Executive Chef Quotes

The last thing a chef wants in a line cook is an innovator, somebody with ideas of his own who is going to mess around with the chef's recipes and presentations. Chefs require blind, near-fanatical loyalty, a strong back and an automaton-like consistency of execution under battlefield conditions.

Maureen O'Brien's Bakery Lingo: A Partial Glossary • 9 donuts - A shutout • 2 croissants - A full moon • 3 croissants - A ménage à trois • 4 bear claws - Full smokey • 2 bear claws - Half smokey • The last one of any item - The gift of the Magi • A baker's dozen of doughnut holes - a PG-13 • Anything in the unlikely quantity of 36 or a lot of something - A Wu-Tang • Blueberry muffin - Chubby Checker • Bran muffin - Warren G the regulator • Any customer who left no tip - A libertarian • Any customer who only tipped the coins from their change - A couch shaker • Any person who requested a substitution - Master and demander • Any person who requested TWO substitutions - Demander in chief • Any person who requested MORE than two substitutions - The new executive chef and finally.... • Any vegan customer - A Morrissey

Life Is Like a Big Kitchen — You Create, Plan, Organize, Execute, Achieve and Sometimes You Fail…

For months beforehand, I fielded calls from British media. A couple of the reporters asked me to name some British chefs who had inspired me. I mentioned the Roux brothers, Albert and Michel, and I named Marco Pierre White, not as much for his food as for how—by virtue of becoming an apron-wearing rock-star bad boy—he had broken the mold of whom a chef could be, which was something I could relate to. I got to London to find the Lanesborough dining room packed each night, a general excitement shared by everyone involved, and incredibly posh digs from which I could step out each morning into Hyde Park and take a good long run around Buckingham Palace. On my second day, I was cooking when a phone call came into the kitchen. The executive chef answered and, with a puzzled look, handed me the receiver. Trouble at Aquavit, I figured. I put the phone up to my ear, expecting to hear Håkan’s familiar “Hej, Marcus.” Instead, there was screaming. “How the fuck can you come to my fucking city and think you are going to be able to cook without even fucking referring to me?” This went on for what seemed like five minutes; I was too stunned to hang up. “I’m going to make sure you have a fucking miserable time here. This is my city, you hear? Good luck, you fucking black bastard.” And then he hung up. I had cooked with Gordon Ramsay once, a couple of years earlier, when we did a promotion with Charlie Trotter in Chicago. There were a handful of chefs there, including Daniel Boulud and Ferran Adrià, and Gordon was rude and obnoxious to all of them. As a group we were interviewed by the Chicago newspaper; Gordon interrupted everyone who tried to answer a question, craving the limelight. I was almost embarrassed for him. So when I was giving interviews in the lead-up to the Lanesborough event, and was asked who inspired me, I thought the best way to handle it was to say nothing about him at all. Nothing good, nothing bad. I guess he was offended at being left out. To be honest, though, only one phrase in his juvenile tirade unsettled me: when he called me a black bastard. Actually, I didn’t give a fuck about the bastard part. But the black part pissed me off.

Wealth is a process, not an event. Ask any chef and they will confirm that the perfect dish is a series of ingredients and a well-engineered process of execution: a little this, a little that, done at the right time at the right place, and wham, you have a tasty meal. Wealth creation has the same method of execution—a mixed collection of many disassociated ingredients into an consolidated whole that has value and is worth millions.

Robin’s voice on the executive chef’s line came to signify tongue. She didn’t say more than a word or two before Denise tuned out. Robin’s tongue and lips continued to form the instructions demanded by the day’s exigencies, but in Denise’s ear they were already speaking that other language of up and down and round and round that her body intuitively understood and autonomously obeyed; sometimes she melted so hard at the sound of this voice that her abdomen caved in and she doubled over; for the next hour-plus there was nothing in the world but tongue, no inventory or buttered pheasants or unpaid purveyors; she left the Generator in a buzzing hypnotized state of poor reflexes, the volume of the world’s noise lowered to near zero, other drivers luckily obeying basic traffic laws. Her car was like a tongue gliding down the melty asphalt streets, her feet like twin tongues licking pavement, the front door of the house on Panama Street like a mouth that swallowed her, the Persian runner in the hall outside the master bedroom like a tongue beckoning, the bed in its cloak of comforter and pillows a big soft tongue begging to be depressed, and then.

