Andrea Hirata Quotes

My mother always cooked, every day, proper food. We didn't have fast food. It was probably pretty much meat and two veg, but as time went on and new things came into the culture, she embraced all of that. I grew up with mealtimes and sitting around the table with proper cooking and eating.

There is a lot of food culture that goes on in the home and in the community in non-traditional ways. Food is a lot more than restaurants.

I'm going to work on food culture and help food become fun and part of peoples' lives again. The traditional restaurant is more commercial-oriented. But I want community through food.

I grew up on a farm, and I had good, natural South Tyrolean food.

When you grow up close to poultry and fields and gardens and open-air markets, you can't help but develop an instinct for quality food.

I think America's food culture is embedded in fast-food culture. And the real question that we have is: How are we going to teach slow-food values in a fast-food world? Of course, it's very, very difficult to do, especially when children have grown up eating fast food and the values that go with that.

Simply by starting to cook again, you declare your independence from the culture of fast food. As soon as you cook, you start thinking about ingredients. You start thinking about plants and animals and not the microwave. And you will find that your diet, just by that one simple act, that is greatly improved.

The United States is far too efficient. We've lost the ceremony of eating. People don't eat at home and cook meals at home.

When I grew up in Italy in the 1950s, it was still very agricultural. Food was very important; produce was very important. Everyone made their own olive oil. It took me a long time after I moved here to understand that Americans are much further away from their food.

At home I serve the kind of food I know the story behind.

People who grow up in a region doubtless have a better cultural awareness of their own cuisine, but it's also true that a lot of locals go to McDonald's, Applebee's and the like.

My wife doesn't cook, so we eat out every night. It's not fine dining or anything - we're not fancy people.

I love to eat out, but even more, I love to eat in.

I love home cooking, and I'm not a great one for fast food.

I grew up with that farm-to-table dining before it was sweeping the nation. I do think there's some value to really throwing yourself into food and embracing where it comes from.

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.

Hardly any of my most memorable meals have been eaten in a restaurant, and definitely none in one of those fancy marble-floored, polished-silver establishments.

That's one of the things my family miss most when I'm travelling - my Sunday roasts and my Japanese meals.

I eat only simple Indian home food - sabzi, roti, dal, chawal, ghee. There are so many benefits of having ghee. My grandmother is 84 and she is still fit and looks beautiful.

The food I've liked in my time is American country cookin'.

Wherever I go, as long as I get a hot vegetable dish, I am okay. If I am in Gujarat, I have Gujarati food. If it's Shillong, it's northeastern.

Eating local is a relatively new concept in American dining; for the Italians, it's a way of life.

When I visit a country, I like to experience local food.

Few people know that I love local dhaba food. It is the best!

I like healthful foods, but I'm from the Midwest, so I like food that's been around longer.