Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A steak needs fat to taste great.
Recipes tell you nothing. Learning techniques is the key.
Men with shaved heads are always better. Just ask my wife.
You have to know the classics if you want to cook modern food.
Every chef should have an understanding of pastries or desserts.
I can't deliver lines, but I can talk about food all night long.
Once you have your basics down, you can start breaking the rules.
In an ideal world for me, school lunch would be free for everybody.
I don't really like money - I like the things you can buy with money.
'Chef' doesn't mean that you're the best cook, it simply means 'boss.'
Mushrooms can be very fancy. It's the closest you can get to eating dirt.
I hate okra and grated mountain yam for the same reason. They're both slimy.
I think the most effective way to run a kitchen is to teach, not to just yell.
I get angry when I think that people are blatantly incorrect on matters of fact.
You want to be the baddest guy in the kitchen and you want the person next to you to know it.
People are not hungry because we dont produce enough. People are hungry for political reasons.
I know how to make sausage, and now that I've seen how laws are made, I'll stick with sausage.
One of the first jobs I ever had was opening clams in a seafood restaurant, so I'm pretty quick at it.
Too often, chefs just want to experiment - they want to use liquid nitrogen before they know how to use heat.
A lot of professions happen to be male-dominated because women drop out at a certain point. It's unfortunate.
Every season we try to do something new. And not for gimmicks. We feel the show has to evolve and keep changing.
I call all chefs cooks. They're all cooks. That's what we do, we cook. You're a chef when you're running a kitchen.
I call all chefs 'cooks.' They're all cooks. That's what we do, we cook. You're a chef when you're running a kitchen.
I know from personal experience, if a chef yelled at me in a kitchen, the first thing I'd want to do is hit them with a pot.
I think steak is the ultimate comfort food, and if you're going out for one, that isn't the time to scrimp on calories or quality.
I think the patterns are set very early when the kids are young. But at the same time, there are some flavors kids just don't like.
In New York, I'll walk down the street and someone will say, 'Nice show,' and that's it. If I'm at a food festival, it's open season.
I can't deal with a lot of spice but I have to eat it. I pay the price - I'm on medication for heartburn, so that's how I deal with it.
I know nothing about hip-hop... There's only so many times you can grab your crotch and prance around stage. I'm gonna get slammed now for this.
I have very good knife skills. I learned to butcher on my second job - I was 18 years old. Every other day we would break down six legs of veal.
Buy the best you can find or afford and don't over manipulate it. If I cook a scallop, the best praise you can give me is that it tastes like a scallop.
Don't touch my napkin. I do not want the server to pick up the napkin and put it on my lap. I know it belongs there; maybe I don't choose to put it there.
There's a food revolution going on throughout the country. And it doesn't matter if you're down south, up north in Maine, if you're out west in Portland or Seattle.
I'd like to see 'Top Chef: Amateur'. Sometimes we have an amateur chef on the show and they just can't cut it against the pros but there are some great stories there.
I don't have a Facebook page and I don't think I will but Twitter for me is a way to take control of the message. Kind of wrestle it back. It's something I'm enjoying.
You can buy a box of low-fat macaroni and cheese made with powdered nonsense. I'm not worried if I'm using four different cheeses and it's high in fat. It's real food. That's what's more important.
My chefs don't apply for 'Top Chef'. They all know that there is no way. At the end of the process I look at the resumes of the last 25 options just to make sure they've never worked for me before.
My feeling is, if you're going to be called a celebrity, you might as well use it for some good. It's better to testify for school lunches in front of Congress than get drunk in a bar somewhere and misbehave.
I started cooking 30-something years ago. When I was 14, 15, I was a short-order cook in a snack bar. That was at a place called the Gran Centurions. It was an Italian-American swim club my parents belonged to.
My son, before he went to school, he'd eat pretty much everything. Then as soon as he went to school, he got some peer pressure, and other kids would say, 'Oh, you're gonna eat that. That's horrible. That's disgusting.'
It's my belief that cooking is a craft. I think that you can push it into the realm of art, but it starts with craft. It starts with an understanding of materials. It starts with an understanding of where foods are grown.
Right now I am kicking around an idea to do a web talk show on a boat. Guests would come on and go fishing with me. I would like to take people who have never fished: You get them out on the water and they really open up.
I want to feed my kid something that is real and not processed. It's hard to do. People are working and busy. The question is: Is it worth it? Is it worth stopping at the farm stand or supermarket to buy fresh ingredients?
So you can say, 'Get Big Government out of here, and don't tell me what to eat,' but when kids are going to school, and they're being fed junk, we're pretty much telling them what to eat, and we're telling them junk is OK.
Hunger is a political issue, and there are several things politically that are keeping people hungry - not funding food stamps adequately, not funding school lunches adequately. So there is a political solution to the problem of hunger.
I started cooking in kitchens right out of high school, and I was lucky to work with a lot of great people, but I had no idea it would turn into this. Of course no one should go into this business because they want to be the next Emeril.
As a chef, I had started working with groups like Share Our Strength and various local food banks in New York, raising money for hunger-related issues. And not only me, but the entire restaurant industry has been very focused on this issue.
With conglomerates selling companies to liquidators, who close down plants and move to non-union areas, it's about time progressive union leaders step in to stop such job-losing tactics... ESOP should become a part of future bargaining packages!
We are not really privy to all that crazy stuff that goes on in the show. I go to work, eat, and talk about food. The wild things happen when we aren't around. I expected Top Chef to last three or four seasons and we are now shooting season ten.
I travel around and hear from so many kids. Their parents say they were always very picky but they watch the show and they want to try stuff. The show is entertainment, but I think it has done so much for the public perception of what food can be.