If you want the meaning of families and life and religion and philosophy rolled into one package, all you need to read is The Brothers Karamazov.

I have always looked at it this way: If you strive like crazy for perfection - an all-out assault on total perfection - at the very least you will hit a high level of excellence, and then you might be able to sleep at night. To accomplish something truly significant, excellence has to become a life plan.

You have to be critical of what you do every day, to analyze it and be willing to push it further.

One must know combinations, one must have a true knowledge of food to be in the moment.

Well, I kind of think that the opposite is true. The customer is rarely right. And that is why you must seize the control of the circumstance and dominate every last detail: to guarantee that they're going to have a far better time than they ever would have had if they tried to control it themselves.

Always make stock in a large quantity and freeze it in plastic bags. That way, when you want to make a nice soup or boil veggies, you can simply pull the bag out of the freezer.

It's a challenge to demonstrate that you can prepare some really interesting food with humble ingredients.