A sous-chef with dreams of her own restaurant empire may have mastered the art of classical French sauce making, but not yet have developed the signature cooking style she imagines as the cornerstone of her own chain of restaurants. She gauges her progress not only by whether she is moving toward her aspirations, but also by her improving skills. Our chef may not yet have the stature of Chef Auguste Escoffier or Emeril Lagasse, but she can remember a time when she could not name the five French mother sauces, let alone execute them. She's made progress. Appreciating the skills she has developed is a marker along the path toward her culinary aspirations. The sense of accomplishment that accompanies improved skills is one of the rewards we reap when we dedicate ourselves to mastery.

It’s more an affliction than the expression of any high-minded ideals. I watch Mark Bittman enjoy a perfectly and authentically prepared Spanish paella on TV, after which he demonstrates how his viewers can do it at home—in an aluminum saucepot—and I want to shove my head through the glass of my TV screen and take a giant bite out of his skull, scoop the soft, slurry-like material inside into my paw, and then throw it right back into his smug, fireplug face. The notion that anyone would believe Catherine Zeta-Jones as an obsessively perfectionist chef (particularly given the ridiculously clumsy, 1980s-looking food) in the wretched film No Reservations made me want to vomit blood, hunt down the producers, and kick them slowly to death. (Worse was the fact that the damn thing was a remake of the unusually excellent German chef flick Mostly Martha.) On Hell’s Kitchen, when Gordon Ramsay pretends that the criminally inept, desperately unhealthy gland case in front of him could ever stand a chance in hell of surviving even three minutes as “executive chef of the new Gordon Ramsay restaurant” (the putative grand prize for the finalist), I’m inexplicably actually angry on Gordon’s behalf. And he’s the one making a quarter-million dollars an episode—very contentedly, too, from all reports. The eye-searing “Kwanzaa Cake” clip on YouTube, of Sandra Lee doing things with store-bought angel food cake, canned frosting, and corn nuts, instead of being simply the unintentionally hilarious viral video it should be, makes me mad for all humanity. I. Just. Can’t. Help it. I wish, really, that I was so far up my own ass that I could somehow believe myself to be some kind of standard-bearer for good eating—or ombudsman, or even the deliverer of thoughtful critique. But that wouldn’t be true, would it? I’m just a cranky old fuck with what, I guess, could charitably be called “issues.” And I’m still angry. But eat the fucking fish on Monday already. Okay? I wrote those immortal words about not going for the Monday fish, the ones that’ll haunt me long after I’m crumbs in a can, knowing nothing other than New York City. And times, to be fair, have changed. Okay, I still would advise against the fish special at T.G.I. McSweenigan’s, “A Place for Beer,” on a Monday. Fresh fish, I’d guess, is probably not the main thrust of their business. But things are different now for chefs and cooks. The odds are better than ever that the guy slinging fish and chips back there in the kitchen actually gives a shit about what he’s doing. And even if he doesn’t, these days he has to figure that you might actually know the difference. Back when I wrote the book that changed my life, I was angriest—like a lot of chefs and cooks of my middling abilities—at my customers. They’ve changed. I’ve changed. About them, I’m not angry anymore.

Chef Nicole, prior to the complex, had been the executive chef for the day care center at a start-up company in San Francisco before it went belly-up, probably because it had devoted quite a bit of money toward things like executive chefs for the day care center.

But I was even more surprised when he stuck around with me and smiled a full, toothy, letter-D-shaped movie star grin. The magazines said he was only twenty-eight, which was young for an executive chef but felt old to me. He looked like a man. Even when Elliott turned twenty-eight, I doubted he would look as manly as Pascal. Somehow, in the supermarket lighting, Pascal seemed hotter- more capable and more real. In restaurants, he blended in with the scenery of the meal. But here, holding his basket just like everyone else, looking at the discounted produce, getting lost in the aisles, his presence became even more magical, as if I were seeing a beautiful, powerful animal in the wild instead of at the zoo.

