In any restaurant of this caliber, the chefs are in the same position, building relationships.
You see fewer and fewer chefs who are really big - most stay in shape.
I call all chefs 'cooks.' They're all cooks. That's what we do, we cook. You're a chef when you're running a kitchen.
Television is kind of a disappointment. I often want to watch it, but I find it quite hard - I don't like soaps, reality TV or celebrity chefs.
No one raps about food like I do. I rap about fine dishes - like, all kinds of things that only real chefs and real foodies are going to know about.
The pressure, the heat, the almost impossibly fast pace at which you need work - this is the reality of working in the culinary industry. This is what professional chefs do night after night.
I think all chefs who pursue great flavor have good ethics.
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.
I take apart restaurant menus everywhere I go. I kind of tick off a lot of chefs in restaurants because I'll say, 'You can keep all of the sauce, keep all of that garbage - just give me that piece of fish. Forget the salad dressing, I don't need all of that extra stuff. Just give it to me straight up, and I'll eat it.'
The food being presented at the most expensive restaurants, by the most sophisticated chefs, was not always recognizable as food to the diner - it required a leap of faith, and I felt curious about that phenomenon.
The good news about showcasing chefs and the TV shows is they've attracted a lot more smart kids to the profession than 30 years ago. On the downside, though, these young chefs all say they want their own restaurant and their own TV show.
When we talk about chefs, we often talk about their love of food or their passion for it, but cooking is also about making a living; it's a job.
Cookbooks have all become baroque and very predictable. I'm looking for something different. A lot of chefs' cookbooks are food as it's done in the restaurants, but they are dumbed down, and I hate it when they dumb them down.
I love chicken. But, like a lot of chefs and cooks, I get tired of preparing it the same way.
As chefs, we cook to please people, to nourish people.
Chefs don't become chefs just to earn stars - that's not the goal.
Bad food is made without pride, by cooks who have no pride, and no love. Bad food is made by chefs who are indifferent, or who are trying to be everything to everybody, who are trying to please everyone... Bad food is fake food... food that shows fear and lack of confidence in people's ability to discern or to make decisions about their lives.
I love Michel Roux, Jr., and James Martin - the chefs who are experts in their own right, like Rick Stein on fish. But I don't watch them very much because I don't think it's fair for my husband to be in a total food environment all the time! So we watch programmes about gardening more.
I have met a lot of top chefs around the world during my travels. Each one of them has said 'Ratatouille' is their favorite movie and the only movie that truly captures what they do.
I like the fact that Melbourne always seems to support their chefs and promote them in ways I find really admirable.
