Mac, tell me about your Mississippi Mudcakes.

"The pancakes? I don't know anything about the pancakes. I didn't make the recipe."

Hold on, I'm quoting you on that.

"You're putting me on record with that? I hate you."

Who did make the recipe?

"That'd be my boss, Cindy."

Cindy is a god.

"Yes, she really is."

So what's it like working in a busy breakfast kitchen?

"In general, working in a kitchen is a lot like being beat up every day--taken into an alley and brutally beaten. And at the end of that day you say to yourself, 'Hey that felt good. I think I'm going to go back tomorrow to the same alley and have the same people beat me up all over again.'"

Why do you say that?

"It's a very masochistic profession, cooking is. At any given time something can be going wrong. In that sense it's valuable and rewarding because you have to figure out solutions to problems in a space of time that's exponentially small."

So why do you do it?

"Because I love it. I'm masochistic in that regard. Once you've spent enough time in the environment, it's something that really kind of... you get used to it. I can't really see myself in a working environment outside of a kitchen; everything moves too slow. In some perverse way you grow to appreciate the fact that you can't know what to expect on a day-to-day basis. If that makes sense."

It makes sense. Is it safe, then, to say all cooks are crazy?

"Yes. Yes, we are all insane in one way or another." MEGAN SELING