When You Become A Good Cook, You

You Know, My Parents Had A Restaurant. And I Left Home, Actually, In 1949, When I Was 13 Years Old, To Go Into Apprenticeship. And Actually When I Left Home, Home Was A Restaurant - Like I Said, My Mother Was A Chef. So I Can't Remember Any Time In My Life, From Age 5, 6, That I Wasn't In A Kitchen.

Food Can Be Utilized For Economic Reasons, Like The Grain Embargo Of Carter 40 Years Ago. You Have A Political Decision, You Are Going To Move The Flow Of Food In A Part Of The World And Not Another Part Of The World. And Certainly Now, With The Way The Country Is Polarized And All That, You Wouldn't Want To Have A French Menu, With A French Thing - You'd Be Crucified! Or Anything Like That. You Have To Be A Real American And Apple Pie And This And That.

Thirty, 40 Years Ago, More Than That Now, Even, The Cook Was Certainly At The Bottom Of The Social Scale. And Any Mother Would've Wanted Their Child To Marry A Doctor, A Lawyer, An Architect, Not A Cook. Now, We Are Genius, It's Different.

I Tell A Student That The Most Important Class You Can Take Is Technique. A Great Chef Is First A Great Technician. 'if You Are A Jeweler, Or A Surgeon Or A Cook, You Have To Know The Trade In Your Hand. You Have To Learn The Process. You Learn It Through Endless Repetition Until It Belongs To You.

I Was Chef To The French Presidents Between '56 And '59, Finished With De Gaulle, And During De Gaulle I Remember Serving Eisenhower, Nehru, Tito, Macmillan; Those Were The Heads Of State At The Time. I Never Saw Anyone. No One Would Ever, Ever, Ever Come To The Kitchen. You Couldn't Even See Them.