Eric Ripert Quotes

Fifteen years ago, France was the promised land of cooking. So I looked at a map, found five restaurants and faxed them to ask for a job. Within five minutes, I got a reply from the then three- star Le Jardin des Sens in Montpellier.

To be a gourmet you must start early, as you must begin riding early to be a good horseman. You must live in France, your father must have been a gourmet. Nothing in life must interest you but your stomach.

For reasons I didn't understand, I felt I needed to learn how to cook the food of France and knew that I was going to have to get over to the country: to Paris, I'd always assumed.

Women can spin very well; but they cannot make a good book of cookery.

My mom, who's been in the restaurant business for 40 years, is the number-one influence in my life. But I look up to a lot of people in the industry. Tops on my list is Mario Batali. My mom and Mario taught me the same lesson: Food is love.

I think D.C. has always been very, very vibrant for food. Like Boston in a way. Boston and D.C. were really the two cities that were the most active with their local chefs and their local food scene.

No matter what their background, the southern French are fascinated by food.

In Paris we have bistros, then we have fine dining. In London, you have a very contemporary scene with mixed influences.

In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.

I think in France, for example, we can say whatever we want about the French, but going out and dining is more about the intellectual moment to share with the people you dine with than trying to figure out what the chef did with that little piece of salmon or lobster and all that.

I still feel that French cooking is the most important in the world, one of the few that has rules. If you follow the rules, you can do pretty well.

Here's the irony in what I do: When I go out to eat, I like classic French food. I like amazing Japanese food that has such a history that it goes back hundreds of years. And I also like really innovative food as well.

Progress in civilization has been accompanied by progress in cookery.

In Paris and later in Marseille, I was surrounded by some of the best food in the world, and I had an enthusiastic audience in my husband, so it seemed only logical that I should learn how to cook 'la cuisine bourgeoise' - good, traditional French home cooking.

I'd rather have Daniel Boulud have 20 restaurants than some restauranteur. It's going to make the food in our country better.

I am a serious food lover and Peruvian cuisine is one of the best in the world.

I never even dreamed of being a chef, and that's fundamental.

Food can be very transformational, and it can be more than just about a dish. That's what happened to me when I first went to France. I fell in love. And if you fall in love, well, then everything is easy.

English food writer Elizabeth David, cook and author Richard Olney and the owner of Domaine Tempier Lulu Peyraud have all really inspired the way I think about food.

On the whole, I rather disapprove of cookbooks, except for the literary ones, like Elizabeth David's.

When I studied at the Parisian cookery school Le Cordon Bleu, making shortcrust pastry was one of the first techniques I learned.

When I was growing up, Chef Charlie Trotter inspired me a lot.

A fellowship to Oxford acquainted me with the depths of English cooking. By the twenty-first century, London's best restaurants are as good as Paris's, but not in the 1950s.

I was a voracious reader and the library fed my curiosity, imagination and my soul. I read by the shelf - biographies, fantasy - all and everything fed my dreams. Then as an adult whenever I would go on location the first thing we would do as a family is sign up at the closest library. Not only would we find books, but what was happening in that town, because the library is the head of the community.

No nation has ever produced great art that has not made a high art of cookery, because art appeals primarily to the senses.