Quotes from Charlie Trotter

I am actually a very gentle person.

If people give me a year or two of their best effort, then I am their friend for life.

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.

When I graduated I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn't want a conventional career.

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'm really not that comfortable with people. I mean, I love individuals, but I'm not very social.

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.

In a time when it is common for chefs to simply reproduce the innovations of others, the few who speak for themselves through their food become the skilled artists of their time.

Chefs, as a whole, say yes to any project, fundraiser, or tasting because they have such a generous spirit.

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.

If you go around the kitchen and ask my employees what they want to be doing in three to five years, most of them, if they're being honest, will tell you that they don't want to be working for me. They want to have their own place. And I think that's great.

I was always inspired by restaurants like La Tulipe in Manhattan. You'd walk right by and say, 'Oh what a lovely house.' You didn't realize there was a restaurant behind the door.

You can't be afraid to not have everything figured out. There's too much pressure on young people today to have it all figured out when they're in college.

Maybe it's good to be traumatized in your youth, to make you think differently and step outside the box. Anybody can be comfortable, but if you get your world rocked, shaken as it were, then maybe it causes you to really go to a whole other level in a different way.

Always make stock in a large quantity and freeze it in plastic bags. That way, when you want to make a nice soup or boil veggies, you can simply pull the bag out of the freezer.

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 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.

Ultimately, I want to prepare food that will be recognized equally in Tokyo, London, and Paris. I am after that universality, that transcendence.

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.

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.

Achieving excellence is being passionate about what you're doing and working so hard that they have to hire two people to replace you.

My parents couldn't be looser. It was the ultimate laissez faire upbringing.