Culinary Discipline Quotes

I need to stay disciplined on the road. Too much food can wreck your palate.

There are people who claim to be instinctive cooks, who never follow recipes or weigh anything at all. All I can say is they're not very fussy about what they eat. For me, cooking is an exact art and not some casual game.

I'm sure that at no point in my life could I ever have shown the kind of focus and discipline and commitment necessary to work a station at elBulli or Le Bernardin. No. That ain't me.

If a chef says to you that he sits down and eats dinner before service, then it's bulls***. And if they do, then I'd tell them that they are a fat f***! You shouldn't indulge, because you need to keep your palate on edge, and keeping it on edge is all about small attention to detail and tweaking along the way.

If you become a chef because you're obsessed by becoming a celebrity, getting my ass kicked and working my nuts off the way I did in France and getting pushed around those kitchens wasn't about becoming famous.

People come up to me all the time and ask how I stay the way I am, and it's no secret. The first lesson a chef needs to learn is how to handle a knife; the second is how to be around all that food.

When I used to have a show on French TV, people would ask me how my jacket stayed spotless while cooking. Your whole area has to be clean - and you have to keep it that way.

I could make apple pie every single day. You need to be super precise in order for it to be perfect. I'm such a perfectionist that baking is calming for me. I've never burnt anything, thank God.