Johnny Iuzzini Quotes

It took me all my life to learn how to salt a tomato.

My advice always is to start very simple and master your timing and master the most simple beats that you can, and you just keep elevating from that. Trying to go right into playing fast is not necessarily the best way to go about it, because if you don't have your foundation locked in, it's hard to progress.

We have to make sure as a staff, and I have to make sure as the staff learns, that we just really keep it simple. We get good at the fundamentals. And then, as we perfect that part of the game, now we can add on.

Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise

If you want to become good at something, do it as often as possible. If you want to become an expert at it, do it every day.

Here is the key to existence. Are you listening? Here is the key to existence; when I tell you this you will know how to run your lives. You will know if you have been living life to the full, and if you realize you haven't been, you will know immediately how to correct that state of affairs. As soon as I tell you the key to existence. Are you ready? Are you ready for me to tell you?... Always breathe. That's the basis of life, breathing. That's basically the basis. If you don't breathe, you die.

Reading is the basics for all learning.

Two key ingredients in any successful chef: a quick learner and someone with a sharp brain.

Having been to culinary school, the single greatest asset I learned there was how to cut and chop properly. It's an investment of money that will save you hours of time down the road, and hopefully some cut fingers.

Each movement is only learned after you've perfected the one before it.

The only way you can stay on top is to remember to touch bottom and get back to basics.

Let every man practise the trade which he best understands.

If you want to think about cooking, and it's a high-five, laid back motion, then flip burgers and dress Caesar salad, don't try to pitch in the premier league of restaurant. Build up to it, by all means.

The first thing you've got to do is know your craft, and then you can do something else with it.

Every day as a kid, I went to the boxing gym. I knew boxing before I knew anything else. And I was once told if you show your child how to do something and you constantly push them, then eventually they'll become masters. They'll become a master of their craft. So that's probably what happened with me and the sport of boxing.

Remember that whatever knowledge you do not solidly lay the foundation of before you are eighteen, you will never be master of while you breathe.

The great ones never take fundamentals for granted.

Every kid in every school no matter their background, deserves to learn the basics about food - where it comes from, how to cook it and how it affects their bodies. These life skills are as important as reading and writing, but they've been lost over the past few generations. We need to bring them back and bring up our kids to be streetwise about food.

If I've learned nothing else, it's that time and practice equal achievement.

Bill Blass came in all the time, and I would make him roast chicken with spring potatoes and spring porcini with spring onion. And baby artichokes. And never, ever did he find a better chicken. Norman Parkinson, one of the greatest photographers alive, came every lunch to Le Cirque. And every time he would clean up his plate with his bread and then he would take his marker and write on the plate how much he loved the food. I think at Le Cirque I learned how to make real food, which is what people crave, not just gimmicky things on a plate.

Shihonage is the foundation of Aikido. All you ever need to master is shihonage.

Practice works because practice gives us a chance to relax enough to make smart choices.

In all things, to serve from the lowest station upwards is necessary. To restrict yourself to a trade is best. For the narrow mind, whatever he attempts is still a trade; for the higher, an art; and the highest in doing one thing does all, or, to speak less paradoxically, in the one thing which he does rightly he sees the likeness of all that is done rightly.

I suppose more than anything, chefs have gotten better, which is great news, which makes my life a lot easier. I can be a lot more creative in terms of the menu.

Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. You’ve got to get the fundamentals down because otherwise the fancy stuff isn’t going to work.