Steve Ells Quotes

Chipotle is really showing that there's a better way to do fast food.

No matter what it is you are cooking, buy the best ingredients you can afford. I don't care if it's a simple salad or Beef Wellington. A quality product stands alone and won't need any dressing up.

I started Chipotle with the idea to create an experience that's fast - and not fast food.

Chipotle was going to incorporate all the things I had learned at the Culinary Institute and Stars and really elevate typical fast food.

The gimmicks that have driven the fast food sector for years - dollar menus, limited time offers, and merchandising partnerships - are not producing results like they used to, as consumers simply want better tasting, nutritious food and a more compelling experience, not gimmicks.

When I created Chipotle in 1993, I had a very simple idea: Offer a simple menu of great food prepared fresh each day, using many of the same cooking techniques as gourmet restaurants. Then serve the food quickly, in a cool atmosphere. It was food that I wanted, and thought others would like too. We've never strayed from that original idea. The critics raved and customers began lining up at my tiny burrito joint. Since then, we've opened a few more.

I try to stay away, but In-N-Out, you just can't compare it. It's the best. It's the best. It's healthy fast food; they do their own meat and their own salad.

Basically, there are two things we know: Everybody has less time, and the general public is demanding better food - better in terms of quality and better in terms of flavor.

It just seems that you were talking positively about McDonald's, that they are... attempting this healthy lifestyle, and yet when we're talking right now... it seems that you're saying they need to make more responsibility.

I'm a filmmaker who decided to go to culinary school. All I picked up was the fact if I didn't understand what was going on with every single ingredient, I could be qualifying for, like, the lunch food job at my daughter's school.

Behind Chipotle is not a corporation; behind Chipotle is a man that is one of the great cooks, that created a great concept.

Green vegetables are something that fascinate chefs; the ability to keep vegetables green. How do we keep them green? What makes them green? Why are they green? And then that sort of army green. Why do they go from bright vibrant electric green to army green, and how can we avoid that?

If I'm a great artisan of the kitchen, it's because I don't buy my sauces.

I don't like gourmet cooking or 'this' cooking or 'that' cooking. I like good cooking.

If you want to become a great chef, you have to work with great chefs. And that's exactly what I did.

I'm really trying to respond to the foods that are in the stores and just pulling the things that are the very best and cook what looks beautiful and is seasonal. That's the way to go. I love going to the grocery store and the market. None of it's drudgery for me. Washing dishes is the drudgery.

If I've gone to the market on Saturday, and I go another time on Tuesday, then I'm really prepared. I can cook a little piece of fish; I can wilt some greens with garlic; I can slice tomatoes and put a little olive oil on. It's effortless.

God, Americans know how to cook.

I think food is getting lighter and healthier because people eat out so often. It's about quality ingredients because that is the root of good food.

If you're picky, you have to learn about cooking.

It's not that hard to make good food.

When I started Chipotle, I didn't know the fast-food rules. People told us the food was too expensive and the menu was too limited. Neither turned out to be true.

When I started on the very first day with just one restaurant, we used to pick oregano off the stems and chop them. We still do that.

I like Monoloco in Petersfield, Hampshire, and Little Dorrit in London's Borough Market. Everything's delicious, healthy, and inexpensive.

Straight up, Oreos, sodas, chips, salsa dips, egg white omelets, yogurts, breads, ketchups, mustards, barbecue sauce, frozen pizzas, hot pockets, ice cream, all these things that you eat in your normal life - I think if chefs got more involved in that, then it could be better. Because we're the ones that know flavor.