There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.

‚Kitchen Confidential‘ wasn’t a cautionary or an expose. I wrote it as an entertainment for New York tri-state area line cooks and restaurant lifers, basically; I had no expectation that it would move as far west as Philadelphia.

My mom had Julia Child and ‚The Fannie Farmer Cookbook‘ on top of the refrigerator, and she had a small repertoire of French dishes.

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

Eating is so intimate. It’s very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you’re inviting a person into your life.

Cooking today is a young man’s game, I don’t give a bollocks what anyone says.

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

The vulgar boil, the learned roast, an egg.

I feel that if Jacques Pepin shows you how to make an omelet, the matter is pretty much settled. That’s God talking.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

When you cook under pressure you trade perfection.

Would I swap what I have achieved as a cook if I could have been as successful as a footballer? Definitely.

Every three months, I’ll say, ‚Honey, I think I should learn how to cook‘.

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

When I figured out how to work my grill, it was quite a moment. I discovered that summer is a completely different experience when you know how to grill.

Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Do not overdo it.

I still love football, though, and I think cooking is like football. It’s not a job, it’s a passion. When you become good at it, it’s a dream job and financially you need never to worry. Ever.

When I was younger we had a grape arbor, and my mom would go out and pick grapes and make grape jam in the sink – boil it, put it in jars, and give it away as gifts.

Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish – too much handling will spoil it.

My dinners at home are startlingly simple. Every night, I stop at the market near my hotel and pick up a steak, lamb chops or some liver, which I broil in the electric oven in my room. I usually eat four or five raw carrots with my meat, and that is all. I must be part rabbit; I never get bored with raw carrots.

When I’m home, I spend Sunday with my husband. If we’re not cooking, we travel around in our camper, stop at fast-food restaurants, and picnic. We love that stuff that will harden your arteries in a hurry.

I’m just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.

The Kobe craze really annoyed me. Most of the practitioners had no real understanding of the product and were abusing it and exploiting it in terrible and ridiculous ways. Kobe beef should not be used in a hamburger. It’s completely pointless.

I love food.

I think every chef, not just in America, but across the world, has a double-edged sword – two jackets, one that’s driven, a self-confessed perfectionist, thoroughbred, hate incompetence and switch off the stove, take off the jacket and become a family man.

Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I’m taking with me when I go.

When I cook for my family on Christmas, I make feijoada, a South American dish of roasted and smoked meats like ham, pork, beef, lamb, and bacon – all served with black beans and rice. It’s festive but different.

I have loved to cook since I was a child in my mother’s kitchen. If I don’t have time to cook, I’ll just read a cookbook.

I cook, I create, I’m incredibly excited by what I do, I’ve still got a lot to achieve.

I think I should learn French and be a better cook – basic, really good life stuff.

My sisters like cooking at my place. It has a bit more room, and the food tastes a little bit better. A big pot of spaghetti and sauce, some warm French bread – works all the time. I think I’ve been eating pasta for 26 years.

Barbecue may not be the road to world peace, but it’s a start.

In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.

You don’t come into cooking to get rich.

I love Velveeta cheese.

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.

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

I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.

My wife dresses to kill. She cooks the same way.

My mother cooked like a scientist. She had a giant Chinese-style cleaver that she chopped with, and a cupboard full of spices.

Who bothers to cook TV dinners? I suck them frozen.

I’m not trying to take New York by storm. I just want to sneak in there, keep my head down, batten down the hatches and cook.

Another suggestion is to cook a meal, maybe not every night, but a couple more times a week than you usually do. That way you have leftovers, and you take your lunch to work.

Chefs are nutters. They’re all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them.

Man who invented the hamburger was smart; man who invented the cheeseburger was a genius.

Cooking is about passion, so it may look slightly temperamental in a way that it’s too assertive to the naked eye.

I’ve been my mom’s kitchen helper since I was a little kid.

I am the most unselfish chef in Britain today.

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.

Those places I don’t understand, just doing bad food. It takes some doing. Making good pasta is so much easier than making bad stuff. It actually takes quite an effort to make poor linguine pomodora.

If you like good ol‘ fashion Southern soul food then, yes, I am a good cook! My specialty is chicken dumplings and poke salad.

I like chicken a lot because chicken is generous – that is to say, it’s obedient. It will do whatever you tell it to do.

Kitchens are hard environments and they form incredibly strong characters.

Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.

Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one’s life.

My mother was born in Baltimore, and before her marriage, she was an artist and teacher of art.

Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother.

Anyone who’s a chef, who loves food, ultimately knows that all that matters is: ‚Is it good? Does it give pleasure?‘

When you’re a chef, you graze. You never get a chance to sit down and eat. They don’t actually sit down and eat before you cook. So when I finish work, the first thing I’ll do, and especially when I’m in New York, I’ll go for a run. And I’ll run 10 or 15k on my – and I run to gain my appetite.

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.

You know, from age 17 on, my paycheck was coming from cooking and working in kitchens.