Had I not been an actor, I would have been counting cash at my father's restaurant or supervising activities in the kitchen. I did it for a year when I was in college. I put on 10 kgs and then it hit me that I couldn't do that anymore.
Being a chef never seems like a job, it becomes a true passion.
I used to be a chef.
I worked as a head cook at courthouses and high schools. I left it behind when I started getting into my music real heavy.
I was always a good cook from my mum showing me when I was a young lad, but hiring a chef helped me to understand food better.
I've been a cook all my life, but I am still learning to be a good chef. I'm always learning new techniques and improving beyond my own knowledge because there is always something new to learn and new horizons to discover.
Way back when I was a junior pastry chef, I'd bake loads of muffins every morning, as many as 120 or so, while operating on autopilot.
Not every chef is a yeller, but I have to say that even a chef who is not a yeller might have a time when that rule might get broken.
"Next," said Mrs Wilfer with a wave of her gloves, expressive of abdication under protest from the culinary throne, "I would recommend examination of the bacon in the saucepan on the fire, and also of the potatoes by the application of a fork. Preparation of the greens will further become necessary if you persist in this unseemly demeanour."
Being a chef would be too much hard work.
Poisoning rarely happens in a well-managed kitchen.
There's no media training. In cooking school, there's not even manager training. You learn the fundamentals of cooking. Everything else is learning by doing.
I told the caterer I'd work for nothing if he'd teach me about catering. I lasted one week full-time. It was exhausting.
Even if the chef has a good business head, his focus should be behind kitchen doors. A business partner should take care of everything in front of the kitchen doors.
Bad cooks - and the utter lack of reason in the kitchen - have delayed human development longest and impaired it most.
I hope the cooks who are working for me now are getting that kind of experience so they can use what they're learning now as a foundation for a great career.
I prize my seamstress, I value my copyist; but my cook, who knows well how to prepare the food to sustain life, and nourish brain, bone, and muscle, fills the most important place among the helpers in my family.
I always knew I wanted to be a chef.
You can't be a chef and appear on television all the time. It's impossible. At least when I earned my stars, I was always behind my stove.
As a chef, I got into this because I love the creative energy and I love the science, but I also love to feed people and make them happy.
I am well aware that a chef is only as good as his last meal.
One summer I was made housekeeper to my own family, making menus and shopping lists. It was my mother's idea of teaching me to be a grown-up. The main thing I remember is my father being so delighted to get roast duck.
As a chef and someone who's been in the restaurant business for almost thirty years now, if there's one thing I learned early on: Never eat at a buffet. I don't want to eat yesterday's food and whatever they're trying to get rid of from their cooler for my lunch, dinner, or breakfast, thank you very much.
I came to understand that the words executive and corporate never belong next to the word chef.
What feats of ingenuity have we not been forced to perform, at times, in order to meet our customers' wishes? Those only who have had charge of a large, modern kitchen can tell the tale.
