Chef Quotes

“Drugs didn't work out too well for me.”

“What you're going to be eating in the next year is decided by chefs. If the consensus is that pot-bellies are in next season, that's what's on your plate. And I think that's a good thing, because we know, obviously, about food.”

“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.”

“The ingredients of a hamburger seldom vary. It's a percentage of fat to lean meat, add salt and prepare and that's it. It shouldn't need a recipe.”

“If you've ever hauled a 28-pound two-year-old around New York, you'll find that men fold at the knees a lot quicker than women.”

“I'm a control freak. If you're going to slap my name on something, I would like to control it.”

“When my father passed, I was still an unsuccessful cook with a drug problem. I was in my mid-thirties, standing behind an oyster bar, cracking clams for a living when he died. So, he never saw me complete a book or achieve anything of note. I would have liked to have shared this with him.”

“When your signature dish is hamburger in between a doughnut, and you've been cheerfully selling this stuff knowing all along that you've got Type 2 Diabetes... It's in bad taste if nothing else.”

“I don't have much patience for people who are self-conscious about the act of eating, and it irritates me when someone denies themselves the pleasure of a bloody hunk of steak or a pungent French cheese because of some outdated nonsense about what's appropriate or attractive.”

“You know, it's not the world I would have wanted, for sure.”

“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.”

“I was a journeyman chef of middling abilities. Whatever authority I have as a commenter on this world comes from the sheer weight of 28 years in the business. I kicked around for 28 years and came out the other end alive and able to form a sentence.”

“People everywhere have been very, very good to me, whether I'm with or without cameras.”

“For me, the cooking life has been a long love affair, with moments both sublime and ridiculous.”

“I, personally, think there is a really danger of taking food too seriously. Food should be part of the bigger picture.”

“I don't snack. I don't generally eat sweets or drink soda. I never eat between meals or even before big ones.”

“I'm very type-A, and many things in my life are about control and domination, but eating should be a submissive experience, where you let down your guard and enjoy the ride.”

“As a chef I’m not your dietitian or your ethicist, I’m in the pleasure business.”

“Don't touch my d**k, don't touch my knife.”

“When I cook, I generally stick with what I know, what I'm comfortable with, and what I feel I've paid my dues learning, and am good at.”

“Food is so personal - I mean someone is talking to you when people are cooking for you. I like to hear an identifiable voice.”

“Cooking professionally is a dominant act, at all times about control. Eating well, on the other hand, is about submission. It's about giving up all vestiges of control, about entrustingyour fate entirely to someone else. It's about turning off the mean, manipulative, calculating, and shrewd person inside you, and slipping heedlessly into a new experience as if it were awarm bath. It's about shutting down the radar and letting good things happen. Let it happen to you.”

“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 a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don't agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.”

“Just because I like sushi, doesn't mean I can make sushi. I've come to well understand how many years just to get sushi rice correct. It's a discipline that takes years and years and years. So, I leave that to the experts.”