Daniel Boulud Quotes

I am very proud of Jim Leiken. He has worked with me for six years and has been patient enough to learn the ropes. He's now matured into a true chef and is working on building his team.

For me, 30 days, it's already pretty good for ribeye or sirloin on the bone. I like my meat grass-fed and juicy. The French never age their meat more than two or three weeks.

I am very concerned about nutrition and always try to be careful about what I eat.

There was no Internet, not even many cookbooks except the old reference books. So we would sit down at night, a group of six chefs, and we'd exchange recipes and each talk about how we were doing things. It was the only way to learn new ideas.

Balthazar has a great New York vibe with the accent of a Parisian brasserie. I usually have the corned beef hash with a fried egg on top and wash it all down with Krug Champagne.

I love to create, and to me, the ultimate freedom of expression is a blank canvas or a block of clay to capture whatever emotions your imagination gives it.

I enjoy what I do because it keeps evolving - when I was a cook, I wanted to be a chef de partie; when I was a chef de partie, I wanted to be a chef; when I was a chef, I wanted to be a restaurateur, and now I am a chef entrepreneur. I am still fulfilling my dream.

I have no pretension that I belong in D.C. I mean, I have to be cautious on how we do our restaurant.

It's not good to thicken sauce with too much butter because it can cause heaviness. You don't want to avoid butter, but you also don't want to put too much - add it slowly.

I actually don't think there is any difference between French and American cuisine. French cuisine was always about discipline, about ingredient, about creativity, but also about simple. I see America as very similar in these rights.

I think in France, for example, we can say whatever we want about the French, but going out and dining is more about the intellectual moment to share with the people you dine with than trying to figure out what the chef did with that little piece of salmon or lobster and all that.

I like to go hear jazz late-night up in Harlem.

I usually try to eat in my restaurants before I fly, as I'd rather sleep on the plane and just order a salad with cheese, maybe some ice cream.

A lot of chefs don't have a natural sense of economy. I was with one guy the other day, and I had to show him how to peel a turnip, because the way he was peeling turnips, he was throwing half of it in the garbage. It's not about being cheap. It's about being proper.

To me, there's no great chef without a great team.

I always had a lot of fun in America, with much more freedom than if I had tried to cook in France. I wouldn't have the same motivation or inspiration, and I wouldn't have cooked for the same kind of people in France, so it wouldn't have given me this edge I had in America.

I love to make a one-pot meal - think stir-fry but in the French Fricassee. I start with what takes the longest to roast and then add vegetables, fresh herbs, and starch until the meal is complete in one shot.

In the Bronx, you have the southern Italians; in Queens, the Greeks, Koreans and Chinese; in Brooklyn, the Jewish community; and in Harlem, the Hispanics - all with their own markets.

For me, the food I like to make is the food I can enjoy all the time anytime. It's not too calculated or technical.

Sauce is certainly ancestral to French cooking. The technique is very tricky, but it's also very fundamental.

I take so much pleasure at seeing customers who are happy: happy with what they eat, but happy with their friends and sharing a great moment together, and I think that is more important in life than the endless pursuit of perfection.

No one knows restaurants like a New Yorker - they're incredibly discerning and restaurant savvy.

Le Cirque at first was one of those general French restaurants in town, which were cooking more or less the same food. At Le Cirque, I wanted to do something different while respecting the foundation of the restaurant. I did that through the menu.

I try to pack light with a folding leather suit bag. Anything more than five days, I need to check in my luggage. What takes the most space? Chef jackets, aprons and tools.

I've always loved it in Las Vegas, and it is the only city in the world that brings so many different talented people from so many places.

New York has an amazing history of farming and fishing that goes right back to the Pilgrim Fathers. At its core are the four seasons, which are distinct, well-established and similar to those in Lyon, where my family lives: when it's snowing in New York, a week later it will be snowing there.

25 years ago, when I started in New York, I had the pleasure to cook for Andy Warhol. At the time, I could have traded art for food - I should have done so, because I could get his work for nothing!

If you aren't born here, to be a real New Yorker, you have to bring your talent, be a successful mentor, and support the New Yorkers who made the city by giving back.

I appreciate the constant evolution in refining food, but not in making food gimmicky.

In any sauce you make, start with a concentration of flavors with great acidity. You then re-dilute the sauce, but the proportion of liquid you add should not be so high that you wash away the extracted flavor you're aiming to create.

When we manage a restaurant, we start making money from the first day. When we own a place, it's often five years before we earn the first penny that is clean of debt.

I try to come to Asia twice a year. I also go to Europe - to London as well as to France to see my family - four or five times a year.

I think there are a lot of chefs in D.C. who have made D.C. what it is today. I am very respectful to them. I'm very admiring of what they've done.

A lot of young chefs today get carried away by trends, by influences, by movements.

The hardest thing for a chef is to become comfortable with what you do. Not to be too neurotic and worried with what you are doing and how wrong or right you are.

I think fine dining should be part of the community where it is, more than just for the people who are going to make a special occasion.

Something I learned when I was very young: with cooking, it doesn't matter where you are; you can always cook. You can end up in small village in Peru where somebody's cooking, take a spoon and taste it, and you might not be too sure what you're eating, but you can taste the soul in the food. That's what is beautiful with food.

I love Italian food; it's soulful like French food. Italian food is original and homey; it's market-driven, but also can be locally sourced.

When France was the only reference for chefs to learn, you could go everywhere in the world, and they would copy dishes directly because they didn't have much expanded imagination or technique or knowledge.

I did all of California from north to south. I did Florida from north to south. I went to the Midwest. I spent time discovering the culture because I thought I was going to stay in America for only two years. Then I decided to come to New York.

From Japan to Thailand, I keep discovering amazing talent, cuisine and food markets.

I've discovered the burger is a crazy thing in Vegas, but I was one of the early chefs to do a lot of burgers.