Alvin Leung Quotes

I was eating in a Chinese restaurant downtown. There was a dish called Mother and Child Reunion. It's chicken and eggs. And I said, I gotta use that one.

The food in Sydney is an Asian Pacific cuisine. It's eclectic but above all it's fresh, inventive and creative and that's what I love about it.

Food makes travel so exceptional, because you get to taste what it's actually supposed to taste like. To eat the real Pad Thai or finally have a proper curry is something pretty amazing.

You have to know the classics if you want to cook modern food.

I really loved traveling the U.S. and seeing regional differences within the same country and how the same ingredients are used in very different ways. I love how the 'old guard' of cuisine are still pioneering so much of the direction of food today.

As a kid we would eat moussaka with mash. We had a real fusion of two cultures that no-one has dared to fuse since.

I like to say, 'Chop suey's the biggest culinary joke that one culture has ever played on another,' because chop suey, if you translate into Chinese, means 'tsap sui,' which, if you translate back, means 'odds and ends.'

Fusion food as a concept is kind of trying to quite consciously fuse things that are sometimes quite contradictory, sometimes quite far apart, to see if they'd work.

At Babbo, each dish grew out of a conversation, trying to put something forth that was new and different. It was a combination of culinary adventurism and the dining-room experience with respect for the classic but with an eye toward innovation. And it was about eating locally, whether produce or fish or meat.

I think that people are getting really excited about different ethnic food, and almost even micro-ethnic food. So it's not just, 'I love Asian,' it's Szechuan or Hunan, this one style from China.

BaoHaus is idiosyncratic, creative, and artistic. My restaurant doesn't look like a Taiwanese restaurant.

I think the French and the Japanese are both obsessed by seasons, small producers, freshness.

I'm a huge cook! I'm actually trying to write my first cookbook. I make an Indian-spice Bolognese and serve it over pasta. It's a combination of flavors that people aren't used to.

The 'Maverick Chef' is one concept that I would really want to do again because I am traveling from country to country taking from what is in that country that is iconic, special, funky, weird and doing it my way. That is something I really enjoy.

Nothing beats the food of Delhi.

In Tijuana, because there's such a mix and match of people and regions and we're a newer city and everyone comes from some place else, I think we're just given permission to play with our food.

Some of the oddest foods I've encountered are 'American' foods represented internationally.

I am not very convinced with having a signature dish. The whole point of being a chef is going to a new place, adapting and curating a new menu as per the culture and community.

Now, I love Israeli food, love 'Jerusalem: A Cookbook', love the homey exoticism, the fusion forged in the crucible of an eternally contested crossroads.

I enjoy experimenting with food and dish out innovative food items as well.

I want to have Congolese influences but also influences from Dubai and Abu Dhabi and France. To mix everything up.

I just think our British cuisine and the different influences we pull together make it special when it comes to food.

Any simple but delicious dish that celebrates the season and locality is what I want to be known for.

Just because something is English does not necessarily mean it is good. We make the best cheddar; we make great pasties. But we can't make very good brie or baguettes - and the French can't make pork pies.

Brittany might not boast the biggest collection of Michelin stars in France, but when it comes to produce, you quickly realise that some of the key building blocks of French cuisine have their roots here.