Chef Quotations

My father was a chef but hadn't owned his own business. I didn't like that. In my heart of hearts, I knew I wanted to be in business.

I always had a fantasy of being a chef, because I like kitchen life.

A great chef is an artist that I truly respect.

I always thought that family was the most important thing in life, and no matter what I do, whether being a chef or an actor or a dancer, being a dad is what I do best.

If you're not the one cooking, stay out of the way and compliment the chef.

I have a chef who makes sure that I'm getting the right amounts of carbs, proteins and fats throughout the day to keep me at my max performance level.

It's like a kitchen, acting. Put a chef in a kitchen and they will have different recipes. Whatever your recipe, what works for you won't work for another.

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

My husband is the chef of the family; he's a brilliant cook. Actually, it makes you quite lazy when you have somebody that's so good at cooking under the same roof. It's all beans or spaghetti when I'm left to run it.

If you want to become a great chef, you have to work with great chefs. And that's exactly what I did.

Now everybody thinks that once you do Top Chef, then 13 weeks later you're a chef. Nobody wants to learn to cook anymore.

I think the most wonderful thing in the world is another chef. I'm always excited about learning new things about food.

I'm not a trained chef, so I end up making stuff up. It either turns out brilliant or an absolute disaster. I just go for it.

I wanted to learn everything I could about what it takes to be a great chef. It was a turning point for me.

Learning about issues such as sustainability and locavorism are things that you need to have as part of you as a chef because it will make you cook more delicious food.

Chefs, as a whole, say yes to any project, fundraiser, or tasting because they have such a generous spirit.

I would love to date a chef. I'd probably get really fat, but I don't care.

There's a bond among a kitchen staff, I think. You spend more time with your chef in the kitchen than you do with your own family.

There really is a camaraderie among chefs and a willingness to help out whenever we can.

You don't have to be a chef or even a particularly good cook to experience proper kitchen alchemy: the moment when ingredients combine to form something more delectable than the sum of their parts.

As a chef, if I can taste something, I can basically figure out whats in it.

I love food shows: Anthony Bourdain, Iron Chef, Chopped, you name it.

'Chef' doesn't mean that you're the best cook, it simply means 'boss.'

Chefs have a new opportunity - and perhaps even an obligation - to inform the public about what is good to eat, and why.

A chef is a mixture maybe of artistry and craft. You have to learn the craft really to get there.

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

You don't become a chef to become famous.

It's wild how chefs have become like rock stars.

I'm the joke of the family with cooking because I've never done it - primarily because I've been surrounded by people who are so good at it. Mum's brilliant. Boyfriends have always been good at it. I'm waiting for my inner chef to be released.

If you are a chef, no matter how good a chef you are, it's not good cooking for yourself; the joy is in cooking for others - it's the same with music.

Everybody these days wants to be a star, including myself. Don't get me wrong, I'm a chef but you want to market yourself and your projects.

I was lucky enough to marry a wonderful chef.

For the longest time, chefs and restaurateurs were able to get products home cooks couldn't get, but that's not the case anymore.

Close interaction with farmers and scientists can expose the chef to new flavours that can be used to delight diners.

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.

I think in France, for example, we can say whatever we want about the French, but going out and dining is more about the intellectual moment to share with the people you dine with than trying to figure out what the chef did with that little piece of salmon or lobster and all that.

Chef's choice is my favorite. I'm super adventurous.

I miss being fawned over by restaurateurs and chefs.

One thing I always say is being a great chef today is not enough - you have to be a great businessman.

First of all, I can't really claim to be a great chef.

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.

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

Whenever I'd go to restaurants, the main chef came out and was cooking for me, and he's asking me how the food is. I get, like, VIP service, so it's weird.

The chef that grew up with the grandma who cooks tends to always beat the chef that went to the culinary institute. It's in the blood.

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.

All the great chefs I know - Thomas Keller, Jean-Georges Vongerichten - they are technicians first.

Food's delicate. You have to handle it with finesse. You can't just be a big ogre.

You're getting to know who the great chefs are through their books.

The worst food you'll ever eat will probably be prepared by a 'cook' who calls himself a 'chef.' Mark my words.

They say never trust a skinny chef, but the fact is, to stay healthy when you're a chef means you have to work twice as hard.

Many of them have accomplished a lot before they ever get to 'Top Chef' although they're not well known. The show just provides them with a platform. There's just one winner and on some seasons you can get numerous chefs that are really good. Even if they don't win, they're all talented.

Very good cooks who are employed as 'chefs' rarely refer to themselves as 'chefs.' They refer to themselves as 'cooks.'

Gordon Ramsay makes me laugh because he knows that I'm not a chef.

Maybe one of the only things I do well: I cook like a maniac! I would be a chef if I weren't an actor.

Every chef should have an understanding of pastries or desserts.

Taking dishes straight off the restaurant's menu and putting them into a cookbook doesn't work, because as a chef you have your own vision of what your food is, but you can't always explain it. Or you can't pick recipes that best illustrate who and where you are and what you're doing. And if the recipes don't work, you don't have a book.

