Steve Chen Quotes

I get asked to speak to a lot of different groups, one of the best parts of my job hosting a show on the Travel Channel, 'Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern.' I take viewers to the far corners of the globe and introduce them to other cultures by exploring the foods they eat - at times, pretty strange stuff.

I think that curiosity happened on these reviews where I was just a guest of the reviewer, because it introduced me to new cuisines and to the idea of cooking as a mechanism for studying other cultures and understanding other parts of the world.

As a chef and avid traveler, meeting new people and sharing a meal with the intent to learn more about their culture is important to me.

I just couldn't live without other cultures' cuisines.

I'm half Moroccan and half Indian so I have quite an adventurous taste in food.

It's fun to pick a cuisine and say I'm going to research Ethiopian food, and see what it's all about. You find that there are a lot of similarities in cuisines from around the world and a lot of similar flavors.

I always had a lot of fun in America, with much more freedom than if I had tried to cook in France. I wouldn't have the same motivation or inspiration, and I wouldn't have cooked for the same kind of people in France, so it wouldn't have given me this edge I had in America.

Lebanese mezze, Cantonese dim sum and Basque pinchos have all evolved over years and are designed to make sense together.

I had a long-lasting love affair with the flavors from Japan and the hustling New York street vendors. And, of course, a life-changing return to Ethiopia has made huge impacts on my life in food.

I'm a firm believer that the world should be your oyster when you're cooking. People should open themselves to other cuisines - there are a lot of hidden secrets all over the world.

Gastronomy has done more to bring together people of the world than any guns ever could.

Some foods you may say, 'Oh wow, this is not food.' People actually eat that somewhere. I just want people to really understand that and really appreciate it.

I have a restaurant in Sri Lanka, and I feel keen to open up something here in Mumbai and bring Sri Lankan food here in India. I feel we have so much in common, but we have a different cuisine, and I am sure people will enjoy here.

After the passing of my personal hero, Anthony Bourdain, I've been reflecting a lot on his influence on food culture. He made street food from around the world, that most of us have never heard of, accessible.

I love to eat internationally and do eating contests everywhere. Traveling around, meeting people, and doing different things.

What I've enjoyed most, though, is meeting people who have a real interest in food and sharing ideas with them. Good food is a global thing and I find that there is always something new and amazing to learn - I love it!

For 'Around the World in 80 Plates' we got to travel all over, having what was like a cross between a culinary competition and races. And in each country we had a chef Ambassador. We went to London, Barcelona, Bologna, Hong Kong, Thailand, Morocco... It was amazing.

New York gives us a wide colour palette to cook from. We have cuisines from around the world, and that lets us pick and choose.

I've been a foodie most of my life. I started when I lived for a year in Germany in my early 20s, and here was this new food environment, and I decided I needed to make sense of it. And I found it was the rules of economics that do the best job. Food is a capitalist product of supply and demand.

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.

From Japan to Thailand, I keep discovering amazing talent, cuisine and food markets.

You just feel a little odd when you don't get your kind of food. Fortunately, there are Indian restaurants all over the world.

You eat a lot of goat stomach when you're in North Africa. You eat whatever's put in front of you. I am a big proponent of that.

I want to expand my cuisine to this country. I love America. I have been here 22 years.

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.