I had a very normal childhood, and my mother cooked very normal food.

My idol was Johann Cruyff (a Dutch soccer player) and I wanted to be like him. But when I realized that I would never be, I decided to do something else. I met the kitchen by chance and quickly became completely enamoured by it.

We need to think about what cooking is, what context it takes place in and what its relationship to the world of art is. If there were criticisms of my presence at Documenta, that's a good thing because it means we were doing something new. Your mission in creating something artistic is to produce something new and polemical.

The avant-garde has always existed throughout the history of mankind. The good things from the avant-garde last and eventually, after many years, become tradition and people forget they were ever part of the avant-garde. The kitchen is a living discipline, always evolving, and there will always be cutting edge things that over the years, ends up being part of tradition.

When I go to a fine dining restaurant, I'm excited and I do expect to find proposals to wake my senses.

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

I am not a multimillionaire. I dont own a yacht or a Ferrari. I live in a 60-square- metre flat. My needs are simple.