Daniel Boulud

“I think Spain will always remain inspirational, and I think French cuisine will continue to be very French and yet very relevant with its time and keep evolving. But the last thing you want for it is to become too trendy and confusing. It has too much history.”

“For me, the food I like to make is the food I can enjoy all the time anytime. It's not too calculated or technical.”

“I've always loved it in Las Vegas, and it is the only city in the world that brings so many different talented people from so many places.”

“I am very proud of Jim Leiken. He has worked with me for six years and has been patient enough to learn the ropes. He's now matured into a true chef and is working on building his team.”

“The biggest thing is education for young chefs and how they should focus on one cuisine rather than trying to imitate too many. It's like art - you can see the cycles from many past artists and new artists being inspired by past artists.”

“I usually try to eat in my restaurants before I fly, as I'd rather sleep on the plane and just order a salad with cheese, maybe some ice cream.”

“When France was the only reference for chefs to learn, you could go everywhere in the world, and they would copy dishes directly because they didn't have much expanded imagination or technique or knowledge.”

“There was no Internet, not even many cookbooks except the old reference books. So we would sit down at night, a group of six chefs, and we'd exchange recipes and each talk about how we were doing things. It was the only way to learn new ideas.”

“If you're in a major city, there's a 25-year cycle. In Vegas, it's probably 10 or 15 years, except for those landmark places like Spago or Nobu. In Vegas, you have to reinvent yourself once in a while.”

“Sauce is certainly ancestral to French cooking. The technique is very tricky, but it's also very fundamental.”

“I love to make a one-pot meal - think stir-fry but in the French Fricassee. I start with what takes the longest to roast and then add vegetables, fresh herbs, and starch until the meal is complete in one shot.”

“For me, 30 days, it's already pretty good for ribeye or sirloin on the bone. I like my meat grass-fed and juicy. The French never age their meat more than two or three weeks.”

“I think D.C. has always been very, very vibrant for food. Like Boston in a way. Boston and D.C. were really the two cities that were the most active with their local chefs and their local food scene.”

“Every time - well, not every time, but in celebration of a great review or a great accolade, I take the team of Daniel to Katz's Deli for lunch. We take the trip on the subway, we were like 40 or 50 people, and we go in the back room and have a pastrami sandwich.”

“The problem is that there is many great chefs and many great cookbooks, but none of them work at home.”

“In Singapore, there is this life and locals and restaurants and then big casinos and an array of chefs, and even Miami is almost close to Vegas when it comes to an amazing presentation of chefs. But they don't have these massive hotels that have become their own culinary villages.”

“In any sauce you make, start with a concentration of flavors with great acidity. You then re-dilute the sauce, but the proportion of liquid you add should not be so high that you wash away the extracted flavor you're aiming to create.”

“The hardest thing for a chef is to become comfortable with what you do. Not to be too neurotic and worried with what you are doing and how wrong or right you are.”

“Boning is a pain, but it makes such a majestic chicken.”

“If you're on a budget, Sweetgreen is a new chain of salad bars that are very good but inexpensive. You choose from a menu or customise your own, with some protein, a healthy salad and a great dressing.”