Top 55 Alain Ducasse Quotes

Gastronomy is my hobby. I’m simply the casting director. Once I’ve brought all the right people together, it is they who must work together to tell a story.

The world of wine is more creative than the world of cooking.

I’m in love with the markets of the world. It’s a photograph of a city, a culture.

I have restaurants, bookshops… but it’s not an empire, more… a puzzle. If it were an empire, all my restaurants would be the same.

If I had the choice to travel to two places in Europe, it would be Paris and London.

In each restaurant, I develop a different culinary sensibility. In Paris, I’m more classic, because that’s what customers like. In Monaco, it’s classic Mediterranean haute cuisine. In London, it’s a contemporary French restaurant that I’ve developed with a U.K. influence and my French know-how.

In London, there is no need for 25 high-end gastronomic restaurants. That would be too much.

I am overfed, so when I am at home, I stop eating.

Classical cooking and molecular gastronomy should remain separate. You can mix two styles and get fusion; any more, and you just get confusion.

There are so many impassioned winemakers. I think there are more impassioned winemakers than chefs.

I think the French and the Japanese are both obsessed by seasons, small producers, freshness.

I was brought up on a farm in Southwest France, eating farm-fresh produce three times a day. It was paradise on Earth, and it shaped my eating habits and my sense of taste.

If you don’t treat an ingredient and its flavors with respect – if you drown it in oil, for instance – you’ll spoil it.

Everywhere in the world there are tensions – economic, political, religious. So we need chocolate.

I love any excuse to work with a mortar and pestle.

What they’ve found so far in the Amazon is 5 percent of what there is yet to discover to eat in the Amazon because it’s completely unknown. I’ve eaten things I’ve never eaten before over there.

I don’t like being a celebrity.

My son, Arzhel, is two, and he eats vegetables twice a day. We have a vegetable garden on our farm in the Southwest, and he gets two baskets, one over each arm, and says, ‘Garden, Papa!’ and then he eats what he picks.

I prefer to be able to identify what I’m eating. I have to know.

The proportion of ingredients is important, but the final result is also a matter of how you put them together. Equilibrium is key.

I live in Paris, yet Monaco, where I spend a lot of time, holds a very special place in my heart.

The restaurants express the spirit of the chef, the spirit of the city, the country.

For me, the most luxurious place is somewhere that allows you to feel emotions and pleasures.

I don’t do the same food in Tokyo that I do in Vegas and vice versa. If I did that, two weeks later I would have no customers.

When I started cooking the meal at home, after I had started cooking in restaurants, I usually would prepare bay scallops or lobster.

London is the most important city in the world for restaurants.

Failure is enriching. It’s also important to accept that you’ll make mistakes – it’s how you build your expertise. The trick is to learn a positive lesson from all of life’s negative moments.

My wife Gwenaelle prepares an ‘energy shot’ for me for breakfast. It’s a mix of linseed, cereal, and raisins, with fresh fruit like kiwi. She also adds yogurt for added texture and some pollen and honey for an energy booster.

I’m anti-globalisation. There is nothing more enriching than to go out into the world and meet people different to you. We must fight the spread of a singular way of thinking and preserve cultural differences.

The planet’s resources are rare; we must consume more ethically and equitably.

I love to pick tomatoes at the end of the day, when they’re still warm from the sun.

I didn’t want to become a chocolatier among others, buying ready-to-use couverture. I wanted to take the same approach I follow in my cuisine: putting the product first, revealing the authentic taste of the products.

If I’m a great artisan of the kitchen, it’s because I don’t buy my sauces.

The Mediterranean is in my DNA. I’m fine inland for about a week, but then I yearn for a limitless view of the sea, for the colours and smells of the Italian and French Riviera.

For me, going to markets is the best way to understand the soul of a place.

It’s not easy to have success with restaurants in different cities, but I like the challenge.

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

Everything that pushes up out of the earth I love. Everything under the earth, root vegetables, I love to cook.

I do most of the cooking in my head.

The relentless pursuit of being different is very French.

I don’t think the rating system places too much pressure on chefs. I prefer to put the pressure on my chefs to perform to the top standards.

In France, Christmas is a family holiday. You stay home. New Year’s Eve is when you go out.

The real evolution is to learn something new every day – it’s very important for chefs to share what they have discovered.

I have a very nice garden and extraordinary markets, where there are products from the earth and the sea, in the French Basque country.

It is impossible to remain indifferent to Japanese culture. It is a different civilisation where all you have learnt must be forgotten. It is a great intellectual challenge and a gorgeous sensual experience.

I would never be able to lead the insane lifestyle I do, traveling all over the world, if I wasn’t eating food that was simple and healthy.

You need a good gardener and a good fisherman. The cook is not required.

I don’t like being disappointed by somebody I trust. Fortunately, it rarely happens.

If my cuisine were to be defined by just one taste, it would be that of subtle, aromatic, extra-virgin olive oil.

In France, I am the fifth artisan to produce his own chocolate, and the others have been doing it for a long time.

It’s striking and unique in London how you know to create this alchemy between the concept, the food, the music, the staff. From the beginning to the end, with all these different elements, it tells a full story that you know very well how to develop and cultivate.

I have a passion for luggage – trunks and so on. I have a collection of them, but I can never resist buying another piece.

My grandmother did all the cooking at Christmas. We ate fattened chicken. We would feed it even more so it would be big and fat.

At my home in the southwest of France, I grow oak, hazel, and lemon trees in my backyard.

If I am going somewhere exotic, I take an empty suitcase with me to bring back the objects I fall in love with.