Quotes on Chef

I kind of do not like the word chef. Chef, giving you a sense of hierarchy and power. To be a good cook and to be a good leader, it has to come from within and to understand others.

I was a journeyman chef of middling abilities. Whatever authority I have as a commenter on this world comes from the sheer weight of 28 years in the business. I kicked around for 28 years and came out the other end alive and able to form a sentence.

I'm a decent cook; I'm a decent chef. None of my friends would ever have hired me at any point in my career. Period.

I wasn't that great a chef, and I don't think I'm that great a writer.

When I'm back in New York - and this is a terrible thing to complain about - I eat a lot more really, really good food than perhaps I'd like to. So many of my friends are really good chefs. It's kind of like being in the Mafia.

My family truly believes they are better cooks than I am. They see me as Giada, not as a celebrity chef. To them I'm just me - their granddaughter, niece, etc., and they're older and wiser. I like that because it keeps you grounded.

A good chef has to be a manager, a businessman and a great cook. To marry all three together is sometimes difficult.

In normal life, 'simplicity' is synonymous with 'easy to do,' but when a chef uses the word, it means 'takes a lifetime to learn.'

All of the people who work in the kitchen with me go out into the forests and on to the beach. It's a part of their job. If you work with me you will often be starting your day in the forest or on the shore because I believe foraging will shape you as a chef.

I train my chefs completely different to anyone else. My young girls and guys, when they come to the kitchen, the first thing they get is a blindfold. They get blindfolded and they get sat down at the chef's table... Unless they can identify what they're tasting, they don't get to cook it.

Kitchens are hard environments and they form incredibly strong characters.

As a soccer player, I wanted an FA Cup winner's medal. As an actor you want an Oscar. As a chef it's three-Michelin's stars, there's no greater than that. So pushing yourself to the extreme creates a lot of pressure and a lot of excitement, and more importantly, it shows on the plate.

A lot of chefs are traditional and do it very well. But the ones who are the most successful are the ones who change things. That is why someone like Heston Blumenthal is a genius.

My palate is simpler than it used to be. A young chef adds and adds and adds to the plate. As you get older, you start to take away.

I have a very modern way of thinking; the chef is there to lead the team and not just to sit behind the piano.

Kitchens should be designed around what's truly important-fun, food, and life.

With cult foods, there is an underlying assumption that the best cooking ideas came generations ago. Yet culinary innovation is nothing to be ashamed of. When a chef tells me he is cooking with his grandmother's recipe, I always wonder why. Did talent skip the past two generations?

As a chef I’m not your dietitian or your ethicist, I’m in the pleasure business.

Japanese chefs believe our soul goes into our knives once we start using them. You wouldn't put your soul in a dishwasher!

Cooking is an observation-based process that you can't do if you're so completely focused on a recipe.

She looked at me and laughed pointlessly. Then she flounced over to the dog, kissed it with ecstasy, and swept into the kitchen, implying that a dozen chefs awaited her orders there.