Professional Kitchen Quotes

Way back in the day, I used to cook for Thomas Keller at Rakel in New York City. Keller is a down to earth, kind, supportive person. I wish people could see that.

Chef: Any cook who swears in French.

It was my first day working at Tour d'Argent, a famous restaurant in Paris, in 1982, and they were celebrating their 400th anniversary. I am in the fish station and after many mistakes, including cutting myself after 30 seconds in that kitchen, the chef said, "Make a Hollandaise sauce with 32 yolks." It takes me forever to separate the yolks from the whites, and I put them in a bowl and try to go close to the stove, but the stove is way too hot for me.

It's a life choice to be a girl chef, as it is to be a boy chef. It feels pretty natural to me. It's a full-time, full-scale, full physical job, and a lot of times, it can take the place of kids and family. To be in this career is much more difficult for a woman to have a family, marriage - whatever that means. It's not a 9-5 job.

Very early in my culinary career, while helping another cook prepare the staff meal, I stirred some chopped raw garlic and herbs into a bowl of leftover lentils. The atonement for this sin was so extreme that I've never repeated it: After being chastised, I spent the next 20 minutes fishing out the minuscule pieces of garlic.

Gastronomy is the French Foreign Legion. You don't need any qualifications. Just walk through the door and keep your head down. Be respectful - "Yes chef!" - and you'll be given a trade. One day you'll be in a position where you can put a roof over your children's heads, you can put food on their table, create security for them.

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 you've attended the Cordon Bleu, you would know that no woman is supposed to be a chef - only men.

People with chile peppers on their chef pants shouldn't be allowed in the kitchen.

If a restaurant kitchen is your office, Nom is for you.

I'm in the kitchen five days a week, no matter what, and one or two of those days I'm on the line. Not because I have to be, but because I want to be.

In a professional kitchen, the idea is to have your cooks not moving much while they're cooking. You want them to stay in the same spot.

How many chefs when I was a young boy shouted at me during service? All I ever said was "Yes, chef." The customer is the most important. If the chef overreacts, fine. At the end of service, you apologize.

I love the intensity of the fine-dining kitchen, but loathe the fine-dining experience.

I call all chefs 'cooks.' They're all cooks. That's what we do, we cook. You're a chef when you're running a kitchen.

I can't work in a domestic kitchen; it's just too confined. There's no freedom, and there's no buzz.

When I graduated from cooking school, I went to work at Stars, which was one of my favorite restaurants in the country at the time, and that's where I really learned to cook and to taste food in a discerning way.

When you're cooking in the premier league of restaurants, when things go down, it has to be sorted immediately.

In any restaurant of this caliber, the chefs are in the same position, building relationships.

I went straight from college into restaurants, so, from the beginning, my idea of what a kitchen should be was the highfalutin' restaurant type - and what I had at home never measured up to that.

Chefs don't become chefs just to earn stars - that's not the goal.