Culinary Artistry Quotes

The thing is everything is good at the Cheesecake Factory. Everything's good. It's science-based. It's a formula; there's math. It's all good!

I've sat in sushi bars, really fine ones, and I know how hard this guy worked, how proud he is. I know you don't need sauce. I know he doesn't even want you to pour sauce. And I've seen customers come in and do that, and I've seen him, as stoic as he tries to remain, I've seen him die a little inside.

A recipe has no soul. You, as the cook, must bring soul to the recipe.

At wd~50, we have carried on, I think, a very honest, legitimate European tradition of messing with foie gras.

When you have a few cake formulas and filling ideas in your repertoire, you will find that it's pretty much an assembly job - you can mix and match a different way every time.

Part of being a really good chef or cook is being able to fix disasters.

The most beautiful thing in the world is my grandmother's apple pie.

Everything I do, I want to take it to the farthest possible degree. I can't just do something the plain way. I don't cook a bowl of pasta; it has to be puff pastry swans.

Why spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour," she'd ask us, "when in the same amount of time, I can do a painting that will last forever?

Chefs aren't celebrities: they're chefs.

I would try doing a dish 30 different ways.

Cooks must feed their egos as well as their customers.

On 'Sweet Genius,' you have to be tough with the chefs, but my goal was to guide them and choose the genius who will win $10,000 - not a bad sum at all for one day's work.

Vietnamese food has probably been saved from the mass market because most people never master the sauces and condiments that must be added to the food, at the table, for its glories to become apparent. It's too much trouble, and a lot of people don't like asking for help, especially if the interaction involves some linguistic awkwardness.

Few things are more beautiful to me than a bunch of thuggish, heavily tattooed line cooks moving around each other like ballerinas on a busy Saturday night. Seeing two guys who'd just as soon cut each other's throats in their off hours moving in unison with grace and ease can be as uplifting as any chemical stimulant or organized religion.

I write in freehand equivalents because measuring, to me, takes away from the creative process of cooking. Two turns of the pan with EVOO is about two tablespoons.

In the 1970s, British food was beginning to get good, whereas in France it was just starting its long, sad decline. My most memorable meals, however, have been in Italy.

This is the most elaborate and luxurious method of convincing others that you can cook. Take everybody out on your yacht until they're green in the face. Then you can rave for weeks about your sauce marinara and no one will gainsay you.

I don't really care that much about eating. But I like impressing people with how good a cook I am. So I will cook. I'm an excellent cook. Not many people know that about me.

The art of the cuisine, when fully mastered, is the one human capability of which only good things can be said.

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.

Anytime I prepare a meal for my family, I am putting all of my time, effort, energy, and love into it.

Fancy Restaurant: one that serves cold soup on purpose.

Everyone makes pesto in a food processor. But the texture is better with a mortar and pestle, and it's just as fast.

Millions of American women, and some men, commit that outrage every summer day. They are turning a superb treat into mere provender. Shucked and boiled in water, sweet corn is edible and nutritious; roasted in the husk in the hottest possible oven for forty minutes, shucked at the table, and buttered and salted, nothing else, it is ambrosia. No chef’s ingenuity and imagination have ever created a finer dish. American women should themselves be boiled in water.