Alain Ducasse Quotes

There are so many impassioned winemakers. I think there are more impassioned winemakers than chefs.

If I'm a great artisan of the kitchen, it's because I don't buy my sauces.

Techniques are not the most difficult to teach. The attitudes chefs take are much more important.

I travel the world, and I can see in Toronto the cooking is very personal. These people cook with their hearts.

The restaurants express the spirit of the chef, the spirit of the city, the country.

I love to pick tomatoes at the end of the day, when they're still warm from the sun.

The proportion of ingredients is important, but the final result is also a matter of how you put them together. Equilibrium is key.

The world of wine is more creative than the world of cooking.

Nowadays, food needs to be healthy, local, sustainable and not filled with too much fat, salt or sugar. It should be slow-cooked and seasonal. That's my vision.

I am a very eco-friendly chef but a guilty air traveller.

Desserts are like mistresses. They are bad for you. So if you are having one, you might as well have two.

My son, Arzhel, is two, and he eats vegetables twice a day. We have a vegetable garden on our farm in the Southwest, and he gets two baskets, one over each arm, and says, 'Garden, Papa!' and then he eats what he picks.

I'm anti-globalisation. There is nothing more enriching than to go out into the world and meet people different to you. We must fight the spread of a singular way of thinking and preserve cultural differences.

In France, I am the fifth artisan to produce his own chocolate, and the others have been doing it for a long time.

To make my meal, I go to the market and to the garden, and then I decide what I'm going to do. That's a great pleasure.

I prefer to be able to identify what I'm eating. I have to know.

In Paris we have bistros, then we have fine dining. In London, you have a very contemporary scene with mixed influences.

I don't think the rating system places too much pressure on chefs. I prefer to put the pressure on my chefs to perform to the top standards.

Food is one part of the experience. And it has to be somewhere between 50 to 60 percent of the dining experience. But the rest counts as well: The mood, the atmosphere, the music, the feeling, the design, the harmony between what you have on the plate and what surrounds the plate.

It is impossible to remain indifferent to Japanese culture. It is a different civilisation where all you have learnt must be forgotten. It is a great intellectual challenge and a gorgeous sensual experience.

I don't do the same food in Tokyo that I do in Vegas and vice versa. If I did that, two weeks later I would have no customers.

I love any excuse to work with a mortar and pestle.

The most classic French dessert around the holidays is the Christmas log, with butter cream. Two flavors. Chocolate and coconut. My first job in the kitchen when I was a boy was to make these Christmas logs.

Failure is enriching. It's also important to accept that you'll make mistakes - it's how you build your expertise. The trick is to learn a positive lesson from all of life's negative moments.

I do most of the cooking in my head.

I have a passion for luggage - trunks and so on. I have a collection of them, but I can never resist buying another piece.

When I'm in Paris, my favorite market is the Marche Raspail on the Left Bank.

I'm surprised by the talent I find all over. There are always new chefs who propose many interesting new ideas, new ways of looking at ingredients.

When I arrived, I didn't understand London customers perfectly, but we've developed the right style with the right price, and step by step, I'm in harmony with London.

I would never be able to lead the insane lifestyle I do, traveling all over the world, if I wasn't eating food that was simple and healthy.

My grandmother did all the cooking at Christmas. We ate fattened chicken. We would feed it even more so it would be big and fat.

I'm in love with the markets of the world. It's a photograph of a city, a culture.

In France, Christmas is a family holiday. You stay home. New Year's Eve is when you go out.

I didn't want to become a chocolatier among others, buying ready-to-use couverture. I wanted to take the same approach I follow in my cuisine: putting the product first, revealing the authentic taste of the products.

The Mediterranean is in my DNA. I'm fine inland for about a week, but then I yearn for a limitless view of the sea, for the colours and smells of the Italian and French Riviera.

Classical cooking and molecular gastronomy should remain separate. You can mix two styles and get fusion; any more, and you just get confusion.

You need a good gardener and a good fisherman. The cook is not required.

I concentrate in my work on preserving and displaying the original flavor from each ingredient in a dish.

If I am going somewhere exotic, I take an empty suitcase with me to bring back the objects I fall in love with.

My wife Gwenaelle prepares an 'energy shot' for me for breakfast. It's a mix of linseed, cereal, and raisins, with fresh fruit like kiwi. She also adds yogurt for added texture and some pollen and honey for an energy booster.

London is the most important city in the world for restaurants.

Everywhere in the world there are tensions - economic, political, religious. So we need chocolate.

It's not easy to have success with restaurants in different cities, but I like the challenge.

In each restaurant, I develop a different culinary sensibility. In Paris, I'm more classic, because that's what customers like. In Monaco, it's classic Mediterranean haute cuisine. In London, it's a contemporary French restaurant that I've developed with a U.K. influence and my French know-how.

I am overfed, so when I am at home, I stop eating.

A man obsessed: obsessed with perfection, sharing, aesthetics, taste, savoir-faire, and much more.

At my home in the southwest of France, I grow oak, hazel, and lemon trees in my backyard.

I was brought up on a farm in Southwest France, eating farm-fresh produce three times a day. It was paradise on Earth, and it shaped my eating habits and my sense of taste.

You take the best ingredients - the best cocoa beans - and you process them in the best traditional way, and you have the best chocolate.

I live in Paris, yet Monaco, where I spend a lot of time, holds a very special place in my heart.

I have restaurants, bookshops ... but it's not an empire, more ... a puzzle. If it were an empire, all my restaurants would be the same.

The planet's resources are rare; we must consume more ethically and equitably.