Jeannie Mai Quotes

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.

I cook British food, but it doesn't mean I'm jingoistic about it. People can cook very good fusion food.

What makes Harlem special is that at any given time, food seekers can not only find food deeply rooted in Southern, Latin and African traditions, but also can taste the newer Senegalese, Chinese, and Italian influences as well.

I love food, all types of food. I love Korean food, Japanese, Italian, French. In Australia, we don't have a distinctive Australian food, so we have food from everywhere all around the world. We're very multicultural, so we grew up with lots of different types of food.

People are trying to figure out what American food is; it's certainly an amalgamation.

If you ask what people say what American cuisine is, they cannot really do it. I don't know what it is.

I tend to eat geographically. When I'm in L.A., I like to eat L.A. food.

England understands good Chinese, Japanese and Indian cuisine; in France, we just get French.

Whoever would have guessed that in the land of cheap sausages and mashed potatoes there could be such a change which would actually bring the French from Paris every weekend to invade Britain en masse to eat great food and drink great wine.

Europe's the mayonnaise, but America supplies the good old lobster.

I think in France, for example, we can say whatever we want about the French, but going out and dining is more about the intellectual moment to share with the people you dine with than trying to figure out what the chef did with that little piece of salmon or lobster and all that.

We in Britain stopped evolving gastronomically with the advent of the pie. Everything beyond that seemed like a brave, frightening new world. We knew the French were up to something across the Channel, but we didn't want anything to do with it.

Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.

I like a lot of food. I like Taiwanese food, of course. I like baguettes, especially the ones that my dad buys. Vancouver has a lot of variety, with pizza, hot dogs, Italian, Indian, seafood - a great combination of culture.

As they say in Italy, Italians were eating with a knife and fork when the French were still eating each other. The Medici family had to bring their Tuscan cooks up there so they could make something edible.

I find that there are a lot of similarities between French and Japanese food. I think they're two countries that have really systemized their cuisine and codified it.

When I was a teenager, I worked in New Orleans for a chef named Paul Prudhomme. That was a very important time in my life as a chef. I developed my palate and learned a lot. And here I am now. I specialize in modern Mexican and contemporary Latin cuisines.

Paris, as always, is swarming with Americans, and these days, it's also swarming with hamburgers. Oddly, though, it's not typically the Americans who are pursuing the perfect burger on the perfect bun with the obligatory side of perfect coleslaw; the Americans are pursuing the perfect blanquette de veau.

When I first went to Paris in 1965, I fell in love with the small, family-owned restaurants that existed everywhere then, as well as the markets and the French obsession with buying fresh food, often twice a day.

New York's food scene is truly unique because it is this wonderful melting pot where immigrants from all over the world have brought with them their cuisines and their ingredients.

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

I'm religious about salted butter. I don't understand how it happened that everyone thought we should all have sweet butter. I blame the French.

While we Brits love a curry, the French get their spicy kicks from the culinary traditions bestowed by their North African population.

I'm always looking for a way to get some spice into my cooking but, generally, the French don't like spicy food.

Eating among the French certainly affected me. After a few years here, I gave up most of my selective food habits.