Top 100 The Chef Quotes
#1. The restaurants express the spirit of the chef, the spirit of the city, the country.
Alain Ducasse
#2. We had to have white people front like the chef and owners. It was not OK for my dad to sell steak, but white people cooking Asian get more attention than the people in Chinatown who actually know what the fuck they're doing.
Eddie Huang
#3. I think in France, for example, we can say whatever we want about the French, but going out and dining is more about the intellectual moment to share with the people you dine with than trying to figure out what the chef did with that little piece of salmon or lobster and all that.
Daniel Boulud
#4. I raise my stein to the builder who can remove ghettos without removing people as I hail the chef who can make omelets without breaking eggs.
Robert Moses
#5. I always hated watching cooking shows where the chef would use ingredients that I couldn't get my hands on, cooking implements that I couldn't afford, recipes that I could never have access to.
Adam Richman
#6. When I'm in L.A., I go to Spago because the chef is a friend of mine.
Nobu Matsuhisa
#7. The chef that grew up with the grandma who cooks tends to always beat the chef that went to the culinary institute. It's in the blood.
Gary Vaynerchuk
#8. At the end of the day, it seems like there's a critic archetype for food movies, like with 'Ratatouille' or anything. You know, if you were doing a puppet show about chefs, one puppet would be the chef, one would be the critic.
Jon Favreau
#9. I liked the energy of cooking, the action, the camaraderie. I often compare the kitchen to sports and compare the chef to a coach. There are a lot of similarities to it.
Todd English
#10. I am the chef of love. Let me utilize your oven.
Jarod Kintz
#11. A cocktail can be made by the bartender. But the cocktail also can be made by the chef.
Jose Andres
#12. Do you realize a fraction of the awful things you have let me in for? How on earth am I to remember whether I go in before the chef or after the footman? I shan't have a peaceful minute while I'm in this place.
P.G. Wodehouse
#13. I have a Madonna portrait done in the style of a Russian icon. My mother, the chef Lidia Bastianich, and I bought it together. It reminds me of her.
Joe Bastianich
#14. We watch the chef slice eel and octopus, delicate operations of dismemberment and amputation. For some reason it makes me think of poetry.
Jessica Martinez
#15. I sometimes think the chef end of cooking is not the real end of cooking. Cooking is all about homes and gardens, it doesn't happen in restaurants.
Delia Smith
#16. I don't think it's a good advert for any restaurant, a fat chef, and secondly, who wants to eat a dessert when the chef's a fat pig.
Gordon Ramsay
#17. I hope you're rushing to tell me that the chef has acquired Jacen Solo's entrails and is braising them for dinner."
"Not quite, Admiral."
"Life is full of disappointments.
Aaron Allston
#18. When I moved to the United States, I first went to California to be the chef at Campton Place. As much as I loved California, I really missed the seasons. So when I moved to New York, I had that again.
Daniel Humm
#19. 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.'
Jacques Pepin
#20. When we're coming up to the race, the Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I always have the same lunch. So that's before the second practice, before qualifying and before the race, I always have a tuna vegetable risotto. The chef makes it slightly spicy, so there's a bit of a kick.
Valtteri Bottas
#21. I was hired as a sous-chef at a restaurant on the Upper East Side. The chef liked to drink - some mornings we would find him sleeping. Two weeks after its opening, I became the chef. I was 20 years old, and way over my head. I had to hire the cooks and do the menus.
Bobby Flay
#22. The restaurant chefs in Spain are breaking ground, but in terms of the everyday cooking in Spain I still hear people coming back and saying they were disappointed. I think it's because they're expecting the chef stuff.
Sally Schneider
#23. I never cooked at home - my father was the chef.
Rene Redzepi
#24. A Good Recipe Is As Good As The Chef That Cooks It
Kirk Castle
#25. 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.
Eric Ripert
#26. Sometimes you just dread reading scripts; it's like the chef who doesn't want to cook at home.
Martin Henderson
#27. Delivering a speech or presentation is like cooking a meal; as long as the chef is good the cuisine doesn't matter.
