Chefs hate desserts. The smartest thing a chef can do is hire a great pastry chef. Cooking savory food is all about feel - you season something, you taste it, you go back in and adjust, more butter, more olive oil, more acid, whatever you want to get it to taste the way you want. Pastries are like a science project. To me, the greatest chefs are the ones who have the greatest feel for food, while the greatest pastry chefs have to be people that are extremely precise.

I think that's what being a chef is all about: camaraderie and teamwork. I never feel that it should be so cutthroat that you can't help the other chefs.

Some of the greatest chefs in the world aren't classically trained. Thomas Keller - probably the greatest American chef ever to walk the earth - never went to culinary school. You know?

My father cried when I said I wanted to be a chef.

You've always got to work to your highest ability level. When times are great and restaurants are jamming, that's when some restaurants get sloppy and take things for granted. Never take things for granted.

I'm a firm believer that all this packaged stuff that Americans are buying up in gobs is making them fatter.

Hitler was a vegetarian.