Chefs Quotes

“In this world . . .

It's Heaven when:
The French are chefs
The British are police
The Germans are engineers
The Swiss are bankers
And the Italians are lovers

It's Hell when:
The English are chefs
The Germans are police
The French are engineers
The Swiss are lovers
And the Italians are bankers.”
― Hidekaz Himaruya, Hetalia: Axis Powers, Vol. 2

“I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make. When one's hostess starts in with self-deprecations such as "Oh, I don't know how to cook...," or "Poor little me...," or "This may taste awful...," it is so dreadful to have to reassure her that everything is delicious and fine, whether it is or not. Besides, such admissions only draw attention to one's shortcomings (or self-perceived shortcomings), and make the other person think, "Yes, you're right, this really is an awful meal!" Maybe the cat has fallen into the stew, or the lettuce has frozen, or the cake has collapsed -- eh bien, tant pis! Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile, as my ersatz eggs Florentine surely were, then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile -- and learn from her mistakes.”
― Julia Child, My Life in France

“It’s more common for people to get fire tattoos. Symbols of passion, transformation, change. But I wanted smoke because it’s what remains. After the fire, after everything is destroyed, you’re left with smoke and ash. You’ve gotta make somethin’ out of it.”
― Kate Meader, Melting Point

“Celebrity chefs are the leaders in the field of food, and we are the led. Why should the leaders of chemical businesses be held responsible for polluting the marine environment with a few grams of effluent, which is sublethal to marine species, while celebrity chefs are turning out endangered fish at several dozen tables a night without enduring a syllable of criticism?”
― Charles Clover, The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat

“A real dish has grown from all the chefs who have combined their talents over the centuries to develop a meal with unique physical characteristics, for there’s not a chef on earth who can claim sole title to a particular dish. It will have typical Iberian or French features, but with traces of Indian, Celtic, Roman, Jewish and even Moorish culture in its savour, although food can’t possibly pass from one country to another without change”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“Aucun destin ne justifierait une quelconque exaltation de quiconque”
― Albert Einstein, The World As I See It

“A chef’s magic is his ingredients, how he can substitute one for another, then break with convention by changing it all around again without once referring to the recipe. And then just at the death complete the beauty by adding another element never previously thought of. Well words are the writer’s sorcery, our dark arts and our sleight of hand. They’re our enchantment and our temptation. Sometimes both the chef and the writer overindulges himself and it gets out of hand, but that’s how we like it, it’s how we’ve ghosted some of our best creations.”
― Karl Wiggins, Self-Publishing In the Eye of the Storm

“A good spice often deceives us into thinking that someone is a good cook.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“I’ve sat in restaurants and viewed the food on the plate as I would a half-blooded mongrel. I may feel sorry for it and given time even get to like it a little, but it’s never going to really gain my affections. The plate in front of you should tantalize, seduce and enchant you. It should be a cheeky devil, a minx, a hussy even, but never a desperado”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“A Wrong Planet Chef always take an interest in the origins of the food he cooks. A particular dish of vegetables, herbs and spices could, for instance, have begun life 5000 years ago on the Indian subcontinent, perhaps in Central India where vegetarian Hindi food is considered as God (Brahman) as it sustains the entire physical, mental, emotional and sensual aspects of the human being. The dish may then have migrated to the Punjab region of the Indian-Pakistan border - The Land of Five Waters - around 250 BC, and from here could have moved on to Western Asia or North Africa as soldiers and merchants moved west with their families into the Eastern parts of the Roman empire, where the cooks would have experimented with new combinations of food, adding fruits, shellfish or poultry to the exotic dish. The dish could then have travelled in any direction heading North through Germany or Sweden to Britain or maybe migrating through Persia or North Africa to Spain and Portugal, creating two very distinct and separate menus but meeting once again in France”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“Everywhere Gage looked, his fingers itched to touch and his brain raced to keep up. A snake coiled beneath his right pec, an eagle took flight over his left. Stars, numbers, and Celtic symbols fought for real estate. Gage would need weeks to explore the storied terrain of Brady’s body.
Better put in for some vacation time now.”
― Kate Meader, Melting Point

“Trying’s good. Trying’s sexy,” Gage murmured against Brady’s ear. “Now try telling me what you need.”
― Kate Meader, Melting Point

“The only good deed I’ll be doing tonight is for the angels.”
“The angels?”
“Haven’t you heard? Every time I make you come, an angel gets his wings.”
Brady dropped his smoky gaze to Gage’s mouth for a beat. “We really need to leave. Now.”
― Kate Meader, Melting Point

“I cooked with so many of the greats: Tom Colicchio, Eric Ripert, Wylie Dufresne, Grant Achatz. Rick Bayless taught me not one but two amazing mole sauces, the whole time bemoaning that he never seemed to know what to cook for his teenage daughter. Jose Andres made me a classic Spanish tortilla, shocking me with the sheer volume of viridian olive oil he put into that simple dish of potatoes, onions, and eggs. Graham Elliot Bowles and I made gourmet Jell-O shots together, and ate leftover cheddar risotto with Cheez-Its crumbled on top right out of the pan.
Lucky for me, Maria still includes me in special evenings like this, usually giving me the option of joining the guests at table, or helping in the kitchen. I always choose the kitchen, because passing up the opportunity to see these chefs in action is something only an idiot would do. Susan Spicer flew up from New Orleans shortly after the BP oil spill to do an extraordinary menu of all Gulf seafood for a ten-thousand-dollar-a-plate fund-raising dinner Maria hosted to help the families of Gulf fishermen. Local geniuses Gil Langlois and Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard joined forces with Gale Gand for a seven-course dinner none of us will ever forget, due in no small part to Gil's hoisin oxtail with smoked Gouda mac 'n' cheese, Stephanie's roasted cauliflower with pine nuts and light-as-air chickpea fritters, and Gale's honey panna cotta with rhubarb compote and insane little chocolate cookies. Stephanie and I bonded over hair products, since we have the same thick brown curls with a tendency to frizz, and the general dumbness of boys, and ended up giggling over glasses of bourbon till nearly two in the morning. She is even more awesome, funny, sweet, and genuine in person than she was on her rock-star winning season on Bravo. Plus, her food is spectacular all day. I sort of wish she would go into food television and steal me from Patrick. Allen Sternweiler did a game menu with all local proteins he had hunted himself, including a pheasant breast over caramelized brussels sprouts and mushrooms that melted in your mouth (despite the occasional bit of buckshot). Michelle Bernstein came up from Miami and taught me her white gazpacho, which I have since made a gajillion times, as it is probably one of the world's perfect foods.”
― Stacey Ballis, Off the Menu

