I love eggs. When it's the season of truffles, scrambled eggs with truffles, and I'm happy. I'm smiling like that.
I am a Buddhist, therefore I should not be collecting anything - however, I have a collection of Buddhas. I have a lot of them.
My mother and my grandmother would make an apple tart in different styles, and I had one per day. Every day I would eat one full apple tart.
I have more eating memories than cooking memories and many memories of being in the kitchen - I was always attracted to the kitchen - but nobody ever wanted me to touch anything.
I have very vivid memories of being a young child. My mother would create dinner as for us, and when she would bake, she would leave some dough for me. I would roll the dough into little sticks while she was cooking the apple tart of whatever. I was looking through the window of the oven and flipping the light, and then my bread would come out, and it was inedible, of course.
I'm very bad, but I like to dance.
Today, because I want to be gentle on my back, I listen to jazz.
In New York there used to be some very good clubs with amazing sound systems. Techno was part of the process.
I am an audiophile. It's almost like a virus. I'm completely crazy about the quality of sound. It's interesting and painful at the same time; you have to really spend a lot of money on the equipment.
When I realized, "Hm, I'm not that good at all. It will take me weeks, maybe months, to master the 32 yolks." When I did, it was a turning point in my career.
At 15, I had to choose a vocational school, and I was delighted, of course, to go to culinary school. But learning the basics was not as exciting as being the chef I am today.
It was my first day working at Tour d'Argent, a famous restaurant in Paris, in 1982, and they were celebrating their 400th anniversary. I am in the fish station and after many mistakes, including cutting myself after 30 seconds in that kitchen, the chef said, "Make a Hollandaise sauce with 32 yolks." It takes me forever to separate the yolks from the whites, and I put them in a bowl and try to go close to the stove, but the stove is way too hot for me.
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.
When you are 25, 30, you know, you have no responsibility, no mortgage, no kids, no retirement to think about, nothing.
