Top 295 Chef Quotes

I think the goal of ‘Chef’s Table’ is that you are so moved by the story that you want to go and eat that person’s food at their restaurant. But I wanted the takeaway from my show to be that you go and cook the thing.

‘Top Chef’ is always entertaining – it’s hard to stop watching, like a good hockey fight, but no one gets hurt. It’s great that the format is so inherently dramatic and can make cooking so entertaining to people who might not ordinarily be interested in a cooking show. Good for the industry all round.

You know, my parents had a restaurant. And I left home, actually, in 1949, when I was 13 years old, to go into apprenticeship. And actually when I left home, home was a restaurant – like I said, my mother was a chef. So I can’t remember any time in my life, from age 5, 6, that I wasn’t in a kitchen.

I’m not a chef. But I’m passionate about food – the tradition of it, cooking it, and sharing it.

Everybody these days wants to be a star, including myself. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a chef but you want to market yourself and your projects.

You’re thinking about a dish, you’re thinking about an ingredient, and in many ways, you end up becoming a naked chef in front of the customer, because what you put on the plate is you. It’s who you are and where you’ve been.

Every dish is very connected to my own experiences. Perhaps I go deeper in the description and feeling in the dish than a male chef would. But it’s difficult to say.

Over the years, quite a few TV producers proposed that I do a program, but I refused. I didn’t want to work on a set that looked like a theater; I wanted a kitchen of the sort every chef dreams about.

I watch a lot of shows on Bravo – I’m not just saying that. I love ‘Top Chef.’ I love ‘Real Housewives of Atlanta.’ That’s my favorite.

If I’m alone, I tend to cook for myself. I do a pretty good job of preparing healthful foods. My go-to is everything in a bowl like quinoa, avocado. Later in the day, scrambled eggs. I’m not a gourmet chef. I cook in bulk very well.

I don’t consider myself a rock star chef, I really don’t. I cook for a living and I try to help out as many people as I can in my life and that’s all I care about. I don’t care about the fame of television, I use to a lot.

I’ve been experimenting more and more with LN2, liquid nitrogen. I’ve used it in battle on ‘Iron Chef America,’ but have also made some great ice creams at home for my family. Since it freezes basically on contact, you can have ice cream ready in mere minutes.

Gordon Ramsay, the only chef in London honored with three stars by the ‘Guide Michelin,’ is not a monster.

The idea of old was to conform yourself to a style of cooking, it was not to create a style of cooking. Now the chef is so much into ‘I want to sign that dish and say I am the one who made that dish.’

Being a chef is about feeding people, which is part of the story of all humanity.

My grandfather used to be a chef and I remember going to his restaurant to peel potatoes and clean his floor. He used to go out and kiss all the girls in the restaurant and I thought ‘oh this is good… one day I want to be like him.’

I don’t like food that’s too carefully arranged; it makes me think that the chef is spending too much time arranging and not enough time cooking. If I wanted a picture I’d buy a painting.

A chef’s palate is born out of his childhood, and one thing all chefs have in common is a mother who can cook.

I don’t like to sit still for long at all, which has probably helped me along the way, and partly why I was drawn to the heat of a restaurant kitchen. The rush of service means that you’re always on your toes and keeps a chef pretty active.

My food hero would be someone like Elizabeth David, because I think what she did for Britain was amazing. Also David Thompson, an Australian chef who does Thai food and really understands the basis of it, has always been very inspiring.

You can’t be a chef and appear on television all the time. It’s impossible. At least when I earned my stars, I was always behind my stove.

If I’m in the ‘hood, I like Chef Creole’s Haitian rice and stewed chicken.

There’s a bond among a kitchen staff, I think. You spend more time with your chef in the kitchen than you do with your own family.

My grandfather was a chef and would make everything himself, including the wine, and had his own huge pizza oven. All the neighbors used to come over and use it to bake their bread.

Men are more mechanical when we cook. Women are more attached. They cook it with feelings. From personal experience. The feeling a female chef puts in the food places her way ahead of men chefs.

