Alice Waters Quotes

It's very hard to be an innovator at the highest level in any discipline. For some chefs it's merely about combining ingredients, but that's something you can do with your eyes closed.

One of the things is challenging yourself to do a Rome show when everybody's done a Rome show. To find some aspect of food culture or chef culture that people can look at in a new way.

I would try doing a dish 30 different ways.

In a time when it is common for chefs to simply reproduce the innovations of others, the few who speak for themselves through their food become the skilled artists of their time.

Your idea of that dish has evolved, and if you're a cook, you can start thinking in different ways about it, maybe even a different way than I think about it.

I like that talented chefs are able to keep coming up with new ways of preparing food - it really is an art form.

I'm surprised by the talent I find all over. There are always new chefs who propose many interesting new ideas, new ways of looking at ingredients.

A jazz musician can improvise based on his knowledge of music. He understands how things go together. For a chef, once you have that basis, that's when cuisine is truly exciting.

After all these years of cooking and writing recipes, I am still amazed every time I notice how even the minutest of variation in technique can make a spectacular difference.

Culture and tradition have to change little by little. So 'new' means a little twist, a marriage of Japanese technique with French ingredients. My technique. Indian food, Korean food; I put Italian mozzarella cheese with sashimi. I don't think 'new new new.' I'm not a genius. A little twist.

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

The idea of old was to conform yourself to a style of cooking, it was not to create a style of cooking. Now the chef is so much into 'I want to sign that dish and say I am the one who made that dish.'

Ferran Adria making hamburgers... some thought it was crazy. But getting them perfect was a challenge. Plus I'm fascinated by all aspects of food.

I appreciate the constant evolution in refining food, but not in making food gimmicky.

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.

What makes the food that we do at Alinea so interesting on the outside is that we really don't let ourselves say no to an idea.

Food culture is like listening to the Beatles - it's international, it's very positive, it's inventive and creative.

To have a basic ingredient that can be prepared a million different ways is a beautiful thing.

Amuse-bouches are an opportunity to push boundaries.

Cooking is a philosophy; it's not a recipe.

Chefs love to have that control and power to control the message they want to deliver.

Because I am a chef, I have to try new things all the time, so it's been really good to have my family to be able to be there and test everything out.

Poultry is for the cook what canvas is for a painter, or the cap of Fortunatus for a conjurer.

As an artist, I try not to sound the same as others. Or even as myself. It's a constant, flowing web of influence. And information. And retweets.

There is a similarity between juggling and composing on the typewriter. The trick is, when you spill something, make it look like a part of the act.