Marcus Sakey Quotes

I like sweet-and-salty things.

In my case, vertical food was less about standing things up than layering things: more an attempt to gain texture by weaving things together.

When you taste things in the right order, sometimes they taste so much different than if you taste them out of order. Not that there's a right order, like by rule, but just like in a thoughtful way that makes sense.

The biggest hits - be they Coca-Cola or Doritos - owe their success to complex formulas that pique the taste buds enough to be alluring but don't have a distinct, overriding single flavor that tells the brain to stop eating.

We can create any sort of flavor on a printed image that we set our minds to.

Cooking is like painting or writing a song. Just as there are only so many notes or colors, there are only so many flavors - it's how you combine them that sets you apart.

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.

You are defined by your ingredients, by the way you touch them, by the flavors you draw from them.

Experience, which plays such an important part in culinary work, is nowhere so necessary as in the preparation of sauces, for not only must the latter flatter the palate, but they must also very in savour, consistence, and viscosity, in accordance with the dishes they accompany.

Between the ages of six and nine, my palette was taking shape as well as my identity as a chef. It was then that I learned the difference between salty, sweet, sour and even spicy.

As a restaurateur, my palate is one of my most important tools.

Since truffle oil and caviar aren't always in the budget, learning to tweak and enhance just a few ingredients and flavor combinations can help you transform those ordinary ingredients into the extraordinary!

Once you know the fundamentals of cooking, then you don't need to follow a recipe - you just know what herbs go well or what meats, or what combination of what goes together, and then you can just branch out from there. But if there's something specific that I want to make, I work on the recipe and tweak it to my own.

I'm not a big sweet guy, I have more of a savory palate.

Balance is key in cooking - you want a little acid, a little sweet, a little savory - the flavors should be harmonious.

Any idea's a great idea as long as it tastes great.

As with lemon juice, the more sorrel you use, the more it has to be balanced with something sweet, starchy or creamy - it's a yin-yang approach to cooking that I find rather calming.

What strikes me, the more I cook, is that the best recipes are ones where the basic anatomy is so sound it will survive multiple adjustments. When a recipe has good bones, you can change the seasoning, double the garlic, swap lime for lemon, and it still turns out delicious.

Whenever we create dishes, we work very carefully and ask ourselves, 'Is there anything on the dish that really doesn't make the dish better?' Then we eliminate that. We try to stay very focused on really showcasing everything on the plate so nothing gets lost.

I think the patterns are set very early when the kids are young. But at the same time, there are some flavors kids just don't like.

Cooking is creating emotion.

I can't do the frappuccino. It's too sweet. I need it straight.

'Chef' is a dish of arroz con pollo served with a smile but not much style. The critic in the film would give it a low grade, for agreeability without ambition.

I am driven by ingredients. My Italian heritage and French training inevitably poke through as well, guiding my techniques.

The service of food is to nurture, to please, to nourish.