Charlie Trotter Quotes

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

Students need to learn how to think critically, how to argue opposing ideas. It is important for them to learn how to think. You can always cook.

I love faltering. I love, in a sense, coming up short. Because you learn nothing from success. You learn so much from failing.

A quarter century of running a restaurant – that’s a long time to do one thing.

Cooking is exactly like making music.

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

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

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.

To me, searching for perfection isn’t anywhere near as interesting as trying to find your own voice.

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.

In my case, vertical food was less about standing things up than layering things: more an attempt to gain texture by weaving things together.

Excellence is about fighting and pursuing something diligently, with a strict and determined approach to doing it right. It’s okay if there are flaws in the process – it makes it more interesting.

I never considered Miles Davis a perfectionist; I always considered him as an excellence-ist, where deviation is actually kind of cool.

Sometimes I think I should have chosen a line of work where it was just me alone in the room, with the sun coming in, and God, insofar as he or she exists, smiling down upon me. Then I would have never been accused of being a tyrant, other than towards myself.

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

I have always considered desserts to be of equal importance to the savory food.

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.

I believe in focusing on details.

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.

My father was a successful entrepreneur.

If you ever want to get anywhere in life, you’re going to have to push it, and somebody’s going to push you to get there. End of story.

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.

I don’t know how to put this gently, but I’m trying to tackle the biggest question of all, which is the God question.

I wasn’t using college as a stepping stone to law school or some other career. I just wanted a liberal-arts education.

The most successful food, I think, is food that both appeals to the super-sophisticated diner or foodie and to the lay diner at the same time.