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It goes back to the early days in the kitchen where you would be tasting dishes all night long, so the last thing I want to do in the morning is eat. Chefs generally tend to be grazers.
On behalf of my native Japan, I am grateful to the culinary community and hospitality industry for working together to raise much-needed funds to aid the tsunami and earthquake victims.
Some of the greatest chefs in the world aren't classically trained. Thomas Keller - probably the greatest American chef ever to walk the earth - never went to culinary school. You know?
Onions and bacon cooking up just makes your kitchen smell so good. In fact, one day I'm going to come up with a room deodorizer that smells like bacon and onions. It's a fabulous smell.
The bully mind is not capable of loving or respecting others nor can it love or respect itself. Life's subtleties and the means of survival require its pretense of both these qualities.
I try to get them working. My older son is 10 and he's pretty interested. We had a dinner party the other night and he helped a lot. He helped peel asparagus; he hung out. It was great.
I want to teach [people] the secret of great visual presentation. Your stomach sees the food first, and I want to help them match food flavor profiles with the aesthetics of everything.
The most important thing for me is to walk the little alleys of the city, to find the little alcove where someone is cooking something, and just watch them do it. That's my idea of fun.
I have been talking nonstop about the symbolism of an edible landscape at the White House. I think it says everything about stewardship of the land and about the nourishment of a nation.
What feats of ingenuity have we not been forced to perform, at times, in order to meet our customers' wishes? Those only who have had charge of a large, modern kitchen can tell the tale.
I love using gas grills because they are easier to heat and it's much easier to control the flames with a gas grill than with a charcoal fire. Grilling is not just about lighting a fire.
I wanted so badly to be straight like my friends. But I couldn't change it any more than I could change having brown eyes. And I knew I would never fit into what kids thought was normal.
Monkeys don't enjoy or appreciate flavours. Experts have told us that human beings are the only beings that can appreciate food at this higher level and the only living beings that cook.
I was purely content to sit in the car and wander around my own mind. Watching the world itself, the people in it, and my whole internal life was more than enough to keep me entertained.
I have to say, opening up in New York taught me a lot about that level of attention to detail. London's a tough market, Paris is a tough market, but New York, well, that's extraordinary.
Grilling, broiling, barbecuing - whatever you want to call it - is an art, not just a matter of building a pyre and throwing on a piece of meat as a sacrifice to the gods of the stomach.
If you can eat with mates or friends or family, I mean, it's such a brilliant thing isn't it? If you feel really rubbish and you have a nice bit of food it makes you feel good, you know?
I'm better with my hands, and I always loved the slightly romantic idea of starting with bits of wood and being able to create something to sit on, to eat from, to store your clothes in.
America gave me the opportunity to open successful restaurants, start a TV show, and write books. I can even fill an auditorium when I give a speech, which in America is rare for a chef.
I remember being a young boy in Spain and watching my parents cook. We didn't go to a lot of restaurants because we didn't always have the money, so cooking at home was just what we did.
Most people only use their griddles for pancakes, but you can sear vegetables like sliced zucchini or mushrooms, thinly sliced meats like chicken or pork, or thinly sliced fish or squid.
We still have a long way to go but if we work together and we work hard, you'll see black people in positions you never thought we'd be in. I thought I would never see a black President.
The problem with a lot of Chinese is that they put up divisions between Taiwanese, Hong Kong natives, mainlanders. We are never united. I really hope that the Chinese can be more united.
Food feeds both the body and soul - there are clear reasons to eat a balanced diet, but there are also reasons you cling to your mom's secret chicken noodle soup recipe when you're sick.
I am guilty of buying way too many gadgets - way too many! And though I try to keep things nice and orderly, sometimes I get distracted and stick saucepans where the stockpots should go.
It's an interesting thing, Top Chef. Some of the contestants will make you one great dish, and then make you something on the next show that will make you say, "Is that the same person?"
There are many reasons I feel at home in the U.K., but if I were asked to pinpoint the moment I knew I'd arrived, it might well be when I realised the British shared my love of fritters.
I wanted to get away from the Mexican vernacular and do more 'nuevo Latino.' Americans are starting to understand regionality in Mexican food. It is very regional in terms of ingredients.
I have a rule: before I can throw anything out, I have to write down five possible uses for it. This stretches my mind and keeps it nimble - just like stretching exercises do for my body.
The fact of the matter is that, for years, the restaurant and service industry has been, to a great extent, built on the backs of often underpaid immigrants of often dubious legal status.
I, a product of the New Frontier and Great Society, honestly believed that the world pretty much owed me a living--all I had to do was wait around in order to live better than my parents.
Turkey is fine, but if I don't have the sides, forget about it. And cornbread stuffing is at the center of my plate. I will have about six sides and then a little bit of turkey and gravy.
Everybody wants to support his own region and economy and farming. If we can preserve the land and if we can preserve the ocean, we all know, deep inside that we're doing the right thing.
A plate of food has to have balance. For example, a mild fish like skate mustnt be overwhelmed by the side dishes. They should have personality and color, but they also have to be subtle.
However amazing a dish looks, it is always the taste that lingers in your memory. Family and friends will appreciate a meal that tastes superb-even if you've brought the pan to the table.
We were saving, saving, saving then going to France and blowing the money eating. She was a nurse and had never experienced fine dining but she loved it, too. Our mates thought it absurd.
My first outdoor cooking memories are full of erratic British summers, Dad swearing at a barbecue that he couldn't put together, and eventually eating charred sausages, feeling brilliant.
Remember, 'No one's more important than people'! In other words, friendship is the most important thing--not career or housework, or one's fatigue--and it needs to be tended and nurtured.
Everybody can cook. You don't have to do anything fancy. You can do a nice antipasto spread with sardines, anchovies, some meats, marinated vegetables, fruits, cheese, nuts, and crackers.
If we don't focus on when we eat - like, let's say we watch television or something - you eat much more. If you focus on the food - you smell it, you cook it - you're enjoying it already.
Growing up, I had a very busy social life. It wasn't until I was a sophomore in high school that I asked Mama if I could come into the kitchen and have her teach me how to cook something.
I think it's important to recall... what you remember your grandmother making, where you're from and the foods you enjoyed as a child yourself, and pass that information off to your kids.
For me, the end of childhood came when the number of candles on my birthday cake no longer reflected my age, around 19 or 20. From then on, each candle came to represent an entire decade.
Polenta is to northern Italy what bread is to Tuscany, what pasta is to Emilia-Romagna and what rice is to the Veneto: easy to make, hungry to absorb other flavours, and hugely versatile.
Most fish require a short cooking time, but cephalopods are the exception to this fishy rule. As with some cuts of larger land beasts, the longer they're cooked, the more tender they get.
I think fine dining is dying out everywhere... but I think there will be - and there has to always be - room for at least a small number of really fine, old-school fine-dining restaurants.
It's wrong I think, morally and annoying in general, to try to get a kid to be a foodie, so I never even suggested, "Hey baby it's good, maybe you should try it." That never worked for me.
Country to me is living life at its simplest: Learning to appreciate a sliced vine-ripe tomato with a dash of salt, served between two slices of good bread and eaten over the kitchen sink.
The nature of human beings is to eat meat and fruits and vegetables, and therefore we have to kill animals. I don't have a problem with that. But it's a sacred moment. It's a gift of life.
I wanted to take nouvelle cuisine further, to the point where we were breaking down the essence of taste and sensation, reconfiguring food as a series of really intense hits on the tongue.