Top 100 The Chef Quotes
#2. 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
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. The restaurants express the spirit of the chef, the spirit of the city, the country.
Alain Ducasse
#7. 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
#8. '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
#9. 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
#10. As a chef I'm not your dietitian or your ethicist, I'm in the pleasure business.
Anthony Bourdain
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. People with chile peppers on their chef pants shouldn't be allowed in the kitchen.
April Bloomfield
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. A cocktail can be made by the bartender. But the cocktail also can be made by the chef.
Jose Andres
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. 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
#27. I came to understand that the words executive and corporate never belong next to the word chef.
Thomas Keller
#28. 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
#29. 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
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. 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
#38. Well, yeah. You said you wanted Italian. See. Chef Boyardee. He makes one the best stuff. (Tabitha)
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. My husband cooks fancier food for himself than I've ever cooked on-air. I call him from the road, and he's making champagne-vanilla salmon or black-cherry pork chop. Half of me is feeling unworthy. Not only am I not a chef, I'm not a better cook than my own husband!
Rachael Ray
#47. We can't all be bakers or chefs. Many of us have modest ambitions. But we can all buy a piece of the pie.
Amah Lambert
#48. I tell a student that the most important class you can take is technique. A great chef is first a great technician. 'If you are a jeweler, or a surgeon or a cook, you have to know the trade in your hand. You have to learn the process. You learn it through endless repetition until it belongs to you.
Jacques Pepin
#49. A Good Recipe Is As Good As The Chef That Cooks It
Kirk Castle
#50. The text, written in Latin, was inspired by a fifteenth-century chef known as Maestro Martino and was called De honesta voluptate et valitudine, On honest pleasures and good health.
Bill Buford
#51. I wanted to write in Kitchenese, the secret language of cooks, instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever dunked french fries for a summer job or suffered under the despotic rule of a tyrannical chef or boobish owner.
Anthony Bourdain
#52. Danny was a matador. Other cast members included a chubby Italian chef, a mime, and, for some reason, a mummy. I found that offensive on behalf of living Egyptian people, but I also knew that Parker McHune's mother couldn't sew, so wrapping her son in Ace bandages was the best she could do.
Molly Harper
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. Sauces comprise the honor and glory of French cookery. They have contributed to its superiority, or pre-eminence, which is disputed by none. Sauces are the orchestration and accompaniment of a fine meal, and enable a good chef or cook to demonstrate his talent.
Curnonsky
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. I was the head chef on the S.S. Diarrhea.
Mr. Krabs
#59. I did all the Chef Boyardee commercials, in America, when I was young.
Jane Seymour
#60. My friends, the hardest thing, when you reach a certain level, is to stay fresh, day in and day out. The world changes very fast around us, no? So, as difficult as it is, the key to success is to embrace this constant change and move with the times," said Chef Piquot.
Richard C. Morais
#61. Whenever I'd go to restaurants, the main chef came out and was cooking for me, and he's asking me how the food is. I get, like, VIP service, so it's weird.
Inbee Park
#62. Emerald [Cunard] alleged that Mrs Ronnie instructed her chef to inflate the quails to be served at dinner with a bicycle pump.
Sian Evans
#63. There's not a single chef I know of that does not think about the politics of the food they're serving.
Gail Simmons
#64. Nobody makes bouillabaisse from scratch. It's all a bunch of malarkey. Even the restaurants buy a commercial-grade product. I had a very famous chef tell me that.
Sandra Lee
#65. Only when a chef changed the way you saw the world, through cooking, did food truly become art, and that was rare indeed.
Michael Ruhlman
#66. Gordon Ramsay, the only chef in London honored with three stars by the 'Guide Michelin,' is not a monster.
Bill Buford
#67. How do I speak Spanish? Not too well. Paz taught me a few words that, if people weren't nice to me, I could tell them a few things. I got to study with [chef] Thomas Keller, who we all love as a guy and Jim had a relationship with him at [his restaurant] the French Laundry.
Adam Sandler
#68. It is great to add some glamour to the food industry, like television shows have done for the food world and inspiring people to work in the industry. The flip side of that is unfortunately people think that after they get their qualifications, they get their invitation to compete on 'Top Chef.'
Curtis Stone
#69. Food is a passion because I basically grew up in a kitchen. My mother was a gourmet chef and I'm the youngest of five kids. We would always congregate in the kitchen.
