Grant Achatz

“Ultimately, the perfect meal is when those things come together - circumstance, the food, ambiance, and you're with the person that you want to be with.”

“I wish that food trucks could exist here in Chicago like they do in Brooklyn and in New York, where you're actually cooking off the truck.”

“Whenever people are faced with any sort of adversity... they tend to gravitate toward things that make them comfortable, and things that they feel are important.”

“What makes the food that we do at Alinea so interesting on the outside is that we really don't let ourselves say no to an idea.”

“Alinea is not the type of restaurant where you go if you're in a hurry. Really, it's about enjoying that three-hour block of time and reflecting on the food, having great conversation with your dining companion.”

“I was a completely below-average high school student. I never went to college.”

“Growing up as a young kid, I was in a restaurant. So, you know, I always had a very good understanding of the nuances. And in a way, that was a bad thing. Because it kind of programmed me to believe that if you're going have a restaurant, this is what you need to do, and this is the way it's going to be run.”

“A cookbook is not like being an author. It's writing down recipes; it's not writing.”

“The most luxurious thing to me is having an hour of my day, which rarely happens, to listen to my iPod and sit on my couch. That's how I unwind.”

“Food is a necessary component to life. People can live without Renoir, Mozart, Gaudi, Beckett, but they cannot live without food.”

“It's not really the life of cooking that's hard - it's what you make of it and what level you push yourself to.”