If you don’t treat an ingredient and its flavors with respect – if you drown it in oil, for instance – you’ll spoil it.
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.
In France, Christmas is a family holiday. You stay home. New Year’s Eve is when you go out.
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.
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.
I only get fat when I eat food cooked by other chefs. At home, my wife does all the cooking. She makes simple things like soups and salads. We both like steamed tofu.
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.
When you grow up close to poultry and fields and gardens and open-air markets, you can’t help but develop an instinct for quality food.
I travel the world, and I can see in Toronto the cooking is very personal. These people cook with their hearts.
If I had the choice to travel to two places in Europe, it would be Paris and London.
Given the number of restaurants I have, I could easily travel all the time – but I try not to.