It’s true that writing and pastry-making are similar, but when you work as a pastry chef, you can get a kind of mania that everything you see is related to pastries.

Get to know the Chef and you will start to enjoy dining out even more.

Yeah, I worked with a chef when I first got into the league. We did all my blood work and found out exactly what I’m sensitive to, what I’m deficient in, what my body needs. I had to cut out a lot of things – chicken, tuna, wheat, and soy.

I’ve been a cook all my life, but I am still learning to be a good chef. I’m always learning new techniques and improving beyond my own knowledge because there is always something new to learn and new horizons to discover.

I thought I’d be a chef by night and paint by day. Now I just have fabulous dinner parties.

By the time I was 30, nobody would work with me. I was friendless, I was hopeless, I was suicidal, lost my family – I mean, it was bad. Bottomed out, didn’t know what I was going to do. I actually thought I was going to be a chef – go to work in a kitchen someplace.

Fish butchering means a lot to me as a chef; I take pride in it and get a lot of joy from filleting fish, working with fish, breaking down fish, trying to understand fish.

There is the cult of the actor and of the director, and there’s even been the cult of the celebrity chef and gardener, but there has never been a cult of the screenwriter. But I’m happy about that because what I crave – in a completely venal way – is creative opportunities, not recognition.

I am often asked what I would be doing if I hadn’t become a writer. I have long said I would probably be a chef or a garden designer or a decorator, but since recording my own books, there is no doubt in my mind that if the writing doesn’t work out, voice work is what I would choose.

The hardest thing for a chef is to become comfortable with what you do. Not to be too neurotic and worried with what you are doing and how wrong or right you are.

Learning about issues such as sustainability and locavorism are things that you need to have as part of you as a chef because it will make you cook more delicious food.

I watched ‘Iron Chef ‘ for years, and I thought, ‘That’s playing for the New York Yankees.’ I made that my version of being Derek Jeter, and I worked really, really hard to win that.

I’m not a chef: I’m a cook.

My reasons for becoming a chef are somewhat of a cliche. I always loved to eat but it was watching my parents cook that really served as the impetus for my career choice.

I have a pet lizard named Puff, five goldfish – named Pinky, Brain, Jowels, Pearl and Sandy, an oscar fish named Chef, two pacus, an albino African frog named Whitey, a bonsai tree, four Venus flytraps, a fruit fly farm and sea monkeys.

I’m not a celebrity chef. I’m a chef that happens to have television shows and a chef that happens to do media.

People with chile peppers on their chef pants shouldn’t be allowed in the kitchen.

It’s not like I’m going to be the new tele chef or anything, I don’t want that at all.

America gave me the opportunity to open successful restaurants, start a TV show, and write books. I can even fill an auditorium when I give a speech, which in America is rare for a chef.

I wasn’t that great a chef, and I don’t think I’m that great a writer.

While you can have the cult of the celebrity chef, the food still must taste good.

If I didn’t ever model? I would be back in Kansas. I would probably end up being a pastry chef. My grandma taught me how to make a pie.

All of the people who work in the kitchen with me go out into the forests and on to the beach. It’s a part of their job. If you work with me you will often be starting your day in the forest or on the shore because I believe foraging will shape you as a chef.

I’ve been fascinated by the world ever since I read ‘Kitchen Confidential’ by Anthony Bourdain. I’ve watched ‘Top Chef’ and watched interviews with chefs on ‘Charlie Rose’… I thought they’re really intriguing characters, and they really encapsulate that tension between vision and commerce, art and commerce.

A friend introduced me to Bob Shaye. He was one of the most remarkable men I’ve ever met. He was a Fulbright scholar, an excellent chef, and very knowledgeable about the arts.

It’s a very naive idea to think that the chef is cooking everything, and, on top of it, is irreplaceable. That would mean that basically he is the only genius, and there are idiots all around him, which doesn’t make sense.

I have a pet lizard named Puff, five goldfish – named Pinky, Brain, Jowels, Pearl and Sandy, an oscar fish named Chef, two pacus, an albino African frog named Whitey, a bonsai tree, four Venus flytraps, a fruit fly farm and sea monkeys.