Jack Canfield
#28. Close interaction with farmers and scientists can expose the chef to new flavours that can be used to delight diners.
Rene Redzepi
#29. Last week I told my wife, If you would learn to cook, I could fire the chef. She said, If you could learn to make love, I could fire the chauffer.
Rodney Dangerfield
#30. 'The chef on duty will constantly point out the time, name the next project, and finish with 'push!' The entire team then calls it back. It is a simple one, but it gives me goosebumps every time.
Jorge Hernandez
#31. Whether it's a hospital or wherever ... we can deliver to anyone with a phone book."
A phone book.
Such a simple and basic answer.
When the chef picked up the phone and said, "Russia Sushi, how can I help you?" did she take him literally?
Ryohgo Narita
#32. In Europe I couldn't be anything but a black cook working for somebody. My inspiration was to own, to be the chef.
Marcus Samuelsson
#33. 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.
Andy Rooney
#34. The design of a restaurant should embrace the identity of the chef, the nature of the cuisine, and the context of the restaurant itself.
David Rockwell
#35. No question, your best times as a cook are the chef de partie years. Chef in charge of a section. It's the best and hardest job in the kitchen.
Tom Sellers
#36. I always say this to the young chefs and mean it: The customer is excited, he says you are an artist, but we are not, just craftspeople with a little talent. If the chef is an artist, he doesn't succeed. Why? Because he is inspired today but not tomorrow. We cannot do that.
Andre Soltner
#37. Management is the kitchen that produces a delicious meal, where Leadership is the Chef hooked by a purpose across the canyon of risks that adds the fragrance and taste to make it go beyond expectations.
Amit Chatterjee
#38. I did all the Chef Boyardee commercials, in America, when I was young.
Jane Seymour
#39. I train my chefs completely different to anyone else. My young girls and guys, when they come to the kitchen, the first thing they get is a blindfold. They get blindfolded and they get sat down at the chef's table ... Unless they can identify what they're tasting, they don't get to cook it.
Gordon Ramsay
#40. My dream as a passionate cook has been to go to Le Cordon Bleu. Never could my most incredible dream have lived up to the experience. The food, the lesson, the chef, the ingredients - all the best of the best. I see why Le Cordon Bleu is world-renowned.
Blake Lively
#41. I cannot bring myself to wear the Nobu hats, or the Nobu T-shirts. But the chef's jacket, that is mine. And when I wear it, I am very proud of myself.
Nobu Matsuhisa
#42. If you're not the one cooking, stay out of the way and compliment the chef.
Michael Strahan
#43. The winner is the chef who takes the same ingredients as everyone else and produces the best results.
Edward De Bono
#44. Mary Jane was a very important person in The Underworld. Nasir liked to call her the chef of the Underworld. Although
Nako
#45. Get to know the Chef and you will start to enjoy dining out even more.
John Walters
#46. My husband is the chef of the family; he's a brilliant cook. Actually, it makes you quite lazy when you have somebody that's so good at cooking under the same roof. It's all beans or spaghetti when I'm left to run it.
Keeley Hawes
#47. Spinach and champagne. Going back to the kitchens at the old Waldorf. Dancing on the kitchen tables, wearing the chef's headgear. Finally, a crash and being escorted out by the house detectives.
Zelda Fitzgerald
#48. I have a very modern way of thinking; the chef is there to lead the team and not just to sit behind the piano.
Alain Ducasse
#49. The chef has kids complaining to their parents the food they get in school is better than what they get at home. He's turned this group of kids into curious, adventurous eaters.
Marion Nestle
#50. I think I'm going to give my baby her first food on Thanksgiving, make her some organic sweet potato. I'm very excited! It's going to be a big day and my husband is in charge of the turkey - he's the chef of the family!
Lily Aldridge
#51. This is the best thing I've ever eaten." He pauses for a drink, staring at me over the rim of his glass of juice.
" It's the provolone," I say, swallowing my last bite.
"It's the chef.
