I work hard. I focus on myself and putting food on my dinner table before anything else. I don't worry about other artists. Worrying about the next person in a negative way is the wrong way to be.
I grew up with that farm-to-table dining before it was sweeping the nation. I do think there's some value to really throwing yourself into food and embracing where it comes from.
If I'd never gone out and done more than one restaurant, my food wouldn't be as good as it is today. I've learned a lot from people who work for me.
Most food you drop is still perfectly edible. If it was in your eyesight the whole time, you can pick it up and eat it.
There are a lot of food Nazis in the U.S., but I believe if you can show people what's really important, they'll judge the rest for themselves.
The problem is when that fun stuff becomes the habit. And I think that's what's happened in our culture. Fast food has become the everyday meal.
I love flying so much. I even like airplane food. No one bothers you and your phone never goes off and you can't have emails go through. It's undisturbed.
You can't very well live in a castle while your kin is on the poor side of town and barely have enough food. Some want you to get to the top and rely on you making it for them, too.
I am a chef through and through. Everything I do - whether it is cooking for kids in Harlem or cooking in a fine dining establishment - all my days are consumed by food.
We're lying ourselves into believing things are untrue, like organic food will solve all our problems, or vitamins will make us healthy, or we don't need to vaccinate our children.
My feeling is that labels are for canned food... I am what I am - and I know what I am.
Recipes are important but only to a point. What's more important than recipes is how we think about food, and a good cookbook should open up a new way of doing just that.
Go to the grocery store and buy better things. Buy quality, buy organic, buy natural, go to the farmers market. Immediately that's going to increase the quality of the food you make.
My job the same as carpenter. What kind of house you want to build? What kind of food you want to make? You think your ingredients, your structure. Simple.
The food was interesting. My background is Russian, so cheese and potatoes are my love. There was plenty of that. And fried cheese! It is really, really, really good. And really, really, really bad for you. It's like an artery on a plate.
Even though I'm big on recipes, I love to make up my own dishes and when you take a risk in the kitchen, you learn a lot about food!
You know, we don't have any decorative sprigs of rosemary; we're not placing little matchstick radishes onto an hors d'oeuvre... The food's gotta taste good. The concept's gotta taste good.
President Obama is the most successful food stamp president in American history. I would like to be the most successful paycheck president in American history.
What I generally get from being in Africa is a sense of warmth and openness. As a stranger, you are always welcomed into people's homes and people are always offering you food. That generosity is incredibly touching.
We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted.
I love to sit and eat quietly and enjoy each bite, aware of the presence of my community, aware of all the hard and loving work that has gone into my food.
