Being a cook, there's always pressure - not for your ego but for people to love your food.
I'm from North Carolina, so I am really picky about my fried chicken.
People are so used to eating terrible pancakes, no matter how you mess up, they're going to be great. And if you make fresh orange juice, they'll be over the moon.
If a D.C. event doesn't have crab cakes, it's low-rent and you need to flee.
Becoming food savvy is one thing, but it's amazing how fast savvy turns to snooty, and snooty leaves you preparing three-hour meals that break your budget and that the kids won't even eat.
If your idea of a 7 course meal is a bucket of KFC and a sixpack, you might be a redneck.
And you understand something: that although, like all American eaters, you've been conditioned to think of the entree as the climax of the meal, it never is. It is, indeed, almost always disappointing, especially if you order fish.
I hated the Naked Chef. Fine, yes, he did good things for school food or whatever, but, you know, I don't want my chefs to be cute and adorable.
Any Southerner is spoiled when it comes to food.
Now everybody thinks that once you do Top Chef, then 13 weeks later you're a chef. Nobody wants to learn to cook anymore.
The restaurant chefs in Spain are breaking ground, but in terms of the everyday cooking in Spain I still hear people coming back and saying they were disappointed. I think it's because they're expecting the chef stuff.
Of course, there's no reason that Paris should have decent Mexican food. It's a silly expectation - there's a Mexican population in Paris, but they're not exactly traveling there from across the border. Paris also doesn't do Peruvian all that well, either.
Food is a big part of my culture, so everyone knows how to cook. When I came to America and asked a babysitter to softboil an egg for my son and she didn't know how, I was shocked.
Making ribs in Texas isn't that unusual a choice for 'Top Chef'. We played the stereotypes everywhere we go. It's not only in Texas. We do it in New York; we did it in San Francisco. Listen if we shoot it in Seattle you know we're going to be throwing salmon somewhere.
I'm sick of the foodies who need every morsel that goes into their mouth to be a Picasso painting, a Giacometti sculpture, a Proust novel, evoking the world with each crumb.
May your rice never burn,' is the New Year's greeting of the Chinese. 'May it never be gummy,' is ours.
At American weddings, the quality of the food is in inverse proportion to the social position of the bride and groom.
Frankly, once I've eaten a thing, I don't expect to see it again.
Bread without butter or coffee without milk is an awful calamity, as if everything before being put in our mouth must first be held under a cow.
If everyone could just cook properly I wouldn't have a problem.
Cooking breakfast and brunch professionally really kind of ruined breakfast service for me for a long time.
You just have to realize that no matter how delectable that meal looks, there's a chance that you might not get to eat it while it's hot.
