If my cuisine were to be defined by just one taste, it would be that of subtle, aromatic, extra-virgin olive oil.
Alain Ducasse
The proportion of ingredients is important, but the final result is also a matter of how you put them together. Equilibrium is key.
Everywhere in the world there are tensions - economic, political, religious. So we need chocolate.
I do most of the cooking in my head.
If you don't treat an ingredient and its flavors with respect - if you drown it in oil, for instance - you'll spoil it.
It is impossible to remain indifferent to Japanese culture. It is a different civilisation where all you have learnt must be forgotten. It is a great intellectual challenge and a gorgeous sensual experience.
In France, I am the fifth artisan to produce his own chocolate, and the others have been doing it for a long time.
Classical cooking and molecular gastronomy should remain separate. You can mix two styles and get fusion; any more, and you just get confusion.
The world forgets about people who are not useful.
I love any excuse to work with a mortar and pestle.
If I had the choice to travel to two places in Europe, it would be Paris and London.
The Mediterranean is in my DNA. I'm fine inland for about a week, but then I yearn for a limitless view of the sea, for the colours and smells of the Italian and French Riviera.
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.
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.
I have an obsession for quality. I work for my guests, not to obtain Michelin stars.
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.
My son, Arzhel, is two, and he eats vegetables twice a day. We have a vegetable garden on our farm in the Southwest, and he gets two baskets, one over each arm, and says, 'Garden, Papa!' and then he eats what he picks.
The restaurants express the spirit of the chef, the spirit of the city, the country.
The planet's resources are rare; we must consume more ethically and equitably.
What they've found so far in the Amazon is 5 percent of what there is yet to discover to eat in the Amazon because it's completely unknown. I've eaten things I've never eaten before over there.
When I started cooking the meal at home, after I had started cooking in restaurants, I usually would prepare bay scallops or lobster.
In France, Christmas is a family holiday. You stay home. New Year's Eve is when you go out.
TV is a deformed vision, an excessive caricature. A chef has to stay an artisan, not become a star.
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.
The real evolution is to learn something new every day - it's very important for chefs to share what they have discovered.
I'm surprised by the talent I find all over. There are always new chefs who propose many interesting new ideas, new ways of looking at ingredients.
In each restaurant, I develop a different culinary sensibility. In Paris, I'm more classic, because that's what customers like. In Monaco, it's classic Mediterranean haute cuisine. In London, it's a contemporary French restaurant that I've developed with a U.K. influence and my French know-how.
The world of wine is more creative than the world of cooking.
In London, there is no need for 25 high-end gastronomic restaurants. That would be too much.
Our milk chocolate is very chocolaty. In fact, we don't call it milk chocolate - we call it milky chocolate.
Gastronomy is my hobby. I'm simply the casting director. Once I've brought all the right people together, it is they who must work together to tell a story.
The relentless pursuit of being different is very French.
I think the French and the Japanese are both obsessed by seasons, small producers, freshness.
To make my meal, I go to the market and to the garden, and then I decide what I'm going to do. That's a great pleasure.
If I'm a great artisan of the kitchen, it's because I don't buy my sauces.
I have a very nice garden and extraordinary markets, where there are products from the earth and the sea, in the French Basque country.
In Paris we have bistros, then we have fine dining. In London, you have a very contemporary scene with mixed influences.
My wife Gwenaelle prepares an 'energy shot' for me for breakfast. It's a mix of linseed, cereal, and raisins, with fresh fruit like kiwi. She also adds yogurt for added texture and some pollen and honey for an energy booster.
When I'm in Paris, my favorite market is the Marche Raspail on the Left Bank.
At my home in the southwest of France, I grow oak, hazel, and lemon trees in my backyard.
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.
I was brought up on a farm in Southwest France, eating farm-fresh produce three times a day. It was paradise on Earth, and it shaped my eating habits and my sense of taste.
London is the most important city in the world for restaurants.
I have restaurants, bookshops... but it's not an empire, more... a puzzle. If it were an empire, all my restaurants would be the same.
I don't like being a celebrity.
With cooking, there's always the tangible and the intangible: that which is in the domain of sentiment, of the individual.
You take the best ingredients - the best cocoa beans - and you process them in the best traditional way, and you have the best chocolate.
I'm in love with the markets of the world. It's a photograph of a city, a culture.
I love to pick tomatoes at the end of the day, when they're still warm from the sun.
The Asian airlines have the best wine programs.
