When I used to have a show on French TV, people would ask me how my jacket stayed spotless while cooking. Your whole area has to be clean - and you have to keep it that way.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I really don't care for the proper chef coat.
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.
I feel like jeans and a T-shirt have become Establishment. Everyone's dressed down. So actually, putting on a jacket is the anti-Establishment stance.
I still feel that French cooking is the most important in the world, one of the few that has rules. If you follow the rules, you can do pretty well.
Nothing should be perfect. I think that's the most important thing. I do wear my jackets almost exaggeratedly short. So that's probably the most mussed up. Along with, you know, not ironing my shirt.
I always try and keep a jacket from everything I do. I've still got my original coat from 'Snatch' and my jacket from 'This Is England'.
In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.
I've treated the waistcoat as if it were a corset, so that it becomes the first layer in the process of putting clothes on the body. There is constant motion between layering and revealing.
In Paris and later in Marseille, I was surrounded by some of the best food in the world, and I had an enthusiastic audience in my husband, so it seemed only logical that I should learn how to cook 'la cuisine bourgeoise' - good, traditional French home cooking.
I always wear a dinner jacket. I never have this definition of what goes for the morning or the evening or what works for the weekend.