Marcus Samuelsson Quotes

I tend to be a person who, when I get interested in something, I get obsessed by it... What happens to me is that I will fall in love with a particular ingredient or a particular dish... Once I make the decision that something has intrigued me enough to draw me in, there is no end to it.

In my actual life, a food adventure is my favorite thing to do.

Being a true foodie, I love visiting new food joints as well as treating my taste buds to pyaaz ki kachori and ghewar.

I began reading cook books when I was six, cause my father had hundreds of cook books in the kitchen. I was obsessed with cooking and tasting different recipes. I got lost in being a compulsive eater. It brought me much happiness. Sadness too, sure. But I have to say, and compulsive eaters will agree with me, for that few seconds that you're eating, food tastes just great.

I'm not a super adventurous eater and I try to make myself try things.

A lot of times on tour it's about, 'OK, where am I today? Wow, I'm in Costa Rica. What is their famous dish?' And it's about trying the food, and really experiencing it.

I'm kind of obsessed with food. I like to eat. When I tour, it's like, well, like a food tour as much as a comedy tour.

It's fun to be able to have a fun palate, and the way I say that, you think about it and it sounds funny, but it's true.

Going to Southeast Asia for the first time and tasting that spectrum of flavors - that certainly changed my whole palate, the kind of foods I crave. A lot of the dishes I used to love became boring to me.

We began building this incredible new foundation in this restaurant, and that's what began giving me the left-hand side of tradition and the right-hand side, my new palate.

I believe in a tongue-first exploration of the world. Food is our most immediate daily relationship to our ecosystem, and there is something delectable and intriguing about it.

I'm always interested in finding the new trend. If you love pizza every day, after 22 years of eating pizza, you want to try sushi.

My way of discovering of what I like was to create a restaurant list and eat my way through it, and I call it my 'inner fat girl bucket list.'

Chef's choice is my favorite. I'm super adventurous.

I started culinary school at a very young age, and really I wanted to be out working, cooking, more than I wanted to be in a classroom. You could say I wasn't a very good student - I wanted to be a student of life and experience.

From a young age, I understood the idea of balanced flavor - the reason you put ketchup on a hamburger. I was that kid who wouldn't eat something if there was something missing. I never really understood it until I began cooking professionally, balancing acids, sweets, spicy flavors and fat.

For years, I've felt that there's an inner cook in me just waiting to be unleashed. But I have to confess I'm having an awful lot of trouble finding her in real life.

I once had an Early Girl tomato at my friend Jay's house, and I thought that was the best thing I'd ever had. But then I visited friends in Senegal, and I ate sea urchin pulled fresh out of the sea. It tasted like the ocean.

When we show up in a city, we ask, 'Where's the best restaurant? What's the best beer?' You start doing that, and you get exposed to a lot of great stuff.

The year 2014 was a big year for my taste buds. They really stepped up their game. Like, I got into red wine, coffee and sushi for the first time. Well done, George.

My journey was never hard; it just happened. From the second I held a knife, from the second I was in culinary school, it's all felt too good to be true. 'This cannot be my job, my life. Somebody has to be kidding with me!'

I grew up in the Philippines and we had all this amazing fresh seafood, but uni was something that I was weirded out by. It wasn't until I was an adult that I was like, 'Let me just go ahead and try this.'

Love me some oysters. I always try them in different countries and cities.

For some reason, some kids have a fear of food. Some adults do, too. The best cure for that is to try a lot of different kinds of things. The more you try, the more experiences you have.

I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food