2012 In Review: Top 20 Quotes Of The Year

Dec 28, 2012 10:01 am

Most memorable lines from chefs and cooking folk

By Food Republic

A best-selling cookbook author admits that no qualifications are needed to write a best-selling cookbook. A former restaurant critic claims Sean Brock teaches heritage poultry ancient languages. What won't Anthony Bourdain sign? What is John Currence so pissed off about? We present to you, our favorite quotes of 2012 on Food Republic.

2012 In Review: Top 20 Quotes Of The Year

"Breasts, no. Thighs, stuff like that, no. I’m a married man, raising a girl who will grow up to be a young woman. I don’t want her seeing pictures of daddy signing tits." – Anthony Bourdain, on autographing body parts. [Click on the link for the full interview]

"I have to say, man to man, summer in New York is like a hot woman piñata explosion. It is awesome. You just look around." – Adam Richman

"I started washing dishes in restaurants when I was 15 and I always sat in when the wine salesmen would come in and the sommeliers would have conversations with the wait staff." — Tyler Florence on how he started loving wine at an early age.

"Wood is it. Different types of wood define different cultures. Jerk chicken cooking over the wood in Jamaica is much different than chicken cooking over mesquite in Texas." — Tim Love

Jo Ann Santangelo

"People are bacon crazy. Let’s put bacon in ice cream! Bacon soap! Bacon. Bacon. Bacon. And about a year ago I got all of my chefs de cuisine together and said we’re done with this shit. I’m exhausted. If another motherfucker puts a charcuterie plate in front of me I will punch him in the face." – John Currence

"[The audience] sees a guy with spikey blond hair and some tattoos driving a hot rod around and they want to say that all this guy has eaten is corndogs." – Guy Fieri

"I want to make a restaurant look like the community that I'm in. There's no difference between the street in front of you and the restaurant. The best restaurants I feel are the ones that represent the community where you are, so there's some terroir." — Marcus Samuelsson

Jo Ann Santangelo

"A lot. A hundred per week, probably. It has nothing to do with resume. I believe that you can always sense a commitment through words." — René Redzepi on his staffing method.

“You can choose to follow me or you can choose to not follow me. And if you don’t like what I do, fuck off.” – Chris Cosentino on keys to growing a Twitter following.

"Without a living, breathing food culture we have a dead culture. We created supermarkets with dead food. We irradiate [foods] and kill them and destroy their enzymatic activity. We have done so well at preserving food that we’ve actually killed it. If you have a dead food, you have a dead culture." — Linton Hopkins

"CNN put me at the top of their list of the most powerful and famous people in Singapore last year... It’s what you do that makes me think you are damn great or not." – KF Seetoh

“Why the fuck would I ever want to open a restaurant? They are the biggest headache, pain in the ass, nightmare businesses you could ever possibly hope to engage yourself in!” – Michael Ruhlman

Photo: Donna Turner Ruhlman

"People have asked me what qualifies me to write a cookbook and I reply, 'nothing.'" – Timothy Ferriss

"I try not to be the neighborhood prick that takes everything, but at the same time, you kind of need every strawberry there." – Dan Kluger on shopping at the Union Square Greenmarket.

Photo: Gabi Porter

"When I got my second Beard award on Friday I went up on the stage, thanked my fellow nominees, had an out of body experience and said something like, 'When you win two and you’re wearing them, they clink in a really pleasant way.'" — Ted Allen

"We keep going back and forth over whether vegetables are going to be cool this year or not." – Amanda Cohen

"There’s a huge amount of territory between the frozen turkey off the back of a truck that your neighborhood drug dealer hands out to curry favor with the populace and that heritage bird that Sean Brock taught Greek to." – Sam Sifton

Photo: Sam Horine

"I [once] smuggled in pimente de terra from the Azores. It's a chile a little less than a jalapeño in spiciness, roasted and ground up with a lot of salt." — Ming Tsai

"I think I’ve had dates like that…" – Drew Nieporent, in response to what he would envision a mackerel-scented cologne to smell like.

"In an open kitchen, if somebody was having a bad night, I’d tell them to take their food, dump it in the garbage, get off the line, stand there and watch me. That kind of a jackass." – Chris Hastings

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