Skills can be taught. Character you either have or don't have. Bigfoot understood that there are two types of people in the world: those who do what they say they're going to do — and everyone else.
Shepherd's pie'? 'Chili special'? Sounds like leftovers to me. How about swordfish? I like it fine. But my seafood purveyor, when he goes out to dinner, won't eat it. He's seen too many of those 3-foo...
Portugal was the beginning, where I began to notice the things that were missing from the average American dining experience. The large groups of people who ate together. The family element. The seemi...
PETA doesn't want stressed animals to be cruelly crowded into sheds, ankle-deep in their own crap, because they don't want any animals to die-ever-and basically think chickens should, in time, gain th...
Our movements through time and space seem somehow trivial compared to a heap of boiled meat in broth, the smell of saffron, garlic, fishbones and Pernod.
Fully feeling the effects of the sake, I was seriously considering burning my passport, trading my jeans and leather jacket for a dirty seersucker suit and disappearing into the exotic East.
Cream rises. Excellence does have its rewards.
Cooking is a craft, I like to think, and a good cook is a craftsman — not an artist.
Bigfoot understood — as I came to understand — that character is far more important than skills or employment history. And he recognized character — good and bad — brilliantly. He understood, and taug...
And, well, for most of my life I’d been way too far up my own ass to be of any use to anyone—something that only got worse after Kitchen Confidential. I don’t know exactly when the possibility of that...
Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The
Under 'Reasons for Leaving Last Job', never give the real reason, unless it's money or ambition.
These are the end products of the Masterminds of Safety and Ethics, bulked up on cheese that contains no cheese, chips fried in oil that isn’t really oil, overcooked gray disks of what might once upon...
The essence of cool, after all, is not giving a fuck. And let’s face it: I most definitely give a fuck now. I give a huge fuck. The hugest. Everything else—everything—pales. To pretend otherwise, by w...
Let ketchup do its job. And don't make house-made ketchup either. Why would you do that? If it's not broken, as they say, why the fuck would you fix it?
I had field experience, a vocabulary and a criminal mind. I was a danger to myself and others.
I believe I should be able to treat my hamburger like food, not like infectious fucking medical waste.
But it's Atlanta that can lay claim to the best of the best (which is to say worst) chef-friendly dives in America: the legendary Clermont Lounge, a sort of lost-luggage department for strippers, who...
Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screwtop jars. Too lazy to peel fresh? You don't deserve to eat garlic.
You are a shit chef!' he would bellow. 'I make two cook like you in the toilette each morning! You are deezgusting! A shoe-maker! You have destroyed my life!. . . You will never be a chef! You are a d...
