Larousse is an invaluable tool for any cook. I've used this great resource all throughout my cooking career, and of course I look forward to the new edition. New information and knowledge are always welcome.

You don't know when inspiration is going to come. But you have to be aware of what's going on around you, so that at any moment, when inspiration happens, you're ready for it and you interpret it.

Whether it's destiny or fate or whatever, I don't think I could do a French Laundry anywhere else.

With passion, if you see the first asparagus of the springtime and you become passionate about it, so much the better, but three weeks later, when you’ve seen that asparagus every day now, passions have subsided. What’s going to make you treat the asparagus the same? It’s the desire.

They know what my standards are. They know what I need and how to get it to me, and they know how to communicate with me if for some reason they can't get it.

When you acknowledge, as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving toward perfection becomes clear: to make people happy, that is what cooking is all about.

Hopefully, imparting what's important to me, respect for the food and that information about the purveyors, people will realize that for a restaurant to be good, so many pieces have to come together.