This kitchen is completely calm. Some of the old-fashioned chefs - they become kings in their kitchen, they've got to be called chef. But I don't care if someone calls me chef or Heston, it really doesn't bother me.

I had cooked a lot in restaurants, in Rocky Point and on golf courses on Long Island, and my mother said, 'Be a chef,' and my dad said, 'Be a lawyer.' But instead, I auditioned for N.Y.U.'s Tisch School of the Arts.

When I was younger, I behaved a bit strangely sometimes - lost my temper, did silly things - but little by little, I've gotten better. As a chef, I think you need to do a lot of work on yourself and your temperament.

Performing has always been instinctive to me. I remember people saying, 'he doesn't know if he's a chef or an entertainer.' But what's wrong with being both? It's like saying you can't run the 100 and the 200 metres.

I came to the U.S. in the 1990s. I worked all around, including at Stars, and in 1996, I became the chef of Yoyo Bistro, which used to be Elka. During my one-year tenure there, I met a lot of French chefs at the time.

I think the goal of 'Chef's Table' is that you are so moved by the story that you want to go and eat that person's food at their restaurant. But I wanted the takeaway from my show to be that you go and cook the thing.

My husband is the chef of the family; he's a brilliant cook. Actually, it makes you quite lazy when you have somebody that's so good at cooking under the same roof. It's all beans or spaghetti when I'm left to run it.

I spend so much time in Los Angeles and normally stay at a corporate apartment when shooting 'Top Chef: Just Desserts,' but when I have the chance to stay somewhere more luxurious, I love The Montage in Beverly Hills.

I'm a little old-school in that I think there's some value in the classics and the steps of achieving a certain profession. If we start slanging the word 'chef' on anybody and everybody who cooks, it takes away a lot.

The restaurant chefs in Spain are breaking ground, but in terms of the everyday cooking in Spain I still hear people coming back and saying they were disappointed. I think it's because they're expecting the chef stuff.

I think I'm going to give my baby her first food on Thanksgiving, make her some organic sweet potato. I'm very excited! It's going to be a big day and my husband is in charge of the turkey - he's the chef of the family!

If you are a chef, you have an incredible responsibility in this world. Don't just open a restaurant to serve food. Include the community, and make sure that you are not taking advantage of what the planet has given us.

I swear, I didn't really go in thinking, 'I'll be the Simon Cowell' of 'Top Chef.' I was just used to being a judge on British food shows where people are much more outspoken and rather rude. That's the culture over here.

The hardest thing about being a full time chef is leaving my work behind when I go home at night. I'll toss and turn about a menu item or forget to order produce and wake up at 4 A.M. in a cold sweat over some artichokes.

It's a very naive idea to think that the chef is cooking everything, and, on top of it, is irreplaceable. That would mean that basically he is the only genius, and there are idiots all around him, which doesn't make sense.

I don't consider myself a rock star chef, I really don't. I cook for a living and I try to help out as many people as I can in my life and that's all I care about. I don't care about the fame of television, I use to a lot.

I've been a cook all my life, but I am still learning to be a good chef. I'm always learning new techniques and improving beyond my own knowledge because there is always something new to learn and new horizons to discover.

You have to be confident in who you are and what you're doing. Of course, you try to evolve. I would never tell you, 'Today is the best I will ever be.' I'm always trying to be a better chef, a better dad, a better person.

In an Indian kitchen, the focus is on getting the job or dish done right in whatever way possible; however, in a French kitchen there's a clear hierarchy, and a chef has to know where their skills are and not go beyond them.

I made a point of eating so fast I never kept the other people waiting who generally ordered only chef's salad and grapefruit juice because they were trying to reduce. Almost everybody I met in New York was trying to reduce.

If you go to chefs all across America and ask them, 'What's your biggest problem right now?,' It is finding people to cook in their restaurants. They're having an enormous, countrywide problem here staffing their operations.

I don't have a nanny. I have a chef, and I have my assistant, and that's it. I do it myself. You know, those hours with your child are really important ones, even if it's just the two of you, being quiet in the car together.

I never go to Vancouver without stopping by Thomas Haas' shop for the best chocolate in North America. A former chef patissier at Daniel, he returned to his hometown and created a top quality brand by sticking to his passion.

When I was in India, I felt like being a full-time chef was a very unique career path. It was quite the contrast from the traditional fields like engineering and medicine and not necessarily considered a full time profession.

You're thinking about a dish, you're thinking about an ingredient, and in many ways, you end up becoming a naked chef in front of the customer, because what you put on the plate is you. It's who you are and where you've been.

I think, as a chef and restaurateur, that you have to take care of your business. Otherwise, you're only as good as your last meal. You have to watch if your food costs are too high, or you could be out of business in no time.

