Jon Favreau Quotes

I cook, I create, I'm incredibly excited by what I do, I've still got a lot to achieve.

I am a chef through and through. Everything I do - whether it is cooking for kids in Harlem or cooking in a fine dining establishment - all my days are consumed by food.

You don't become a chef to become famous.

I like cooking, but I don't think I could be a chef. Everyone from the ground up does terrible hours, whether you've just walked in off the street and you've got no experience, to whether you're the head chef. You can work 14 or 15-hour days. It's really, really intense.

I started cooking in kitchens right out of high school, and I was lucky to work with a lot of great people, but I had no idea it would turn into this. Of course no one should go into this business because they want to be the next Emeril.

When we talk about chefs, we often talk about their love of food or their passion for it, but cooking is also about making a living; it's a job.

You don't go into being a chef for the money.

I love cooking and kitchens.It's just a great world, and I wanted to explore it. You see the façade, the outside, the public part, and then you just walk through one door marked "Staff Only" and you're in a different universe.

Cooks are an undervalued, awesome profession.

The biggest thing is education for young chefs and how they should focus on one cuisine rather than trying to imitate too many. It's like art - you can see the cycles from many past artists and new artists being inspired by past artists.

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

'Kitchen Confidential' wasn't a cautionary or an expose. I wrote it as an entertainment for New York tri-state area line cooks and restaurant lifers, basically; I had no expectation that it would move as far west as Philadelphia.

You know, from age 17 on, my paycheck was coming from cooking and working in kitchens.

I have met a lot of top chefs around the world during my travels. Each one of them has said 'Ratatouille' is their favorite movie and the only movie that truly captures what they do.

When you have a chef that wants to be in the spotlight, maybe after one or two appearances on a show, they think they're at a certain level that they haven't reached yet in the kitchen. Shows like 'Top Chef', 'Hell's Kitchen' have helped bring attention to the culinary world.

Back in the day, cooking definitely was the thing where you could make a lot of money. Also, it was something that I liked to do.

Very good cooks who are employed as 'chefs' rarely refer to themselves as 'chefs.' They refer to themselves as 'cooks.'

My dream as a passionate cook has been to go to Le Cordon Bleu. Never could my most incredible dream have lived up to the experience. The food, the lesson, the chef, the ingredients - all the best of the best. I see why Le Cordon Bleu is world-renowned.

I started my cooking 'career' aged 15, almost 20 years ago. At the time it was quite a shock suddenly working 75 to 80 hours a week, without time to play football or other sports.

My reasons for becoming a chef are somewhat of a cliche. I always loved to eat but it was watching my parents cook that really served as the impetus for my career choice.

I never even dreamed of being a chef, and that's fundamental.

I call all chefs 'cooks.' They're all cooks. That's what we do, we cook. You're a chef when you're running a kitchen.

I didn't harbor a huge desire to become a chef until I graduated from college.

My father and my brother are chefs.

After attending The Dalton School and then Vassar College, I began cooking in New York City restaurants helmed by Anne Rosenzweig, Joachim Splichal and Thomas Keller.