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Whenever a chef cooks for his own ego rather than his guests, he/she set themselves up for ridicule and failure. In the end, it's the service industry. Our goal is to make our guests happy through our cooking.

The way to entice people into cooking is to cook delicious things.

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.

The cooking profession, while it's a noble craft and a noble calling, 'cause you're doing something useful - you're feeding people, you're nurturing them, you're providing sustenance - it was never pure.

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

When I cook, it's something nobody else would enjoy.

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

As a chef, you need to respect your guests and their needs. If they decide that they want to eat certain things and not eat others, if for religious reasons or just decide they don't want to eat certain ingredients, you have to respect that.

It's very important to me that people who are actual chefs and other professionals in the culinary world, understand that I'm not, and have never held myself out as being, like a CIA trained chef.

I'll basically eat anything that a chef puts in front of me. One of the reasons is respect for the chef. I watch chefs eat at other chefs' restaurants, and they're very aware not to leave anything over because the chef is watching very closely. It's a very sincere interaction when two chefs are cooking for one another.