Except for the coconut cake (filled with Meyer lemon curd and glazed with brown sugar), most of the desserts she made for Walter were not her best or most original, but they were exemplars of their kind: portly, solid-citizen desserts, puddings of rice, bread, and noodles-sweets that the Pilgrims and other humble immigrants who had scraped together their prototypes would have bartered in a Mayflower minute for Greenie's blood-orange mousse, pear ice cream, or tiny white-chocolate eclairs. Walter had also commissioned a deep-dish apple pie, a strawberry marble cheesecake, and a layer cake he asked her to create exclusively for him. "Everybody expects one of those, you know, death-by-chocolate things on a menu like mine, but what I want is massacre by chocolate, execution by chocolate- firing squad by chocolate!" he told her. So that very night, after tucking George in bed, Greenie had returned to the kitchen where she made her living, in a basement two blocks from her home, and stayed up till morning to birth a four-layer cake so dense and muscular that even Walter, who could have benched a Shetland pony, dared not lift it with a single hand. It was the sort of dessert that appalled Greenie on principle, but it also embodied a kind of uberprosperity, a transgressive joy, flaunting the potential heft of butter, that Protean substance as wondrous and essential to a pastry chef as fire had been to early man. Walter christened the cake Apocalypse Now; Greenie held her tongue. By itself, this creation doubled the amount of cocoa she ordered from her supplier every month. After it was on his menu for a week, Walter bet her a lobster dinner that before the year was out, Gourmet would request the recipe, putting both of them on a wider culinary map.

With this in mind, I’d started a leadership and mentoring program at the White House, inviting twenty sophomore and junior girls from high schools around Greater D.C. to join us for monthly get-togethers that included informal chats, field trips, and sessions on things like financial literacy and choosing a career. We kept the program largely behind closed doors, rather than thrusting these girls into the media fray. We paired each teen with a female mentor who would foster a personal relationship with her, sharing her resources and her life story. Valerie was a mentor. Cris Comerford, the White House’s first female executive chef, was a mentor. Jill Biden was, too, as were a number of senior women from both the East and the West Wing staffs. The students were nominated by their principals or guidance counselors and would stay with us until they graduated. We had girls from military families, girls from immigrant families, a teen mom, a girl who’d lived in a homeless shelter. They were smart, curious young women, all of them. No different from me. No different from my daughters. I watched over time as the girls formed friendships, finding a rapport with one another and with the adults around them. I spent hours talking with them in a big circle, munching popcorn and trading our thoughts about college applications, body image, and boys. No topic was off-limits. We ended up laughing a lot. More than anything, I hoped this was what they’d carry forward into the future—the ease, the sense of community, the encouragement to speak and be heard. My wish for them was the same one I had for Sasha and Malia—that in learning to feel comfortable at the White House, they’d go on to feel comfortable and confident in any room, sitting at any table, raising their voices inside any group.

To become an executive chef, you have to start at the bottom, learn the ropes, know the kitchen, and know the basics. Be okay with having someone constantly telling you what to do. Be a team player. Oh,

also took three quizzes on Facebook. Answers: Lydia Bennett, executive chef and 89% British.

2007 Wall Street Journal profile also described how, at one of Schwarzman’s five houses, an “11,000-square-foot home in Palm Beach, Fla., he complained to Jean-Pierre Zeugin, his executive chef and estate manager, that an employee wasn’t wearing the proper black shoes with his uniform…[H]e found the squeak of the rubber soles distracting.” His own mother told the paper that money is “what drives him. Money is the measuring stick.” Schwarzman’s most serious self-inflicted wound, though, was the $3 million sixtieth birthday party he threw for himself in February 2007, at which he paid pop stars Rod Stewart and Patti LaBelle to serenade him. The media sensation stirred by the billionaire bacchanal led directly to congressional calls to close the carried-interest loophole.

He therefore determined to hire a hatchet man to do the nasty work for him, bringing in a former McKinsey operative and giving him the title of Chief Operating Officer. This COO was himself quite expensive, his salary, bonus, long-term compensation, and perquisites amounting to the cost of several hundred smaller jobs. He at once targeted Law, Accounting, Public Relations, Event Planning, Office Services, and several other formerly integrated departments for extreme unction, although he did spare the executive chef. “This place is way fat,” he told the CEO, who knew he was full of shit but admired the zeal with which he justified his compensation.

Note from Tim Ferriss: I asked Tim to share a fun piece of related background. Here it is. In early 2015, Elon reached out to schedule a call. He said he had read some Wait But Why posts and was wondering if I might be interested in writing about some of the industries he’s involved in. I flew out to California to meet with him, tour the Tesla and SpaceX factories, and spend some time with the executives at both companies to learn the full story about what they were doing and why. Over the next six months, I wrote four very long posts about Tesla and SpaceX and the history of the industries surrounding them (during which I had regular conversations with Elon in order to really get to the bottom of the questions I had). In the first three posts, I tried to answer the question, “Why is Elon doing what he’s doing?” In the fourth and final post of the series, I examined Elon himself and tried to answer the question, “Why is Elon able to do what he’s doing?” That’s what led me to explore all these ideas around reasoning from first principles (being a “chef” who comes up with a recipe) versus reasoning by analogy (being a “cook” who follows someone else’s recipe).

