Top 40 Eric Ripert Quotes

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

I’m fascinated by Japanese cuisine.

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.

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

I like working in silence.

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.

Factory farming’s evil; you know that.

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

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.

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

I don’t follow the food trends.

Nobody wants an ugly book.

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.

I am totally anti-technology.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

I just find the world very exciting and beautiful everywhere.

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

The Cheesecake Factory’s not that bad.

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

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

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

You don’t become a chef to become famous.

I’m a very bad baker.

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.

Obviously California is fantastic in terms of produce, vegetables.

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

Chefs are leaders in their own little world.

I barely speak English.

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