Sophie Jordan
#52. At 15, I had to choose a vocational school, and I was delighted, of course, to go to culinary school. But learning the basics was not as exciting as being the chef I am today.
Eric Ripert
#53. The last thing a chef wants in a line cook is an innovator, somebody with ideas of his own who is going to mess around with the chef's recipes and presentations. Chefs require blind, near-fanatical loyalty, a strong back and an automaton-like consistency of execution under battlefield conditions.
Anthony Bourdain
#54. His and hers?" "No," he says. "I don't care which, but make sure there's no difference in the plates. I'd rather the chef not know which is mine." The waiter nods and disappears as I regard Naz curiously. "Why don't you want the chef to know?" "Because if he knows which is mine, he might poison it.
J.M. Darhower
#55. There are those who say that poets should use her and his art to change the world. I'd agree with that, but I think everybody should do that. I think the chef and the baker and the candlestick maker - I think everybody should be hoping to make it a better world.
Maya Angelou
#56. A good apprentice cook must be as polite with the dishwasher as with the chef.
Fernand Point
#57. The chef who cooks without a song on his lips cannot hope to infuse the right carefree improvisatory note into his art.
James Hamilton-Paterson
#58. I get so tickled when that pilot happens to be an African American because I rarely see that. The same is true when I go to find restaurants. I mean, most places I go, I kind of have some idea who the chef is, which is why I want to go.
Marcus Samuelsson
#59. You can't go into the chef's office of any serious kitchen and not see a copy of Larousse. A must-have for professional and home cooks alike.
David Chang
#60. 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.
Gordon Ramsay
#61. Yet New York is always the chef, never the diner. Being
Edmund White
#62. Even if the chef has a good business head, his focus should be behind kitchen doors. A business partner should take care of everything in front of the kitchen doors.
Bobby Flay
#63. I am the most unselfish chef in Britain today.
Gordon Ramsay
#64. Between the ages of six and nine, my palette was taking shape as well as my identity as a chef. It was then that I learned the difference between salty, sweet, sour and even spicy.
Marcus Samuelsson
#65. I'm proud of the way I rearrange and put things together, like a chef who makes a great meal, or a filmmaker who puts together a story - it's casting, editing, cinematography.
Bonnie Raitt
#66. You have no choice as a professional chef: you have to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat until it becomes part of yourself. I certainly don't cook the same way I did 40 years ago, but the technique remains. And that's what the student needs to learn: the technique.
Jacques Pepin
#67. Hassan, he has the makings of a great chef, it is true, and he has talent beyond anything you and I possess.
Richard C. Morais
#68. The scotch egg is such a Scottish food. It's as though a great Scottish chef said: I need a tasty snack. Let's take an egg ... and wrap it in meat!! Makes it a bit harder.
Bill Bailey
#69. 'Chef' is a dish of arroz con pollo served with a smile but not much style. The critic in the film would give it a low grade, for agreeability without ambition.
Richard Corliss
#70. When you look at a kitchen, you tend to see that the people who are doing really well are those who have worked with the same chef or stayed in one restaurant for a significant amount of time.
Daniel Humm
#71. As a chef I'm not your dietitian or your ethicist, I'm in the pleasure business.
Anthony Bourdain
#72. My palate is simpler than it used to be. A young chef adds and adds and adds to the plate. As you get older, you start to take away.
Jacques Pepin
#73. I like the idea of being so passionate about everything I do and the fact that I might wake up tomorrow and say 'I want to be a chef,' and just pour myself into that.
Kat Graham
#74. People with chile peppers on their chef pants shouldn't be allowed in the kitchen.
April Bloomfield
#75. I am not a chef. I can't claim that title. The difference is a cook doesn't have a degree. A chef has formal education. It has nothing to do with talent or actual preparation - one just can't claim the title if you don't have degree.
Anna Pump
#76. Let's face it: if you and I have the same capabilities, the same energy, the same staff, if the only thing that's different between you and me is the products we can get, and I can get a better product than you, I'm going to be a better chef.
