I always had a lot of fun in America, with much more freedom than if I had tried to cook in France. I wouldn't have the same motivation or inspiration, and I wouldn't have cooked for the same kind of people in France, so it wouldn't have given me this edge I had in America.
I love eating out. I don't deny that. But I don't want 12 or 15 courses because the chef wants me to taste this or taste that. I just want to be able to decide.
Taste cannot be controlled by law.
Prepared and fast foods have given us the time and freedom to see cooking as an art form - a form of creative expression.
I live in a world where I want everyone to be able to put beurre blanc on the table for dinner.
Say what you will about the south, but in North Carolina a hot dog is free to swing anyway it wishes.
Every Frenchie has inherited their own way of making ratatouille, usually just as maman used to make. Well, my mum never made one, so I consider that my licence to make mine as I please.
Margarita was never short of money. She could buy whatever she liked. Her husband had plenty of interesting friends. Margarita never had to cook. Margarita knew nothing of the horrors of living in a shared flat. In short... was she happy? Not for a moment.
The only kind of restaurant I could imagine doing would be the extraordinarily snooty restaurant with three or four tables, and I would cook what I felt like cooking. And you could eat it or not.
I really don't limit myself in any way. I just search for great flavors and marriages wherever they come from.
I make an enormous amount of salads, but my salads are like meals. They're amazing. I like going down to the farmers' market and looking to see whatever you can find, because you can put anything in a salad.
Italians allow anything in their cooking.
I don't have much patience for people who are self-conscious about the act of eating, and it irritates me when someone denies themselves the pleasure of a bloody hunk of steak or a pungent French cheese because of some outdated nonsense about what's appropriate or attractive.
I think a lot of people think being in the kitchen is being really serious, and especially that baking is very serious, very straitlaced. For me, it's about figuring out your voice, finding your personality, and getting in the kitchen to explore.
I eat everything I want on Christmas day. I really don't watch what I eat. It's not like you have Christmas every day!
I think people make it too systematic in a way, like it's a chemistry formula. Food is not like that; food is very forgiving. Connecting and making do with a lot of the food elements can be fun and exciting.
I always thought eating what you wanted was one of those aspects of adulthood to be looked forward to when you were a child.
Chefs have only been able to work in restaurants, high-end cuisine. Why? Why haven't they been able to find other scenarios? For those chefs who want to do avant-garde cuisine, should they be finding their income in a restaurant? These are the kind of questions we are asking ourselves. So the new scenario will allow them to do whatever they want to do, whenever they want to do it.