“Real food is whatever cooks are proud to make.”
― C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

“I love Italy. For hundreds of years, if not centuries, the people of italy (Italians) have been living here." [Audrey's insight]”
― Tom Gleisner, Audrey Gordon's Tuscan Summer

“The whiff of Ben's parcel hovered under the delicious aroma of fish. Suddenly John felt hungry. The men, he saw, were sipping from a ladle which they passed between them. The tallest of the three slurped and smiled.
'Whether or not Miss Lucretia consumes it, the kitchen has discharged its duty,' he declared cheerfully. He towered a whole head over the others. 'A simple broth is most apt for a young stomach, especially a stomach which chooses privation over nourishment. Lampreys. Crab shells ground fine. Stockfish and...' He sniffed then frowned.
'Simple, Mister Underley?' jibed Vanian in a nasal voice. 'If it is simple, then how is it spiced?'
'Came in a parcel this morning,' Henry Palewick offered. 'Down from Soughton. Master Scovell had it out in a moment. Smelled like flowers to me. Whatever it was.'
'Which flowers?' demanded the fourth man of the quartet, in a foreign accent. He pointed a large-nostrilled nose at Henry. 'Saffron, agrimony and comfrey bound the cool-humored plants; meadowsweet, celandine and wormwood the hot.”
― Lawrence Norfolk, John Saturnall's Feast

“Chefs are cooking blind, for strangers whose memories are unknown.”
― Bee Wilson, First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“As the excesses of 'molecular gastronomy' have slowly faded away, like the smell of a particularly pungent fart, a breath of fresh culinary air has swept across the country. I've been passionately interested in food and drink for more than 30 years and writing about it for a decade. In my experience there has never been a more exciting time to eat out in this country.”
― Andy Lynes, Kingdom of Cooks: Conversations with Britain's New Wave Chefs

“With the long list of supposedly health-endangering
meals on our menus, ‘starving’ seems like
a healthy option to have on our list of safe-to-eat meals.”
― Uche Mac-Auley

“Georgia attacked her dinner prep more aggressively than usual. As she saw it, there were two kinds of chefs. First, there were the cerebral types, who cooked with an intellectual, almost academic, bent. They cooked with precision and accuracy, studying a particular ingredient's effects in multiple settings before introducing it into their kitchen. These chefs loved the science of food. Fastidious in their pre-prep prep, they knew with 99 percent accuracy that a dish would turn out well. Then there were the chefs who worked from the heart. Who were furious when a dish fizzled, chopped angrily at the food as if it were their enemy, but on a good day could coax such sensuous, sublime flavors from a paltry potato and a handful of herbs that no diner would suspect its humble origins. When they hit, they hit big. But when they fell, it was like a sequoia cracking open in the redwood forest.”
― Jenny Nelson, Georgia's Kitchen

“Time and space do bend, but they bend for the engaged, not the disengaged.”
― Dan Charnas, Work Clean: The life-changing power of mise-en-place to organize your life, work, and mind

“How an Englishman came to be ‘Cooking up a Country’ in Italy
It was a book that got me into this mess. Almost twenty years ago after reading Annie Hawes excellent, Extra Virgin, I jumped on a flight intent on experiencing Liguria for myself. What I discovered here has had me coming back for holidays ever since. Until two years ago, that is, when I bowed to the inevitable British compulsion to own property.”
― James Vasey

“It is a curious sensation, being a customer where you have been a slave's slave.”
― George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“Some prince and princess wear crowns.
Some wear chef hats!



Babbling Beth The Story Chef”
― Lauren Freckles

“Some princes and princesses wear crowns.
Some wear chef hats!”
― Lauren Freckles

“In the nine-to-twelve category: number twelve, traditional turkey dinner and cranberry pumpkin pie! Number forty-nine, caramel beef stew with vegetables and caramel apples! Number three, barbecued catfish and king cake! Number eighteen, Asian noodle stir-fry and vanilla soy cookies!”
― Jen Nails, One Hundred Spaghetti Strings

“Phillipa and I had just returned to the kitchen with a full basket of these beautiful mushrooms. I held a dirt-encrusted one up to my nose, breathing in its earthy aromas, happy to have all of my senses back.
"What do you want to do with these?" asked Phillipa.
"Something traditional and simple so the flavor of the mushrooms isn't lost," I said. "Poêlée de cèpes à la bordelaise?"
"Perfectly delicious," said Phillipa. "I'll scrub the beauties down and then grab the ingredients."
"You remember what they are?"
"Of course. Olive oil, butter, garlic, thyme, bay leaves, flat parsley, salt, and pepper," she said. "And I'm already drooling.”
― Samantha Verant, Sophie Valroux's Paris Stars