Chef Quotes

“I'm very proud of the Rome episode of 'No Reservations' because it violated all the conventional wisdom about making television. You're never, ever supposed to do a food or travel show in black and white.”

“If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.”

“I'm a radical environmentalist; I think the sooner we asphyxiate in our own filth, the better. The world will do better without us. Maybe some fuzzy animals will go with us, but there'll be plenty of other animals, and they'll be back.”

“I'd never done anything useful as far as my writing.”

“When I'm back in New York - and this is a terrible thing to complain about - I eat a lot more really, really good food than perhaps I'd like to. So many of my friends are really good chefs. It's kind of like being in the Mafia.”

“Every chef I know, their cholesterol is through the roof. And mine's not so great.”

“Only desperation can account for what the Chinese do in the name of 'medicine.' That's something you might remind your New Age friends who've gone gaga over 'holistic medicine' and 'alternative Chinese cures.”

“There are chefs who are spectacular technicians, and often their food is worth eating once or twice, but if there's no heart in it, if there's no personality in it, it's not something you want to go back for. But heart without any skill at all? All the heart in the world ain't gonna help you if you can't peel an onion, or if you don't understand how to apply heat properly. A well-done steak is a well-done steak.”

“I'm married to an Italian woman, and I used to love cooking Italian at home, because it's one-pot cooking. But my wife does not approve of my Italian cooking.”

“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.”

“I'm evangelical on the subject of some chefs and writers.”

“My house is run, essentially, by an adopted, fully clawed cat with a mean nature.”

“The Congo was the most difficult shoot of my life but was also maybe the greatest adventure of my life.”

“Do you really want to make risotto to order when you have eight guests sitting there? No. It won't work. Most cookbooks won't tell you that. They will say make it and it will come out perfectly. They should tell you you're probably going to screw it up the first 10 times you make it.”

“In that sense, what a great way to live, if you could always do things that interest you, and do them with people who interest you.”

“My brain and body and nervous system, they see a plane ride, a long plane trip, as an opportunity to sleep with nothing coming in, nothing to do. I just go offline the minute I'm on the plane.”

“My wife was easy because she trains [jiu-jitsu] all the time. She's pretty much on a completely different diet. I always just threw meat at her and she's happy on a 100 percent protein diet, so we seldom ate together.”

“One of my few virtues - I don't have a lot of them - would be a deep sense of curiosity. I'm interested in how other people live in other places; I'm interested in other cultures.”

“I wish I could play bass like Larry Graham or Bootsy Collins. My God, I'd give up just about everything else for that.”

“I lurched away from the table after a few hours feeling like Elvis in Vegas - fat, drugged, and completely out of it.”

“I would frankly be shocked if Donald Trump even knows how to use chopsticks or is even able to manipulate them with those tiny little fingers.”

“I admire vegetarians who refuse to eat nothing but vegetables in their homes, but I also admire those who put aside those principles or those preferences when they travel. Just to be a good guest.”

“It would be an egregious mistake to ever refer to me in the same breath as most of the people I write about.”

“I don't have to agree with you to like you or respect you.”

“It just seems there's better things to do in your life than be on television if it's not interesting, if it's not challenging, if it's not fun. You know? When it stops being those things for me, I'll stop making television.”