Chef Quotes - Page 5

For the longest time, chefs and restaurateurs were able to get products home cooks couldn’t get, but that’s not the case anymore.

Things are going to go wrong. The great chefs are the ones that don't let it fluster them. They just move through it.

I was lucky enough to marry a wonderful chef.

I'd rather go with someone who wasn't a great speaker, but was a great chef, rather than someone who was a great performer, but maybe not a great cook.

People have no idea how much work it is for a man to produce an ejaculation. You have this seminal vesicle churning out this fluid, the prostate gland producing an alkaline solution. It's like having five iron chefs in your crotch working to cook up this stuff.

The pendulum of cookery techniques became more significant than the actual experience. And when that happens, the customer's satisfaction becomes secondary to the chef's satisfaction. And in that case, you have an upside-down equation. Because the customer is the basis of our restaurant, first of all, and if the chef becomes the most important person at the table - even more so than the guests - then suddenly you're left with something that doesn't really work.

You need to know your craft.

Even growing up, I was always the helper-outer, the sous-chef to my parents.

As a chef, if I can taste something, I can basically figure out whats in it.

Chicago is a lot of my background as a chef.

A chef who doesn't wash his hands is like a cop who steals. It's a cry for help.

I did all the Chef Boyardee commercials, in America, when I was young.

When you'd get a note from someone, the government, it meant something was wrong. This was the way it was. Just goes to show you the way that being a chef has changed, you know - being on the bottom of the social scale and now being what we are, it's incredible, it's terrific.

All the great chefs I know - Thomas Keller, Jean-Georges Vongerichten - they are technicians first.

Obsolescence is the key to innovation.

I suppose more than anything, chefs have gotten better, which is great news, which makes my life a lot easier. I can be a lot more creative in terms of the menu.

[Molecular gastronomy] was a great trend, because it experimented with food. The benchmark was [former elBulli head chef] Ferran Adrià, and now he is no longer there it is harder to gauge.

Everybody these days wants to be a star, including myself. Don't get me wrong, I'm a chef but you want to market yourself and your projects.

There's not a single chef I know of that does not think about the politics of the food they're serving.

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.

You don't become a chef to become famous.

I'm not a trained chef, so I end up making stuff up. It either turns out brilliant or an absolute disaster. I just go for it.

Chefs aren't celebrities: they're chefs.

I love food shows: Anthony Bourdain, Iron Chef, Chopped, you name it.

If you were to go to a restaurant and disagree with Daniel Boulud, he'd probably throw something at you. Restaurant chefs have a problem with caterers because we accommodate special requests, but great service is about getting exactly what you want.