ERIC RIPERT

I find the organic wave much more interesting in America than in France.

For me, I do not wish to build an empire.

In a professional kitchen, the idea is to have your cooks not moving much while they're cooking. You want them to stay in the same spot.

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.

Everybody wants to support his own region and economy and farming. If we can preserve the land and if we can preserve the ocean, we all know, deep inside that we're doing the right thing.

Obviously California is fantastic in terms of produce, vegetables.

If you can't think like an onion or a carrot or a tomato, you may be a technician, but you won't understand what you're doing, and your dish will be flat.

I see a lot of people who change careers in the middle of their life and they think it's a good idea to come in the kitchen.

The nature of human beings is to eat meat and fruits and vegetables, and therefore we have to kill animals. I don't have a problem with that. But it's a sacred moment. It's a gift of life.

A lot of foreign people say, when asking about eating habits, 'What is your guilty pleasure?' I have no guilt. Whatever I do, I enjoy and it's the point. I think if you start to feel guilty about it, that's a problem. So, no guilty pleasures. I have pleasure and no guilt at all.

When you are 25, 30, you know, you have no responsibility, no mortgage, no kids, no retirement to think about, nothing.

I am not a picture guy. I like to live in the present and keep the image of the past vivid in my mind. I don't need the precision of the picture.

When I see someone who has responsibilities, most of the time I can pinpoint that person because of the way he carries himself.

When I am about to have a difficult project, I dream I am climbing a mountain. When everything is going fine, I dream I am going down the mountain.

I barely speak English.

I don't follow the food trends.

Money is not necessarily, although it helps a lot for happiness, it's not necessarily the best way to be happy, to be rich, you know.

I don't like it when I go to a restaurant and I'm lectured from the menu.

There is great food in Vegas.

To me, it's very important to have time at the restaurant but also time with family and time for myself.

I am a Buddhist, therefore I should not be collecting anything - however, I have a collection of Buddhas. I have a lot of them.

Nobody wants an ugly book.

It's a very naive idea to think that the chef is cooking everything, and, on top of it, is irreplaceable. That would mean that basically he is the only genius, and there are idiots all around him, which doesn't make sense.

America is a such a melting pot, I'm not sure if roast chicken is the classic comfort food for everybody.

It has been stressful to be a French resident in America.