Barry Lam Quotes

Get to know the Chef and you will start to enjoy dining out even more.

You have to think of a restaurant as a series of impressions. But what makes my job so great is there's no one answer that's right for every restaurant.

Although the skills aren't hard to learn, finding the happiness and finding the satisfaction and finding fulfillment in continuously serving somebody else something good to eat, is what makes a really good restaurant.

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

It is not difficult now to make good food because we have sophisticated equipment and refined ingredients. Being innovative also helps you. It sets you apart from other chefs. But taste is king.

One of Netscape's main attractions to customers from Day One is that we provide alternatives. And that's cherished by many customers - certainly not all.

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.

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.

I loved the cooking; that was what I was passionate about, but getting to watch the guests eat - because you could see everything from the kitchen - just watching people eat and looking at the plates when they came back, just understanding, this is such an amazing job.

I don't like eating in restaurants.

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 love restaurants from top to bottom.

We'll serve, on a good Saturday night six or seven thousand people in all the restaurants, and it's like, the percentages are that maybe one person's not going to like what they get. And I can't be there to fix it. I hate that. We're in this business to make things that please people.

After failing four times and after working for other people and realizing that nobody paid attention to the food like they should have, we wanted to just pay attention to the food and service.

Chalkboards being used inside the restaurant seem to be a good sign that the proprietors are proud of their food, and that's kind of nice, actually - it's a nice personal touch.

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.

Frankly, Milan kind of sucks as a restaurant city. It's so fashion-obsessed that people don't pay that much attention to the food.

I'm the person who wouldn't send back my food even if I got steak when I'd ordered fish.

Although a great restaurant experience must include great food, a bad restaurant experience can be achieved through bad service alone. Ideally, service is invisible. You notice it only when something goes wrong.

If I ever own a restaurant, I will never allow the waiters to ask if the diners like their dishes. Particularly when they're talking.

God, Americans know how to cook.

When I used to work at Friday's, in a restaurant, that endless appetizer, that was my worst enemy as a server. Oh my god.

I was a part- time chef. I can cook you the best steak you've ever had.

I think my service is better than my food... I focus so much on the service.

When you do a menu at a restaurant, you have to be the engineer of that menu. It has to be a crowd-pleaser.