Laura Prepon
#70. The celebrity-chef thing, even at its worst, its most annoying, its silliest, its goofiest, its most egregious and cynical, has been a good thing.
Anthony Bourdain
#71. The stressful part of that is that you're not a chef. People who have learnt to be chefs have spent years in kitchens just on the vegetable section and then move up to the fish section, etc, whereas you have to do everything and it's really full on, but it's an amazing experience.
Jayne Middlemiss
#72. The winner is the chef who takes the same ingredients as everyone else and produces the best results.
Edward De Bono
#73. The type of cuisine I do, especially after being on 'Iron Chef' for several years, is a lot of global cuisine. My strength has always been Mediterranean cuisine across the board from Morocco, Spain, Italy, Greece, France, but I think now I'm doing a lot of very different cuisines all the time.
Cat Cora
#74. If he is thin, I will probably dine poorly. If he is both thin and sad, the only hope is in flight.
Fernand Point
#75. I really don't care for the proper chef coat.
David Chang
#76. Get to know the Chef and you will start to enjoy dining out even more.
John Walters
#77. We in the media have been guilty about not doing a better job of making people understand how really simple cooking is. We've made everyone feel like they have to be a chef.
Ruth Reichl
#78. Chef Matt Accarrino has the best pasta in San Francisco, and Shelley Lindgren is one of my favorite sommeliers. Their attention to detail in the service, food, and amazing wines will blow anyone away.
Elizabeth Falkner
#79. I am a chef who happens to appear on the telly, that's it.
Gordon Ramsay
#80. 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.
Curtis Stone
#81. Marcus Samuelsson is a chef who inspires me everyday. He has such a deep understanding of flavors and techniques. His food is representative of the diverse world that we live in. What he has done in Harlem with Red Rooster is very special. Marcus is not just a chef, he's a food activist.
Aaron Sanchez
#82. At heart, 'Chef' is a daddy-daycare fable about an overextended man who teaches his 10-year-old son the family business and learns to love him.
Richard Corliss
#83. The first year I sold a photo to was a lady who thought I was a chef, for some reason. I've no idea why.
Graeme Le Saux
#84. 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
#85. I've been a model for 15 years, and I've been on 'Top Chef' for eight seasons, and before that I had other cooking shows, so I've learned a thing or two about how to camouflage certain areas and how to draw the eye to a preferable area of the body.
Padma Lakshmi
#86. I am not a fine chef, but I can certainly get dinner on the table for 14 people. With that many, I try to keep it simple: salmon, mashed potatoes, sauteed spinach, and salad.
Cindy Crawford
#87. I have a theory that the people who cook in jails are British chefs.
Steve Earle
#88. With people in the world such as 'Jamie Oliver' and [TV chef] Clarissa Dickson-Wright there isn't much hope for animals.
Steven Morrissey
#89. 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
#90. Back in the day, I used to watch 'The Cajun Chef' with Justin Wilson. His mixing would go one way, and his stomach would go the other.
Adam Richman
#91. I am not a food critic. Or a chef. Or even a professional writer. What I am schooled in the art of, however, is enjoying myself.
Jewel Staite
#92. 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
#93. I have a chef who makes sure that I'm getting the right amounts of carbs, proteins and fats throughout the day to keep me at my max performance level.
Barry Bonds
#94. Mostly I enjoy the restaurants (my husband is a chef), though I wish we had a wider diversity of ethnic food.
Poppy Z. Brite
#95. I'd like to see 'Top Chef: Amateur'. Sometimes we have an amateur chef on the show and they just can't cut it against the pros but there are some great stories there.
Tom Colicchio
#96. The hardest thing about being a full time chef is leaving my work behind when I go home at night. I'll toss and turn about a menu item or forget to order produce and wake up at 4 A.M. in a cold sweat over some artichokes.
Alexandra Guarnaschelli
#97. I, alas, must present myself somewhat ignominiously as a chef in a busy kitchen. Somewhere a novel is bubbling on a back burner, an old attempt at history may come out of the freezer.
Theodore White
#98. Yet New York is always the chef, never the diner. Being
Edmund White
#99. 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.
Gordon Ramsay
#100. A lot of people love the idea of improvising but are terrified of it, so I tried to make a book that was not a chef's book about improvising but a real home cook's book with a real home cook's pantry, supermarket ingredients, that sort of thing.
Sally Schneider
