You can't please everyone, especially if you're doing very radical things at the vanguard of cooking. That's life; it's a polemic I've lived with since I started cooking.

We knew the time would come that we'd have to step down because we'd been winning Oscars for 15 years. I discovered this one day when I got home, my mother was reading a newspaper and she said, 'Again? What are you doing in the papers?' And I realized if my mother thought that of me, what would my enemies think?

You can't please everyone, especially if you're doing very radical things at the vanguard of cooking. That's life; it's a polemic I've lived with since I started cooking.

In my early days, I copied the great French chefs, like most chefs do. Copying is not bad. Copying and not recognizing that you are copying is bad. For me, when I go to a restaurant and am served a dish influenced by something we created at elBulli, if it's well done, it makes me extremely happy.

You may say, "Oh, no. You can't touch a traditional recipe." But we ask: why can't you? Back in 1350, a vinaigrette was a stew, so we ask, why not? This can be applied to any kind of cooking, and that's the shocking part of it. It kind of bends all the traditions. It's a good thing.

It’s very hard to be an innovator at the highest level in any discipline. For some chefs it’s merely about combining ingredients, but that’s something you can do with your eyes closed.

Risk is to do something that 99 percent of the time would be a failure.