The pastry kitchen is colder than I had imagined but smells delicious, as sweet and crisp as the bite of an apple. The walls are covered in white tiles, and almost everything is made of stainless steel. There are quite a few Chinese chefs in the kitchen, busy at work. They don't look rushed at all, carefully executing their tasks. One chef is releasing praline balls from their molds and then dipping them in a bowl of melted chocolate. It looks like a silken soup, and my mouth waters. He drops each ball in with a large fork and slowly stirs it around. When it comes up again, it has the satin sheen of the warm chocolate. He rolls it, the fork providing a cradle against a marble bench top until it is cool. The fork leaves no crease or mark on the finished product, a perfect sphere. There is such slow art to it; I feel hypnotized.

Social roost was born when the two were in the mediterranean and had an idea to bring their world travel dining experiences back to the community in which they were born and raised. They joined forces with new york city’s executive chef, susan burdian and the three developed a globally inspired menu from a scratch kitchen that is now served at social roost. Of course, delicious food deserves delicious cocktails. Rob and jason tapped st. Petersburg native max blowers as their lead mixologist. Max developed cocktails around social themes provided by rob and jason to create the ultimate lavish cocktail menu.

Food allergies are no joking matter. We have a friend who left a Paris restaurant on a gurney because a waiter took it upon himself to interpret her stated Capsicum annuum (bell peppers) allergy as merely an intolerance. Another friend is fatally allergic to Arachis hypogaea (peanuts). Serious allergy sufferers carry epinephrine pens that can inhibit some allergic reactions. They never take risks, because the appearance of EMTs—emergency medical technicians—and a stretcher kills the vibe of any celebration. And any veteran chef who’s seen a severe allergy attack unfold at a party will work in good faith to make damn sure it never happens again. But more and more Americans dress up mild intolerances and preferences for food in allergy drag, perhaps to absolve themselves of the rudeness of expecting to be served a customized plate. Chefs and waiters share stories of such behavior constantly: guests who are “allergic” to dairy until the chocolate pudding comes out for dessert. The “celiac” who needs his first course and second course gluten-free and then asks for a second slice of cake. “It’s every party now,” Robb Garceau, now executive chef at Neuman’s Kitchen, told us. “Guest says: ‘I need a vegan first course!’ So we build a special salad just for her. And then we send her a vegan main. But she’s seen somebody else’s salmon. Captain tells me: ‘She wants the fish course.’ And I’m like: ‘What?! You were vegan half an hour ago!

He imagined a reality show host selling Los Angeles to a live audience: “Are you a surfer dude hitting the waves? You’ll fit right in. How about a hipster starting a gluten-free cookie brand or a new church? Of course. And is there a place for a young family raising small children? You bet. How about a retired couple wanting to play bingo all day? Indeed. High-powered executives? Yes! Lawyers, doctors, agents, and managers? Best place to thrive. Gym buffs, starlets, chefs, yoga teachers, students, writers, healers, misfits, trainers, nurses? Right this way, please. Are you into cosplay, improv, porn, Roller Derby, voyeurism, cemetery movie screenings, food truck drag racing, AA, relapse, rehab, open mic, plastic surgery, wine tastings, biker meetups, karaoke, clubbing, S and M, or escape rooms? Come on over!” Every race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and food preference was well represented within Los Angeles County, and this is what Oscar loved most about his city;

As with my valets, all of them were Black, Latino, or Asian American, and all but one were men (Cristeta Comerford, a Filipina American, had been recently appointed as the White House’s executive chef, the first woman to hold the job). And while they were uniformly glad to have well-paying, secure jobs with good benefits, it was hard to miss in their racial makeup the vestiges of an earlier time, when social rank had clear demarcations and those who occupied the office of president felt most comfortable in their privacy when served by those they assumed were not their equals—and, therefore, could not judge them.

computer programs are much like cookbook recipes. Both offer specific directions to accomplish a task. Yet, while chefs write their cookbooks to be read by people, programmers can’t write for computers in the same way, because computers don’t natively comprehend programming languages. Computers speak a binary language of 0s and 1s, so to get a computer to perform my job, I have to convert my C++ code into a computer-consumable binary form using a program called a compiler. This conversion process of human-readable to machine-runnable is called compilation or building. This translation procedure also explains why lines of code written in a programming language are called source code. They’re the source material a compiler builds into (i.e., translates into) binary code the computer can execute.