The iPhone is like 'omakase', the style of sushi where the chef chooses what you're going to eat, and might even tell you how to eat it - no wasabi allowed on this, no soy sauce allowed on that. Definitely no California rolls.

At the end of the day, it seems like there's a critic archetype for food movies, like with 'Ratatouille' or anything. You know, if you were doing a puppet show about chefs, one puppet would be the chef, one would be the critic.

I'm not a chef. I haven't created any new technique in the kitchen. I'm not a rocket scientist. I think I'm good at writing accessible, fun, and affordable meals for the average American family. That's what I think I'm good at.

Being on "Top Chef" opens a lot of doors and gives you a wider audience than you may have had before. It was super-scary when I first finished the show, having no idea what to expect and wondering why my Facebook was blowing up.

The album 'Kelis Was Here' sucked the life out of me, and so I went off and studied to be a Cordon Bleu chef. What's great about food is that it's less about who you know and what you look like, and more about if you're any good.

I am a futurist, projecting trends in science into the next decades and century, but ironically my two daughters - one is a neuroscientist and the other is a pastry chef - tell me that my taste in music is positively prehistoric.

Ever since I read 'Kitchen Confidential,' I saw a little light bulb go off. Being a chef is like being on a pirate ship; it's not like 'Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?' or whatever my impression was as I was growing up.

Part of what makes a great chef is the ability to adapt, cook, and to taste. A great chef will use all their food knowledge, food memories, and senses to work with each ingredient and apply themselves to the dish they are creating.

If I'm alone, I tend to cook for myself. I do a pretty good job of preparing healthful foods. My go-to is everything in a bowl like quinoa, avocado. Later in the day, scrambled eggs. I'm not a gourmet chef. I cook in bulk very well.

My family truly believes they are better cooks than I am. They see me as Giada, not as a celebrity chef. To them I'm just me - their granddaughter, niece, etc., and they're older and wiser. I like that because it keeps you grounded.

I am not a chef. I can't claim that title. The difference is a cook doesn't have a degree. A chef has formal education. It has nothing to do with talent or actual preparation - one just can't claim the title if you don't have degree.

There is an old story that says that Julia Child dropped a chicken on the floor when she was filming 'The French Chef.' And then - that, in fact, is not true. She just, you know, dropped some potatoes she was trying to flip in a pan.

It's really unfair to working women in America who read celebrity news and think, 'Why can't I lose weight when I've had a baby?' Well, everyone you're reading about has money for a trainer and a chef. That doesn't make it realistic.

My grandfather used to be a chef and I remember going to his restaurant to peel potatoes and clean his floor. He used to go out and kiss all the girls in the restaurant and I thought 'oh this is good... one day I want to be like him.'

I was dishwasher, then promoted to chef in a local kitchen in a restaurant in Seattle, and I was working on a building site as well, putting in insulation and painting houses, and then doing some classes at a community college nearby.

I just love food and the art of it. There's such an art to being a good chef and the way you present food and the different ingredients you use. It's like music - you get inspiration from different genres. It's the same with art, too.

I probably do 10 to 12 Snapchats a day. Spending time with my family or my chef, my workouts, my outfits, or any events I'm attending. Playing music in the car is a big one for me. Dancing sometimes. Or asking people, 'How's business?'

I have a pet lizard named Puff, five goldfish - named Pinky, Brain, Jowels, Pearl and Sandy, an oscar fish named Chef, two pacus, an albino African frog named Whitey, a bonsai tree, four Venus flytraps, a fruit fly farm and sea monkeys.

My food hero would be someone like Elizabeth David, because I think what she did for Britain was amazing. Also David Thompson, an Australian chef who does Thai food and really understands the basis of it, has always been very inspiring.

I get so tickled when that pilot happens to be an African American because I rarely see that. The same is true when I go to find restaurants. I mean, most places I go, I kind of have some idea who the chef is, which is why I want to go.

I think that the stigmas against model-actresses - and even just, like, entertainer, celebrity chef, and musician - those kinds of walls have been broken down, and you can do multiple things. So while I can, I don't see why I would stop.

Yeah, I worked with a chef when I first got into the league. We did all my blood work and found out exactly what I'm sensitive to, what I'm deficient in, what my body needs. I had to cut out a lot of things - chicken, tuna, wheat, and soy.

Everybody has their role in the food world and what they choose to appreciate. I'm not a fine dining chef. I appreciate it. I think Thomas Keller is amazing. But I really like where I'm at; I like what I do. I like how it makes people feel.

I don't like to sit still for long at all, which has probably helped me along the way, and partly why I was drawn to the heat of a restaurant kitchen. The rush of service means that you're always on your toes and keeps a chef pretty active.

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