There is no other place on earth even remotely like New Orleans. Don’t even try to compare it to anywhere else.
You have to be a romantic to invest yourself, your money, and your time in cheese.
They’re professionals at this in Russia, so no matter how many Jell-O shots or Jager shooters you might have downed at college mixers, no matter how good a drinker you might think you are, don’t forget that the Russians – any Russian – can drink you under the table.
Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me. The perfect meal, or the best meals, occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself.
For me, the cooking life has been a long love affair, with moments both sublime and ridiculous.
The roots of creativity of cooking are hungry people trying to figure out how to take something that’s not particularly fresh or tender and transform it into it something delicious that everyone will love.
As a chef I’m not your dietitian or your ethicist, I’m in the pleasure business.
An employer of mine back in the ’80s was kind enough to take me on after a rough patch, and it made a big difference in my life that I knew I was the sort of person who showed up on time. It’s a basic tell of character.
I’m excited by any food that’s prepared by someone who’s proud of what they’re doing, who puts a personal imprint on food.
My French definitely improves the more I drink, as I worry less and less about absolutely perfect grammar. I do speak and understand the language, just not particularly well.
In that sense, what a great way to live, if you could always do things that interest you, and do them with people who interest you.
Skills can be taught. Character you either have or you don’t have.
That without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive, moribund.
Luck is not a business model.
The journey is part of the experience – an expression of the seriousness of one’s intent. One doesn’t take the A train to Mecca.
An ounce of sauce covers a multitude of sins.
In this way, writers are indeed, as Henry Miller suggested, traitors to the human race. We may turn a light on inequity, injustice, and oppression from time to time, but we regularly kill what we love in insidious fashion.
I’ve long believed that good food, good eating, is all about risk. Whether we’re talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or working for organized crime ‘associates,’ food, for me, has always been an adventure.
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.
There is no Final Resting Place of the Mind.