Chefs have a new opportunity - and perhaps even an obligation - to inform the public about what is good to eat, and why.
There is no conflict between a better meal and a better world.
When you get close to the raw materials and taste them at the moment they let go of the soil, you learn to respect them.
People will travel anywhere for good food - it's crazy.
Learning about issues such as sustainability and locavorism are things that you need to have as part of you as a chef because it will make you cook more delicious food.
If you see someone in the kitchen that has good hands and a quick brain, then you need that person to be in the front of everything.
Take a trip to the forest and experience the greatness of getting on your knees and picking your own food and going home... and eating it.
Close interaction with farmers and scientists can expose the chef to new flavours that can be used to delight diners.
Cooking, I mean, food, cooking foods is just everything that I do from morning to night. It's how I choose to live my life: through cooking, people that are in food culture. And I love it.
All of the people who work in the kitchen with me go out into the forests and on to the beach. It's a part of their job. If you work with me you will often be starting your day in the forest or on the shore because I believe foraging will shape you as a chef.
My last meal on Earth, I would love it to be a bowl of blueberries with cold cream.
I've never had anything but the freedom to do what I wanted just as long as it made me happy.
That's how people make sense of a meeting: they eat something. If they were in a sad moment it would be the same thing, they'd be eating something. It's what makes life fun. We don't need it to be delicious or great or all these things if we're just to survive. But it's one of those things that makes life fun, livable. And the more I submerge myself in it, the more fun I seem to have.
The drive for working comes from everyday moments - the thrill of experiencing a young cook succeeding in what they thought was an impossible job, as well as guests being happy. I also love the unknown - discovering new things and trying to make sense of them.
There's no media training. In cooking school, there's not even manager training. You learn the fundamentals of cooking. Everything else is learning by doing.
If you see how a plant grows and you taste it in situ you have a perfect example of how it should taste on the plate.
Fine dining is an occasional treat for most people.
I'm a bit of a glutton - I eat too much of all that is good to eat.
A gastronomical supermeal didn't necessarily have to involve the things I had brought from other top kitchens.
I can't crack jokes because I don't have any.
I started to change. It was sort of a restaurant mid-life crisis, you could say. I lost a lot of confidence, not so much as a father or as a friend, but as a boss, as a chef that's to make decisions throughout the day all the time. I just slowly started burning out. Once you lose your confidence like that, you start being angry in the kitchen. I couldn't recognize myself anymore. I started writing the journal. It was never meant to be a book, but the editor at Phaidon read parts of it. As editors do, I guess.
I never cooked at home - my father was the chef.
I only have the restaurant. If I do other things, it's only to do with the restaurant.
21 years ago when I started cooking, to be a cook meant that you were going to stay in the basement. Being a chef, you would never be on a book tour. You could never dream that 20 years later on you would be on a book tour. It wasn't a part of your dreams because it was just totally unrealistic. When did cooks - restaurant cooks, not cooks that have 15,000 television shows - when did cooks become part of pop culture the way they are?
I still cook at home. A lot of chefs I think don't cook at home. But I still do, I love cooking at home, I love having friends.
