You know the old adage that the customer's always right? Well, I kind of think that the opposite is true. The customer is rarely right.
All four elements were happening in equal measure - the cuisine, the wine, the service, and the overall ambience. It taught me that dining could happen at a spiritual level.
It's a lot harder to get people to 'ooh' and 'aah' over beets and carrots than it is to get them to 'ooh' and 'aah' over artichokes or asparagus, and I enjoy being able to take these humble, 'lowbrow' foodstuffs up a few notches and serve them with great exuberance.
The body cannot produce enzymes in perfect combinations to metabolize your foods as completely as the food enzymes created by nature do. This results in partially digested fats, proteins, and starches that can clog your body's intestinal tract and arteries.
One must know combinations, one must have a true knowledge of food to be in the moment.
A jazz musician can improvise based on his knowledge of music. He understands how things go together. For a chef, once you have that basis, that's when cuisine is truly exciting.
I have always considered desserts to be of equal importance to the savory food.
I never considered Miles Davis a perfectionist; I always considered him as an excellence-ist, where deviation is actually kind of cool.
Excellence is about fighting and pursuing something diligently, with a strict and determined approach to doing it right. It's okay if there are flaws in the process - it makes it more interesting.
The most successful food, I think, is food that both appeals to the super-sophisticated diner or foodie and to the lay diner at the same time.
I don't want to turn 50 and say, 'Gosh, I wish I'd lived in that part of the world for a time. I wish I'd read that book by Faulkner.' I want time to delve back into Thoreau and Kafka.
I worked in 40 restaurants over a five-year period.
I don't understand people who spend their twenties hanging out in bars and going to football game. That stuff is so boring compared to really applying yourself to what you do.
I couldn't really relate to the fraternity or party scene, to the people out in the mall every day protesting one thing or another. I felt like there was no one I could relate to.
Sometimes I think I should have chosen a line of work where it was just me alone in the room, with the sun coming in, and God, insofar as he or she exists, smiling down upon me. Then I would have never been accused of being a tyrant, other than towards myself.
My parents couldn't be looser. It was the ultimate laissez faire upbringing.
I took the obligatory economics classes in school, but I've long been a fan of the Milton Friedman philosophy and its libertarian bent: One must be free to do what one wants to do, as long as you don't harm another. This is the seminal treatise on free-market economics.
I don't ever want to lose that mind-set where you've got to be able to realize different ideas-slash-fantasies-slash-possibilities in your life.
Life's too short. You may be on this planet for 80 years at best or who knows, but you can't just pedal around and do the same thing forever.
Any fool can be happy. What I'm interested in is satisfaction. There's got to be more to life than just being happy. You've got to be fulfilled. You've got to be satisfied; philosophically satisfied is what I mean.
