Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My reasons for becoming a chef are somewhat of a cliche. I always loved to eat but it was watching my parents cook that really served as the impetus for my career choice.
I am confident that we will see a growing consensus about the most effective way to transform food in America: building a real, sustainable and free school-lunch program.
Big stuff and little: learning how to order breakfast in a country where I don't speak the language and haven't been before - that's really satisfying to me. I like that.
When I was writing 'Kitchen Confidential,' I was in my 40s, I had never paid rent on time, I was 10 years behind on my taxes, I had never owned my own furniture or a car.
When I'm on television, I think that I appeal to the everyday guy, 'cause that's who I am. The guys who go to the football games on the weekends are my viewers, for sure.
Cook ingredients that you are used to cooking by other techniques, such as fish, chicken, or hamburgers. In other words be comfortable with the ingredients you are using.
I have worked my way up in the food industry being strong and steady about who I am as a person, first and foremost, as a chef and professional, and certainly as a woman.
I was 25 years old when I arrived in D.C. It was just myself and two people who worked and helped me in the kitchen. I was only cooking for three people most of the time.
California is lucky, the East Coast is lucky because we get great seafood and a lot of produce from Florida, locally in good weather, but in the winter we have to buy it.
Could you imagine people eating a painting - if they could introduce a painting into their bodies? It's probably the artist's dream, and we have the opportunity to do so.
You can't please everyone, especially if you're doing very radical things at the vanguard of cooking. That's life; it's a polemic I've lived with since I started cooking.
A plancha is just a hot flat surface. So if you think about it, anything is a plancha, like a saute pan or a griddle. A la plancha is the perfect way to cook for a crowd.
I eventually settled in Washington, where my partners and I have been fortunate to build a restaurant business that now employs thousands of Americans across the country.
When I say, 'Everybody to the table and eat,' I mean it. That is the glue, the center that holds the family, that gives security. Good food brings everybody to the table.
The hardest part of anything is making a dish consistently great - you order it seven years later, if it's still on the menu, and it's still as good as what you remember.
I'm not a fighter, but in my mind I'm fighting every day. 'What's new? What am I doing?' I'm fighting myself. My soul is samurai. My roots aren't samurai, but my soul is.
Recipes are important but only to a point. What's more important than recipes is how we think about food, and a good cookbook should open up a new way of doing just that.
I travel 330 days a year and eat every two and a half hours - I'm a big guy. I always carry a fork, little bottles of spices, and Sriracha. I eat what I feel like eating.
Americans don't have deep gastronomic roots. They wanted to get away from the cultures of Europe or wherever they came from. We stirred up that melting pot pretty quickly.
You have an impeccable argument if you said that Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo are food capitals. They have a maximum amount of great stuff to eat in the smallest areas.
I think all kids need snacks. Mine are fruit machines. I give them things like apple slices, berries and melon. Do I let them eat ice cream? Absolutely. But not every day.
Chefs don't do ponytails and we shouldn't do them because I guarantee that whenever there's a discovery of hair in the food, it's guaranteed it's from the chef's ponytail.
I have experienced a tremendous amount of personal and professional growth, and I feel incredibly lucky that I'm able to make a career out of doing the things that I love.
What really makes your business is your workers - their commitment, their knowledge, how you train them, how you treat them. They have to make the entity a winning entity.
People who don't travel cannot have a global view, all they see is what's in front of them. Those people cannot accept new things because all they know is where they live.
There's not one food that causes diabetes.What causes Type II diabetes is being overweight... I've just come to grips, over the past four or five months, with my diabetes.
I was wrong to exaggerate in statements related to my experiences in the White House and the Royal Family. I am truly sorry for misleading people and misstating the facts.
Be curious, learn and read as much as you can about food. Don't worry about making money. Focus on learning at various venues before you settle down for a steady position.
Cooking is like painting or writing a song. Just as there are only so many notes or colors, there are only so many flavors - it's how you combine them that sets you apart.
Fish butchering means a lot to me as a chef; I take pride in it and get a lot of joy from filleting fish, working with fish, breaking down fish, trying to understand fish.
The addition of vinaigrette to freshly roasted vegetables gives them a freshness and juiciness they don't normally have; the acidity brings out new shades of flavour, too.
Though not a true cereal but a fruit, buckwheat seeds resemble cereal grains and are often used in a similar way to rice, barley, bulgar or quinoa, usually as a side dish.
If we're talking fantasy, I would love to host a late night talk show... More Fallon than Leno. Those guys always seem like they're having way too much fun at their 'jobs.'
I was brought up on a farm in Southwest France, eating farm-fresh produce three times a day. It was paradise on Earth, and it shaped my eating habits and my sense of taste.
I feel that good food should be a right and not a privilege, and it needs to be without pesticides and herbicides. And everybody deserves this food. And that's not elitist.
You can call me the bad boy chef all you want. I'm not going to freak out about it. I'm not that bad. I'm certainly not a boy, and it's been a while since I've been a chef.
I'm not besotted with the notion of being on CNN to the point that I'm going to suddenly morph into Anderson Cooper or Christiane Amanpour. I'm not a foreign correspondent.
It's not good to thicken sauce with too much butter because it can cause heaviness. You don't want to avoid butter, but you also don't want to put too much - add it slowly.
I try to pack light with a folding leather suit bag. Anything more than five days, I need to check in my luggage. What takes the most space? Chef jackets, aprons and tools.
We began building this incredible new foundation in this restaurant, and that's what began giving me the left-hand side of tradition and the right-hand side, my new palate.
In order to create a little bit of confidence, start cooking with pasta. Pasta is phenomenal. Once you've cooked pasta properly for the first time it becomes second nature.
I haven't raised my voice for eight to 10 years in the kitchen. And I won't have anybody shouting. If I hear of anybody having a go at anyone else, they'll get disciplined.
Just like if you were brought up on a farm, you would most likely carry on your father's business as a farmer; I was brought up in the kitchen and ended up becoming a chef.
When restaurants start to mature - and usually the five-year time is the time when the restaurant starts to settle in and have its own personality - your job is to grow it.
I exercise every morning, no matter what. Sometimes it's tough to do right when you get off the plane, but after ten minutes you start sweating, and you always feel better.
There's not one food that causes diabetes. What causes Type II diabetes is being overweight... I've just come to grips, over the past four or five months, with my diabetes.
I have a tendency to trail off in conversations. I don't look up at people sometimes when I talk or cook, and those are all pretty bad no-no's being in front of the camera.
There's nobody you can call and say, 'So, can you maybe send me your formula for frying Hollandaise?' because to the best of my knowledge, it didn't exist before we did it.
Without the assistance of eating and drinking, the most sparkling wit would be as heavy as a bad soufflé, and the brightest talent as dull as a looking-glass on a foggy day.
I don't think it ever works to tell people what they can't eat. They can do it for so long, and then they fall off. You have to bring them into a new relationship with food.