The hardest part of anything is making a dish consistently great - you order it seven years later, if it's still on the menu, and it's still as good as what you remember.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I like complicated dishes but also appreciate simple foods.
I love inventive food, but I want the classic dishes to taste like how I remember them. I get a little bummed out when there is too much fancy stuff going on and it doesn't resemble the original dish at all.
Whenever we create dishes, we work very carefully and ask ourselves, 'Is there anything on the dish that really doesn't make the dish better?' Then we eliminate that. We try to stay very focused on really showcasing everything on the plate so nothing gets lost.
It's not really the life of cooking that's hard - it's what you make of it and what level you push yourself to.
Classics can be phenomenal when done right. A simple roast chicken dish could be the best thing you ever eat.
For me, the most difficult piece is the one I'm about to make.
Being a food show and being me, I always kicked it up a notch, which means I would always elevate the spice level or the complexity of a particular dish. So, it was always like we're going to kick this up a little bit.
It all comes back to the basics. Serve customers the best-tasting food at a good value in a clean, comfortable restaurant, and they'll keep coming back.
As I mature as a chef, I no longer aim to pack multiple techniques and ingredients into a single dish. Realizing that restraint is more difficult, I find it often renders incredibly beautiful results.
The hardest part of cooking is shopping, and if you organize yourself and shop once a week, you're halfway there.