Alvin Leung Quotes

When you talk about avant-garde cuisine, the surprise factor is really important. For example, I love looking at blogs and the photos, but I'm not that keen on other people taking photos of my dishes.

I love Chinese food, like steamed dim sum, and I can have noodles morning, noon and night, hot or cold. I like food that's very simple on the digestive system - I tend to keep it light. I love Japanese food too - sushi, sashimi and miso soup.

I love inventive food, but I want the classic dishes to taste like how I remember them. I get a little bummed out when there is too much fancy stuff going on and it doesn't resemble the original dish at all.

The food being presented at the most expensive restaurants, by the most sophisticated chefs, was not always recognizable as food to the diner - it required a leap of faith, and I felt curious about that phenomenon.

I'm trying to keep my cooking approachable and accessible but with a little fun twist.

As a kid, I remember my mother always experimenting with bizarre combinations of food such as gulab jamun and pickle! Surprisingly, many years down the line, I have adapted the same.

My specialties include macaroni and cheese and ordering Chinese-food delivery.

Sundays are for Dim Sum. While the rest of America goes to church, Sunday School, or NFL games, you can find Chinese people eating Cantonese food.

Le Cirque at first was one of those general French restaurants in town, which were cooking more or less the same food. At Le Cirque, I wanted to do something different while respecting the foundation of the restaurant. I did that through the menu.

A pig's trotter is a fantastic thing. The first night of my honeymoon in Paris, my wife fell asleep in her steak tartare, so my trotter kept me company.

When I was a kid, my mother used to feed me mashed-potato sandwiches, brussel sprout sandwiches; my brain cells were starving from lack of food. I'll eat anything. I'll eat dirt.

Our goal was to show people a vision of food they hadn't seen before. So, I had this idea of... let's cut all these things in half, and show a picture of the food in the pan, in the oven.

What has impressed me the most about the Italians whose tables we've sat at is that they are traditional cooks but also outrageously innovative. These people are wild improvisers.

Don't be afraid to adapt new ingredients into your own techniques, and traditional ingredients into new recipes.

A holiday vacation can mean sampling all kinds of new cuisine - whether it's Uncle Joe's award-winning chili or the exotic flavors of Nepal. If your little ones are fussy, be sure to ease mealtime hassles by bringing along a supply of the familiar foods they're accustomed to rejecting at home.

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

Frankly, Milan kind of sucks as a restaurant city. It's so fashion-obsessed that people don't pay that much attention to the food.

I wanted to come up with a hybrid show of sorts that wasn't your traditional 'dump and stir' type of cooking show.

I'll read a recipe but then decide, 'Well, it's sort of like this, then.' Or I'll go to the fridge and think, 'I'll see what I can put together,' and I'll combine beetroot and sausage and prawns with goat's cheese sprinkled on top and think, 'I like that they're all slightly pink. It looks fine and... actually, it is fine.'

Your idea of that dish has evolved, and if you're a cook, you can start thinking in different ways about it, maybe even a different way than I think about it.

Amuse-bouches are an opportunity to push boundaries.

While I'm driving north, I'm already thinking about kippers - it's worth the journey just to have kippers for breakfast on Saturday.

I love to cook comfort food. I'll make fish and vegetables or meat and vegetables and potatoes or rice. The ritual of it is fun for me, and the creativity of it.

I'm something of a foodie, I guess, and I'm a big Chinese food fan.

I'm a very improvisational cook. I sort of like to make things up as I go along. I'm quite creative in the kitchen.