Culinary Craftsmanship Quotes

I came from the old world of gastronomy. Many years ago I walked into the kitchens of the Hotel St George and I feel very fortunate that I worked for chefs that were behind their stoves. I saw that world of gastronomy. I can sit here today and say that I saw the golden age of gastronomy. It's gone, it's gone. It's never going to have that anymore, once the accountants get involved the romance fades. That's the reality.

No matter how much creativity goes into it, cooking is an art. Or perhaps I should say a craft. It abides by absolute rules, physics, chemistry, etc. and that means that unless you understand the science you cannot reach the art. We're not talking about painting here. Cooking's more like engineering. I happen to think that there is great beauty in great engineering.

Cooking is work that is traditionally done by working-class people. The work itself is not glamorous. It's repetitive, and it's a lot closer to factory work than art, whatever level you're doing it at. Certainly chefs are used to living like rock 'n' rollers to some extent, inasmuch as we get a lot of those fringe benefits without having to learn how to play guitar.

The art of cooking is among the most intimate things that we can do for another.

These French-style caramels are handmade in California. It's always hard to give them away!

Cooking done with care is an act of love.

Why take pride in cooking, when they don't take pride in eating?

The workman mindful of success, therefore, will naturally direct his attention to the faultless preparation of his stock, and in order to achieve this result, he will find it necessary not merely to make use of the freshest and finest goods, but also to exercise the most scrupulous care in their preparation, for, in cooking, care is half the battle.

Food made by hand is an act of defiance and runs contrary to everything in our modernity. Find it; eat it; it will go. It has been around for millennia. Now it is evanescent, like a season.

When you become a good cook, you become a good craftsman, first. You repeat and repeat and repeat until your hands know how to move without thinking about it.

The best poet is the man who delivers our daily bread: the local baker.

I'm not a good butcher but I've had to learn to carve the joint. People expect a new look.

I think the great Mexican cuisine is dying because there are fast foods now competing, because there are supermarkets, and supermarkets can't afford to keep in stock a lot of these very perishable products that are used for fine Mexican cooking. Women are working and real Mexican cooking requires enormous amounts of time.

You walk into a restaurant when chefs are not there and it's different. The magic isn't there. Why pay top pounds when the chef is not in the house? I feel cheated. I don't mind paying big money for food but if I go to Paul Bocuse's restaurant I want Paul in the house.

Even more then long hours in the kitchen, fine meals require ingenious organization and experience which is a pleasure to acquire.

there is a poetry in making preserves; the housewife has caught duration in the snare of sugar, she has enclosed life in jars.

People cooked with a certain integrity before fast food, 50 or 60 years ago. When the cheap food arrived, and we didn't have the education and deep cultural roots to hold on, we got swept away by fast, cheap and easy.

I love to try and cook. I'm pretty good, but I'm not saying I'm great. So that's exactly why I wanted to learn from the best. There's a certain type of bonding that happens when you cook with people you love.

To see the butcher slap the steak before he laid it on the block, and give his knife a sharpening, was to forget breakfast instantly. It was agreeable too - it really was - to see him cut it off so smooth and juicy. There was nothing savage in the act, although the knife was large and keen; it was a piece of art, high art; there was delicacy of touch, clearness of tone, skilful handling of the subject, fine shading. It was the triumph of mind over matter; quite.

The family was an art ... and the dinner table was the place it found expression.

Beauty fades, but cooking is eternal.

I got killed against Morimoto. I brought out white plates with food; I thought that was really nice. He brings out sculptures of ice, Noah's ark made of balsa wood that he carved at his restaurant downstairs, smoking trees ... When I saw that, I looked at my sous chef and I'm like, we're toast.

I think at Le Cirque I learned how to make real food, which is what people crave, not just gimmicky things on a plate.

In a time when it is common for chefs to simply reproduce the innovations of others, the few who speak for themselves through their food become the skilled artists of their time.

I was drawn to bakery and pastry. It's the same discipline you employ in dance - you take the instruction, and you keep on practicing, seeking perfection. You never achieve it, but you strive.