Kill, defeather, and roast a Fury. Murder, process, and broil a Fury with pickled shiitakes and spicy miso. Execute, unrobe, and make Fury rendang.

What does 'chef' mean?" "Uh, 'chief,'" he replies. "That's right. Chief. The person in charge. I have just been appointed executive chef, which means I'm the number one in charge here, and I'm now announcing that a few things are going to change. First off- Paul, listen up here- we will treat each other with respect. So that means no more names that you pretend to think are cute and funny but that we all know are incredibly shitty. If I hear anyone throwing around racial or ethnic or sexist slurs, there will be consequences. And those consequences may or may not include me pinning your willie to that bulletin board." She gestures to the corkboard where schedules and messages are posted. A few of the men in the crowd wince.

Now, no one likes to grill more than I do. But everyone in the business knows there's a huge difference between grill and sauté. Grill guys- and by no means would I want to imply that grilling isn't an art- but grill guys tend to be the cavemen of the kitchen. The guys who don't possess much in the way of artistic flair but can give you a perfectly pink tenderloin of venison after sprinkling it with salt and pepper, searing it, and poking it a couple of times. These are not the men for delicate seasonings and sauce making. They stick to the meat, mostly. And they can take a lot of heat. Sautéing is the highest station in the kitchen, below the sous chef and chef. And I, for one, goddammit, have piled enough skyscraper salads to be given consideration. I'm not working my way up the kitchen ladder for my goddamn health. I know all too well the sting of vinegar in an open cut. Oh yes, that salad you're eating as a light appetizer? My bare hands have massaged dressing into every leaf. Lettuce loves me. But I've got ambition and, I don't mind saying, a decent palate. I believe I'm capable of executing the finer sauce nuances. I want to start my own place. I want to be The Chef. And the only way to do this (aside from buying a place outright) is by becoming the greatest cook I can be. Which means kicking ass on the line, not just salads and desserts. These are my hopes. These are my dreams.

To say that Bittersweet Café was her happy place was perhaps an understatement. In the last two years, Rachel had left behind her high-pressure executive chef job and Melody her dead-end position in a chain bakery, then decided to open their dream restaurant together. The way all the details had come together was downright magical; nowhere in Denver's history had a functional café and bakery materialized in under four months. But Ana had no doubt there had been a healthy measure of divine intervention in the situation. She could feel it in the mood and the atmosphere of this place. Light, welcoming, refreshing. It was no wonder they'd quickly developed a devoted following. They were already in the middle of plans to take over the vacant space in the strip mall beside them and expand to meet their ever-growing demand. Ana couldn't be prouder. If she were truthful, she was also a little jealous. She might be good at her job, and she was certainly well paid, but there was an allure to the idea of working with her best friends, being surrounded by delicious food and baked goods. Too bad she had absolutely no culinary talent. Her mom had made sure she could cook rice properly and prepare Filipino dishes like adobong manok and kaldereta, but her skills stopped there. Considering the fat and calorie content of those foods, she'd left her childhood meals behind in favor of an endless stream of grilled chicken or fish over salad.

The definitive guide for beginning one’s own exciting tomato odyssey. —Chef Claud Mann, host of Dinner & a Movie on TBS (from the Foreword) It’s been over twenty years since the infancy of Tomatomania. Scott and I have worked hard to continue the excitement each year providing seedling starts, conducting educational lectures and Tomato Tastings. This continued energy has made Scott and Tomatomania the talk of the town. The hundreds of tomato varieties Tomatomania provides creates a hysteria among gardeners who can’t wait for Tomatomania events to open near their homes. As one of their original suppliers I learned and watched this hysteria grow to where it currently is today. The responses that Tomatomania received during the plant sale demanded multiple deliveries of fresh seedlings each day. —Steve Goto, expert tomato nurseryman, consultant, and lecturer Fruit geeks and tomatomaniacs rejoice! This lovely book has managed to capture the excitement, passion and deep understanding of all things tomato in its pages, going well beyond the 'how-to’ and into 'hell-yeah!' territory. For those of us who have held close the special tradition of springtime Tomatomania outings across California, we can now share their joy and subsequent bounty in all their glory. —Rick Nahmias, founder/executive director, Food Forward