Eric Ripert Quotations

Everybody wants to support his own region and economy and farming. If we can preserve the land and if we can preserve the ocean, we all know, deep inside that we're doing the right thing.

A lot of foreign people say, when asking about eating habits, 'What is your guilty pleasure?' I have no guilt. Whatever I do, I enjoy and it's the point. I think if you start to feel guilty about it, that's a problem. So, no guilty pleasures. I have pleasure and no guilt at all.

I don't think I have an obsession, however I do eat chocolate every day.

It's a very naive idea to think that the chef is cooking everything, and, on top of it, is irreplaceable. That would mean that basically he is the only genius, and there are idiots all around him, which doesn't make sense.

Some chefs go crazy with one restaurant, and if I had 20, I would go nuts.

It took me all my life to learn how to salt a tomato.

If you can't think like an onion or a carrot or a tomato, you may be a technician, but you won't understand what you're doing, and your dish will be flat.

You don't become a chef to become famous.

Having sharp, great knives will enable you to cook very precisely. Knife skills are essential in cooking.

Money is not necessarily, although it helps a lot for happiness, it's not necessarily the best way to be happy, to be rich, you know.

When I am about to have a difficult project, I dream I am climbing a mountain. When everything is going fine, I dream I am going down the mountain.

I am a Buddhist, therefore I should not be collecting anything - however, I have a collection of Buddhas. I have a lot of them.

I don't like it when I go to a restaurant and I'm lectured from the menu.

America is a such a melting pot, I'm not sure if roast chicken is the classic comfort food for everybody.

As young cook, especially in France, they're very tough in the kitchen. The idea is to make you humble and learn fast.

Chefs are leaders in their own little world.

Cooks build muscles; we can stand all day long on our feet and not feel the pain.

I am convinced that if you serve great value, people will come to you.

I like very much Louis Vuitton. My wife loves it too.

In a professional kitchen, the idea is to have your cooks not moving much while theyre cooking. You want them to stay in the same spot.

It has been stressful to be a French resident in America.

I find the organic wave much more interesting in America than in France.

I see a lot of people who change careers in the middle of their life and they think it's a good idea to come in the kitchen.

Michelin will have to do a bit of explaining with only three stars at the top. Most of the newspaper reviewers here go up to four stars.

We are putting in a lot of fabrics.

What I never want to do is lose my focus on Le Bernardin. That's why I did not want to be burdened with managing the place. I'm not going to be there every day.

When I see someone who has responsibilities, most of the time I can pinpoint that person because of the way he carries himself.

With scallops, it's where you get them. We get them live in the shell. I'm willing to share our connection with the White House. This could be the start of a beautiful love affair with the scallop.

To me, it's very important to have time at the restaurant but also time with family and time for myself.

A lot of people believe that when you are Buddhist, you are the Dalai Lama. I'm certainly not.

For me, I do not wish to build an empire.

The nature of human beings is to eat meat and fruits and vegetables, and therefore we have to kill animals. I don't have a problem with that. But it's a sacred moment. It's a gift of life.

I like the dynamic of PBS. They're very honest and authentic.

I'm very inspired by other cultures and very often use what I perceive to be exotic ingredients.

I never pressure myself to do something I don't want to do.

I just find the world very exciting and beautiful everywhere.

I am not a picture guy. I like to live in the present and keep the image of the past vivid in my mind. I don't need the precision of the picture.

You won't be getting what you would get for $90 at Le Bernardin.

I'm very bad, but I like to dance.

Today, because I want to be gentle on my back, I listen to jazz.

In New York there used to be some very good clubs with amazing sound systems. Techno was part of the process.

We lived in St. Tropez when I was young, and there were a lot of Vietnamese refugees in France at the time, after the war. My mother had many Vietnamese friends who entertained a lot, and she was taught how to make that spring roll. She would make them all the time.

I am an audiophile. It's almost like a virus. I'm completely crazy about the quality of sound. It's interesting and painful at the same time; you have to really spend a lot of money on the equipment.

I have very vivid memories of being a young child. My mother would create dinner as for us, and when she would bake, she would leave some dough for me. I would roll the dough into little sticks while she was cooking the apple tart of whatever. I was looking through the window of the oven and flipping the light, and then my bread would come out, and it was inedible, of course.

I have more eating memories than cooking memories and many memories of being in the kitchen - I was always attracted to the kitchen - but nobody ever wanted me to touch anything.

My mother and my grandmother would make an apple tart in different styles, and I had one per day. Every day I would eat one full apple tart.

Just walking in the kitchen (and we have three kitchens at Le Bernardin), I exercise quite a lot. I also walk in Central Park for 50 minutes from my house to Le Bernardin every day, rain, shine, snow.

I had a passion for cooking, and I was a very bad student.

At 15, I had to choose a vocational school, and I was delighted, of course, to go to culinary school. But learning the basics was not as exciting as being the chef I am today.

California is lucky, the East Coast is lucky because we get great seafood and a lot of produce from Florida, locally in good weather, but in the winter we have to buy it.

Fast food is both evil and genius. Because of it we can feed a large number of people fairly decently at an affordable price. However, all the artificial flavors and artificial ingredients in some of their products are unacceptable. And it's designed so you can eat fast so you get back to work more quickly. Not good.

When you are 25, 30, you know, you have no responsibility, no mortgage, no kids, no retirement to think about, nothing.

I don't follow the food trends.

When I started to work in Paris in fine dining, the passion really kicked in, and I knew that I would not, for the rest of my life, do anything else.

I come from a family of farmers on both sides of my family.

The fish is the star of the plate.

For me, food is about memories, feelings, emotions, and so is Le Bernardin, and that's why it's not just a restaurant.

When I realized, "Hm, I'm not that good at all. It will take me weeks, maybe months, to master the 32 yolks." When I did, it was a turning point in my career.

When you serve lobster, you've taken a being's life away. Therefore if you create a recipe, you have to be very dedicated to elevate the lobster, to make it good and tasty of course, but at the end of the day it's a matter of paying homage.

Obviously California is fantastic in terms of produce, vegetables.

It was my first day working at Tour d'Argent, a famous restaurant in Paris, in 1982, and they were celebrating their 400th anniversary. I am in the fish station and after many mistakes, including cutting myself after 30 seconds in that kitchen, the chef said, "Make a Hollandaise sauce with 32 yolks." It takes me forever to separate the yolks from the whites, and I put them in a bowl and try to go close to the stove, but the stove is way too hot for me.

I love garlic, and I use it often.

My New Year's resolution is to cut my diet sodas down to two cans a day!

If I go to a nightclub, even if the music is good, if the sound system is not, I don't stay.

The importance of reading, for me, is that it allows you to dream. Reading not only educates, but is relaxing and allows you to feed your imagination - creating beautiful pictures from carefully chosen words.

I love eggs. When it's the season of truffles, scrambled eggs with truffles, and I'm happy. I'm smiling like that.

Cooking is a holistic process of planning, preparing, dining and sharing food. I place food at the center of our humanity, as it nourishes not only our physical bodies but also our emotional and spiritual lives. Food is truly a cultural phenomenon that informs our traditions and our relationship with the earth. I genuinely believe that food connects us all.

When I was twelve, I decided to become a chef. I stole a book from the library about the greatest restaurants in France. I'd flip the pages and dream. I should return that book to the library some day.

The importance of reading, for me, is that it allows you to dream.