If I want popularity, I go to a chef's convention.

I was good at math and science, and I got lots of degrees in lots of things, but in a parallel universe, I probably became a chef.

I am so proud of 'Top Chef' - I think it's got great cred.

I am a chef who happens to appear on the telly, that's it.

I'd like to see 'Top Chef: Amateur'. Sometimes we have an amateur chef on the show and they just can't cut it against the pros but there are some great stories there.

I did all the Chef Boyardee commercials, in America, when I was young.

I've been nominated for 12 Emmys, and we won - for 'Top Chef' - the only time I didn't go.

I am the most unselfish chef in Britain today.

We are not really privy to all that crazy stuff that goes on in the show. I go to work, eat, and talk about food. The wild things happen when we aren't around. I expected Top Chef to last three or four seasons and we are now shooting season ten.

I'm not a TV guy. I'm a restaurant chef and a businessman.

I'm a Twitter addict. Jose Andres is a serial tweeter. It's funny to see which chefs have embraced it, and the different paths they take.

I'm a bit of a gourmet chef. I love cooking - mostly Thai food.

Even growing up, I was always the helper-outer, the sous-chef to my parents.

I want to be a chef, but I'm only a fat girl chef; like, I only like to make fat comfort food. I'm not, like, a healthy chef person.

I'm evangelical on the subject of some chefs and writers.

Every chef I know, their cholesterol is through the roof. And mine's not so great.

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

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.

We are pleased to have a chef of such stature share our vision. Dale's Kitchen gives our technology wonderful exposure throughout the foodservice and packaging industries. The Fresh Flow(TM) Tap is changing rules.

When we are trying to come up with new health laws, you bring doctors, you bring experts in medicine. In urban planning, you bring the best architects. How it is possible that when we are talking about the way we are going to feed America, no chef shows up in the room?

I always loved cooking, from an early age. I kind of wanted to be a chef.

Set yourself up for success from the very beginning and then focus on maintaining that success.

I think all chefs who pursue great flavor have good ethics.

The best way to learn to cook is to do some serious eating.

She's just the master chef in the kitchen. When she was measuring out the milk for nine children, she made sure each glass had an equal amount. Otherwise, the kids would get on her about it.

She has been a pastry chef and was working there, too. When I talked to her today (Friday), she said her only regret was leaving her cookbooks and recipes behind when she left.

Men are always pushed into group situations ... like group sports with a leader. In the kitchen the chef is your captain, but in pastry there is more autonomy, more independence. Women relish that. you are permitted to be creative sooner than on the hot line.

Occasionally, the chef gets creative and comes up with a new one.

I have dreams of becoming a professional pastry chef and having a little bakery - that's how much I love baking. I love to cook in general, but my heart lies in desserts.

But the food was great, ... Our chef was doing a fantastic job.

Eh! Je suis leur chef, il fallait bien les suivre. (Ah well! I am their leader, I really ought to follow them.)

He is the first chef-restaurateur who has dared to admit openly, and even elevate to the status of a doctrine, his belief that a chef can serve his customers with the world's finest food without constantly slaving at the stove himself. ... I have a very modern way of thinking; the chef is there to lead the team and not just to sit behind the piano.

I suspect she and the chef did not see eye-to-eye, and that is the kind of thing that happens. So much of this is chemistry and personality. So I am sure they will get another chef and I am sure the food will be fine.

It ain't what you got, it's what you know and do with what you got, ... The difference between a cook and a chef is understanding what's going on.

People love the idea of the chef coming to them. But it's an extraordinary undertaking to do these parties. To replicate what we do in the restaurants in someone's home - the precision, the perfection - is a huge challenge and extremely time-consuming.

I think every chef should have a food truck. It's a good way to test the markets, to invest in meeting the future restaurant goers.

I think his greatest assets to Medici are his flavors and his personality. More than any other chef I ever worked with, he likes to come out and talk to people and welcome them back and remember how they like something prepared. 'What can I cook for you tonight?' is his attitude.

This says everything about this state. That a North Dakota farm boy who at one time didn't know what he wanted to be ­ a fashion designer or a chef ­ can stand up here in front of you and say I am going to bring your seat back home to North Dakota.

Nobody likes sweaty coleslaw.

Young chefs, famous chefs, home cooks, and everyone who loves food and cooking-we all depend on Larousse Gastronomique. It is the only culinary encyclopedia that is always up-to-date.

I think it's a universal truth that most chefs I know are happiest eating simple, unadorned good things.

Having been a chef for some many years, I understand what it's like to work really, really hard to get good at something, only to have someone piss all over it.

If you go to chefs all across America and ask them, 'What's your biggest problem right now?,' It is finding people to cook in their restaurants. They're having an enormous, countrywide problem here staffing their operations.

If you have a good experience in a restaurant, you tell 2 people. If you have a bad experience, you tell 10 people.