Charlie Trotter Quotes

I do a lot of recipe creation. Translation: cooking tempting dishes that must be eaten.

Cuisine Nouvelle was just a concept, and one which, crucially, the English managed to get wrong. I mean, if you run a restaurant, you've got to feed people, not make pretty little pictures on plates to make up for your lack of ability.

Chefs are artists, and I couldn't be happy with my art if I was forced to use cheap ingredients.

When you talk about avant-garde cuisine, the surprise factor is really important. For example, I love looking at blogs and the photos, but I'm not that keen on other people taking photos of my dishes.

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.'

Know how to garnish food so that it is more appealing to the eye and even more flavorful than before.

To become a good cook is to know yourself, and I, at this point, know myself. I know myself, and I know the cook I want to be and the cook I am striving to be.

I love showing my personality in my cooking.

Our goal was to show people a vision of food they hadn't seen before. So, I had this idea of... let's cut all these things in half, and show a picture of the food in the pan, in the oven.

It's so beautifully arranged on the plate - you know someone's fingers have been all over it.

I cook more theoretically than I do practically. My job is creative, and in the kitchen, the biggest part of my creativity is theoretical.

The visual aspect of a dish is so important; the shapes and colors and overall design have to strike the right mood and convey the right idea.

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.

Cooking is an art form, a creative thing.

I don't know if I am a good cook, but I am a dedicated cook.

Obviously, I like very beautiful food, because I think as delicious as food has to taste, it also has to look very beautiful - the process of presentation is very important.

Desserts are all about form and function, about warm and hot and cold. I want every component to hit your palate on different levels at different times.

There is something timeless and beautiful about cooking straight to camera.

I just love food and the art of it. There's such an art to being a good chef and the way you present food and the different ingredients you use. It's like music - you get inspiration from different genres. It's the same with art, too.

I love cooking shows! I'm not a bad cook myself, but I must say that I admire the creativity of those young chefs. It makes me jealous... and hungry.

As chefs, especially pastry chefs, your creativity plays such an important part in your daily work. We truly do have a blank canvas to work with every time we create a new dish.

As a chef, I got into this because I love the creative energy and I love the science, but I also love to feed people and make them happy.

I believe that a cook in a kitchen isn't producing an entree: he's producing a reaction. The product is the reaction; the entree is just the vehicle.

I learned that things taste better on pretty plates.

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