispy Tacos, recent winner of SF Weekly's Best Taco 2005

Hometown:Trumbull, Conneticut, now living on a sailboat in Sausalito

1. What did you eat growing up?
I have the typical Italian American background. We ate lots of pasta and traditional Italian dishes, pretty healthy food. I ate artichokes when I was little, stuff most kids probably wouldn't eat. We went out to eat a lot. We were always going into New York. I even remember eating at the Russian Tea Room.

My whole family was in the restaurant business. My mother, stepfather and brother own an Italian restaurant in Connecticut called Tuscany which just got a great review in the New York Times. Growing up my mom's uncle had a restaurant, my grandfather had a restaurant supply store, and my mom had a restaurant for a while too.

My mom was a great cook. After my parents divorced I lived with my dad and he wasn't much of a cook. So I started cooking for my dad and my brother. I'd call my mom and get recipes and techniques from her.

2. What's your favorite item on the menu?
Still has to be the fish taco. I love it the most. After I moved here I went down to Baja and tried the fish tacos, then I came back and tried sampling one and that was enough, I decided I knew exactly how I wanted mine to taste.

3. What makes a great taqueria?
What pushes me is consistency and quality level. With a lot of taquerias it might be a mom cooking and it's easy for her to get overwhelmed. We sell 600-1000 tacos a day and so you have to know how to do things on a large scale. We use the Niman Ranch meats, Fulton Valley farms chicken. The food is number one, but we are as goofy as we can be in this nightclub environment with pinatas hanging from the chandeliers. There are people who love the decor even more than the food, which is not what I was going for! We're "Tijuana chic"

4. What would you be doing if you weren't a chef?
I'd be doing something on the water. Maybe on a tugboat? I'd work as a mate on a private yacht and then get my captains license.

5. What's the best thing about living in the Bay Area?
It's the close proximity to outdoor activities, and that's where I have the conflict with being inside and cooking all day. So running a taqueria is perfect. I can be surfing in ten minutes at Ocean Beach or mountain biking in the Headlands in ten minutes. The wine country is an hour away, Tahoe is three hours, I can even drive to Mexico in eight hours, or fly to LA or Vegas.

I live on my sailboat in Marin, it's a quick commute and I'm in the City. I love the Headlands, Mount Tam, Cronkhite Beach. I try to get out and do that as much as possible.