Best 188 quotes in «chef quotes» category

While Nicole drove off in search of recipes for fish hash, clam fritters, and salmon quiche, Charlotte settled in the Chowder House with Dorey Jewett, who, well beyond the assortment of chowders she always brought to Bailey's Brunch, would be as important a figure in the book as any. They sat in the kitchen, though Dorey did little actual sitting. Looking her chef-self in T-shirt, shorts, and apron, if she wasn't dicing veggies, she was clarifying butter or supervising a young boy who was shucking clams dug from the flats hours before. Even this early, the kitchen smelled of chowder bubbling in huge steel pots. Much as Anna Cabot had done for the island in general, Dorey gave a history of restaurants on Quinnipeague, from the first fish stand at the pier, to a primitive burger hut on the bluff, to a short-lived diner on Main Street, to the current Grill and Cafe. Naturally, she spoke at greatest length about the evolution of the Chowder House, whose success she credited to her father, though the man had been dead for nearly twenty years. Everyone knew Dorey was the one who had brought the place into the twenty-first century, but her family loyalty was endearing.

Who's cooking your food anyway? What strange beasts lurk behind the kitchen doors? You see the chef: he's the guy without the hat, with the clipboard under his arm, maybe his name stitched in Tuscan blue on his starched white chef's coat next to those cotton Chinese buttons. But who's actually cooking your food? Are they young, ambitious culinary school grads, putting in their time on the line until they get their shot at the Big Job? Probably not. If the chef is anything like me, the cooks are a dysfunctional, mercenary lot, fringe-dwellers motivated by money, the peculiar lifestyle of cooking and grim pride. They're probably not even American.

You want to be hands-on and on the other side, you need to be a great delegator...

Why don't you like the foods I like?" he asks sometimes. "Why don't you like the foods I make?" I answer.

Will was now all man. And all cowboy.

You have only failed if you have completely given up on your goal.

You can never focus without a goal and never achieve your goal without focus...

A chef who doesn't wash his hands is like a cop who steals. It's a cry for help.

A chef is a mixture maybe of artistry and craft. You have to learn the craft really to get there.

A good apprentice cook must be as polite with the dishwasher as with the chef.

A great chef is an artist that I truly respect.

A good chef has to be a manager, a businessman and a great cook. To marry all three together is sometimes difficult.

A lot of chefs are traditional and do it very well. But the ones who are the most successful are the ones who change things. That is why someone like Heston Blumenthal is a genius.

All the great chefs I know - Thomas Keller, Jean-Georges Vongerichten - they are technicians first.

A lot of young chefs today get carried away by trends, by influences, by movements.

A lot of writers and artists are like chefs who eat their own cooking in the kitchen and then deliver an empty plate with assurances that it's great.

As a chef, if I can taste something, I can basically figure out whats in it.

Ask any comedian, tennis player, chef. Timing is everything.

As chefs, we cook to please people, to nourish people.

Being a chef never seems like a job, it becomes a true passion.

Before any exposure on TV, I'm a real chef.

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.

Both my parents are chefs I grew up in a restaurant and was always surrounded by cooks. I love food.

Chef: Any cook who swears in French.

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.

Chefs think about what it's like to make food. Being a scientist in the kitchen is about asking why something works, and how it works.

Chefs, as a whole, say yes to any project, fundraiser, or tasting because they have such a generous spirit.

Chefs have a new opportunity - and perhaps even an obligation - to inform the public about what is good to eat, and why.

Chefs work with food, artists with oil paint, programmers with code.

Chicago is a lot of my background as a chef.

Don't dunk your nigiri in the soy sauce. Don't mix your wasabi in the soy sauce. If the rice is good, complement your sushi chef on the rice.

Chef' doesn't mean that you're the best cook, it simply means 'boss.

Chefs become attracted to being able to get product and then clientele - those are the two things that attract you as a chef.

Chefs don't actually say 'That's a spicy meat-a-ball,' except to indicate that there's a bomb threat in the restaurant without alarming the customers. Terrorism is the spiciest meatball there is.

Chefs hate desserts. The smartest thing a chef can do is hire a great pastry chef. Cooking savory food is all about feel - you season something, you taste it, you go back in and adjust, more butter, more olive oil, more acid, whatever you want to get it to taste the way you want. Pastries are like a science project. To me, the greatest chefs are the ones who have the greatest feel for food, while the greatest pastry chefs have to be people that are extremely precise.

Cooking is an observation-based process that you can't do if you're so completely focused on a recipe.

Do we really require so many gardening programmes, makeover programmes or celebrity chefs?

Even the most astute chefs seek out the assistance of Celine Labaune, owner of Gourmet Attitude, because they know they can rely on her keen senses and deep understanding of the truffle trade.

Eh! Je suis leur chef, il fallait bien les suivre. (Ah well! I am their leader, I really ought to follow them.)

Even growing up, I was always the helper-outer, the sous-chef to my parents.

Every chef I know, their cholesterol is through the roof. And mine's not so great.

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.

Every chef should have an understanding of pastries or desserts.

First of all, I can't really claim to be a great chef.

Great food needed more than chefs; it needed gourmet diners.

Food is life, life is food. If you don't like my approach you are welcome to go down to McDonalds.

Gordon Ramsay makes me laugh because he knows that I'm not a chef.

I always had a fantasy of being a chef, because I like kitchen life.

Having been a chef for some many years, I understand what it's like to work really, really hard to get good at something, only to have someone piss all over it.

I am not a chef. I am not even a trained or professional cook. My qualification is as an eater.