Thomas Keller
#77. When I was twelve, I decided to become a chef. I stole a book from the library about the greatest restaurants in France. I'd flip the pages and dream. I should return that book to the library some day.
Eric Ripert
#78. I cannot wait to see the day that one day we will have a chef that will become the secretary of food of the United States of America.
Jose Andres
#79. As a chef, I could not wash my hands - nor clean pots, pans, utensils, meats or produce, nor make soups and sauces - if I did not have clean water. Were this to happen, of course, these would be the least of my concerns. Because water is the linchpin of survival: without it, not much else matters.
Marcus Samuelsson
#80. Making ribs in Texas isn't that unusual a choice for 'Top Chef'. We played the stereotypes everywhere we go. It's not only in Texas. We do it in New York; we did it in San Francisco. Listen if we shoot it in Seattle you know we're going to be throwing salmon somewhere.
Tom Colicchio
#81. Every chef has his treats. By that, I mean bits and pieces from things you're working on - crusty little cake trimmings, ends from a brisket, collars from a salmon, scraps. But they're snacks to me, and I eat them right off the cutting board - maybe too much.
Tom Douglas
#82. I'm not a chef. I think in this country, we use the term very loosely. I'm a cook and a teacher.
Julia Child
#83. I swear, I didn't really go in thinking, 'I'll be the Simon Cowell' of 'Top Chef.' I was just used to being a judge on British food shows where people are much more outspoken and rather rude. That's the culture over here.
Toby Young
#84. Chefs become attracted to being able to get product and then clientele - those are the two things that attract you as a chef.
Michael Mina
#86. I came to understand that the words executive and corporate never belong next to the word chef.
Thomas Keller
#87. News networks giving a greater voice to viewers because the social web is so popular are like a chef on the Titanic who, seeing the looming iceberg and fleeing customers, figures ice is the future and starts making snow cones.
Randall Munroe
#88. 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.
Alexandra Guarnaschelli
#90. I've lost my mind," Alex muttered, grabbing her knives again and stomping back across the kitchen. "I woke up this morning a boring little chef on planet earth, and somehow ended up in the Twilight Zone as a third-rate stand-in for Buffy the Vampire Slayer".
Lynsay Sands
#91. Maybe one of the only things I do well: I cook like a maniac! I would be a chef if I weren't an actor.
Ian Somerhalder
#92. He smokes too much weed. I can taste it in his spunk. I need to get him to eat more pineapple to sweeten his seed. I'm like the Iron Chef of ball batter.
Jaden Wilkes
#93. People come up to me all the time and ask how I stay the way I am, and it's no secret. The first lesson a chef needs to learn is how to handle a knife; the second is how to be around all that food.
Marcus Samuelsson
#94. My grandfather was a chef for a Baron in Sicily before he came to America. I grew up with him. I used to do my homework at one end of the kitchen table while he cooked at the other end.
Vincent Schiavelli
#95. Well, yeah. You said you wanted Italian. See. Chef Boyardee. He makes one the best stuff. (Tabitha)
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#96. I'm not a chef. I haven't created any new technique in the kitchen. I'm not a rocket scientist. I think I'm good at writing accessible, fun, and affordable meals for the average American family. That's what I think I'm good at.
Rachael Ray
#97. It's very tempting to have a nanny and live in a gated community and have a chef - I'd love to have a few dinners cooked for me. But I don't want that for my children. When they're older, if people say to them, 'Did you have a chef?' I want them to be shocked by the question.
Kate Winslet
#98. I have great empathy for all the contestants that come on 'Top Chef,' whether they go home right away or they make it to the finish line. It's a very vulnerable position they put themselves in and I feel for them.
Padma Lakshmi
#99. When I look at someone's face, there's something in my brain that just clicks - that breaks down their face into the elements that go into a caricature. It might be like the way a chef tastes a dish and can break down into elements what went into it.
Steve Breen
#100. They say never trust a skinny chef, but the fact is, to stay healthy when you're a chef means you have to work twice as hard.
Marcus Samuelsson
