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Q: What was it about food and cooking that interested you from so early on?

A: I always enjoyed eating. I probably had a lot of good memories of the kitchen, because my grandmother cooked all the time. Our family life was around the kitchen. She would can, she would make wine, she did all these things that brought everyone into the kitchen. There was probably some association with happiness around that. If I were to cite an external source, it would probably be that. Internally, some people know they always want to do something in life. I happened to be one of the lucky ones that knew early.

Q: Do you remember the first meal you cooked for somebody else?

A: I didn’t really do meals as much as I just started working on one particular dish and just started going nuts on it, to the point that somebody would come over and say, "Daniel’s making tapioca pudding again. Okay." It wouldn’t even be a question; it’d be like, "He’s here, we’re having tapioca." Not unlike children when they go through phases of eating. Like, they can’t get enough mashed potatoes, for example. They can’t get enough ice cream. You know how children go through these stages? I not only lived that by eating it; I lived it by making it.

Q: If you could choose anyone in the world to cook a meal for you, who would it be?

A: My wife. First of all, I’m in the restaurant business, so to come home and have a relaxing meal, that would be sort of a rare thing to begin with. I enjoy her cooking, but also the conversation — that means much more to me. I don’t really have any celebrity that I would want to have cook. It would be my wife.

Q: Aside from Meritage, do you have a favorite restaurant in Boston?

A: Oh, that’s a loaded question, because if I say somebody is good, what happens to the rest of the people that I like? There’s a lot of restaurants that do a good job. I don’t go out enough. It depends on what I’m in the mood for.

I love simple food. I love Oishii, in Chestnut Hill. I love going to No. 9 Park or Troquet or Mistral or Gordon’s [Hamersley’s Bistro]. Really, I enjoy all of them. It all depends on what mood I’m in and what I’m looking for. Every one of the top chefs I’m talking about, I enjoy all their restaurants. It all depends on how I’m feeling.

Q: What’s the most expensive bottle of wine at Meritage right now?

A: I don’t have the list in front of me, but I would say one of the most expensive is the ’86 Mouton. Mouton is a first-growth Bordeaux, and it’s about $1600 on the list.

Q: How often do people order something that expensive?

A: Well, that particular bottle was ordered two months ago, so it does get ordered. I would say most of the wine that gets sold is between the $50 and the $150 range. We find that the most expensive wines are ordered in one of two scenarios: one would be a special event, 25th anniversary, whatever. Or a business meal, where they’ll entertain clients and want to impress them. And they have an expense account.

Q: What’s one dish we’ll never see on one of your menus?

A: How about two things? The first one would be haggis. I say that, and I’m Scottish in background. It’s sheep’s stomach that’s been poached and filled with barley and offal. That I won’t have on my menu. And you won’t see lung on my menu. When I worked in Italy, the staff meal once a week was bollito misto. Well, bollito misto just means "mixed boil," and when they’re feeding the help, they throw everything in there. And one of the pieces was polmoni. I was like, "Polmoni — I’ve got to go back to my room and figure out what polmoni is." And I go back to my room and polmoni — lungs. It tastes and looks like sponge. I would never have that on a menu. And I wouldn’t have blowfish, either. Why take a risk of dying? The bile of blowfish can kill you. Anything that’s dangerous I would say you wouldn’t find on my menu.

Q: Do you have a guilty-pleasure food?

A: It’s going to sound funny, but I rarely eat dessert. I love creating them, there’s a lot of passion in my creating of the desserts here, I really enjoy it, but I don’t really eat them. In this field, you can get very heavy, very fast. I’ve always been health-conscious and I try to keep my weight down and I go to the health club. I think of how many minutes I have to spend on the elliptical cross-trainer if I’m eating a dessert.

I would say cheese. I know cheese is not that good for you, even though some diets, like Atkins, will tell you otherwise. But if it’s a great cheese, then I’ll indulge. In particular, I love French cheeses. I really love the Old World cheeses, because there’s such a history of cheese-making there, and there’s so little government interference that they’re able to produce raw-milk cheeses. So they haven’t been pasteurized, and the flavor is just incredible. I love to have that with a great bottle of wine. That would be my indulgence, right there.

Q: If you could choose your last meal, what would it be?

A: That’s impossible. It depends on what day was going to be my last day. I would definitely have a fish I’d just caught. So these things are the most important to me: things I just caught. The freshest vegetable that day. A cheese like I just talked about, a fantastic cheese that I didn’t even know existed. And, of course, all the wines to go with that. I’d like to be surprised. I’d like someone to surprise me with something I’ve never had before. For dessert, if it was spring, I could tell you: strawberry-rhubarb pie. It would be something seasonal and in the fruit family. For me, the freshest ingredients are the best.

The 16th annual Boston Wine Festival runs from January 7 through April 8, at the Boston Harbor Hotel, Boston. Call (888) 660-WINE or visit www.BostonWineFestival.net for reservations and information. Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com