Classic Dishes Quotes

When I wrote 'Barefoot in Paris,' I wanted to make simple recipes that you could make at home that tasted like French classics.

Classics can be phenomenal when done right. A simple roast chicken dish could be the best thing you ever eat.

A steak is a steak, so I tried to experiment with different side dishes, such as truffle croquettes, and unusual condiments, but I learned that people don't want you to change the steakhouse.

I love inventive food, but I want the classic dishes to taste like how I remember them. I get a little bummed out when there is too much fancy stuff going on and it doesn't resemble the original dish at all.

You have to be very careful how you insert new stuff, 'cause people want to hear the old stuff. It's like cooking, you know? You can't put too many peppers into the eggs... otherwise it's going to be distasteful.

France and Britain have large culinary differences, but one thing they do share is a relatively low tolerance for modernist cooking.

The role of a chef isn't to reinvent dishes but to tweak.

In each restaurant, I develop a different culinary sensibility. In Paris, I'm more classic, because that's what customers like. In Monaco, it's classic Mediterranean haute cuisine. In London, it's a contemporary French restaurant that I've developed with a U.K. influence and my French know-how.

I think Spain will always remain inspirational, and I think French cuisine will continue to be very French and yet very relevant with its time and keep evolving. But the last thing you want for it is to become too trendy and confusing. It has too much history.

I actually don't think there is any difference between French and American cuisine. French cuisine was always about discipline, about ingredient, about creativity, but also about simple. I see America as very similar in these rights.

I call it an old-fashioned seafood house for the new millennium. We are trying to update what we know as old fish houses and places like that, which are great, but I want to give it a new, fresh look with updated versions of the classics we all love.

When we were working on 'Julie & Julia,' I went back to the Julia Child cookbook and made some things I haven't made in a while, one being beef bourguignon, which to me is a hilariously 1960s dish that everyone felt they had to serve at a dinner party or they weren't a grown-up.

Here's the irony in what I do: When I go out to eat, I like classic French food. I like amazing Japanese food that has such a history that it goes back hundreds of years. And I also like really innovative food as well.

Catfish's mild taste adapts well to a wide array of flavors, especially strong assertive ones, which is why you used to see it 'blackened' Cajun style on so many restaurant menus - a trick which soon became a tired cliche.

Sweetened ice tea is one of the things I love about the South, right up there with homemade biscuits and cheese grits.

America is a such a melting pot, I'm not sure if roast chicken is the classic comfort food for everybody.

There's so much that can be learned from French cooking, especially really traditional, more modest meals.

I like healthful foods, but I'm from the Midwest, so I like food that's been around longer.

Home cooks are finding inspiration in the past, digging up centuries-old recipes more familiar to the likes of Thomas Jefferson than Thomas Keller.

All of my dishes kind of have the same thing going on - I'm always going to give you the same things that I grew up with or that my mom used to make. I'm not going to use nitrogen in my tacos.