A Quote by Chris Cosentino

Fame hurt. People thought I was a sellout chef and stopped coming to my restaurant. — © Chris Cosentino
Fame hurt. People thought I was a sellout chef and stopped coming to my restaurant.
I wanted to work in a restaurant. Le Cirque was looking for a chef and they approached me. I was excited to be able to be part of this restaurant with an amazing reputation, but not a good one for food at the time. I made it clear that if I was coming to Le Cirque it was going to change.
My grandfather used to be a chef and I remember going to his restaurant to peel potatoes and clean his floor. He used to go out and kiss all the girls in the restaurant and I thought 'oh this is good... one day I want to be like him.'
You hit a certain age and - especially because of TV - the young cooks coming up say, 'You're a sellout, because you're doing something other than what you should be doing.' 'Top Chef' is a double-edged sword for me: There's a whole group of people who will not come to the restaurants because they assume I'm not in them anymore, all I do is TV.
The restaurant chefs in Spain are breaking ground, but in terms of the everyday cooking in Spain I still hear people coming back and saying they were disappointed. I think it's because they're expecting the chef stuff.
I was hired as a sous-chef at a restaurant on the Upper East Side. The chef liked to drink - some mornings we would find him sleeping. Two weeks after its opening, I became the chef. I was 20 years old, and way over my head. I had to hire the cooks and do the menus.
The design of a restaurant should embrace the identity of the chef, the nature of the cuisine, and the context of the restaurant itself.
Many chefs of a certain caliber do not see me as a chef. I don't have a restaurant. They see me as a TV food personality, not a chef. I've gotten respect, trust me, they respect me, but I think that I can't hit that particular level of respect from them until I have a successful Vegas restaurant that not only makes money but creates unbelievable food and a fabulous experience. I don't think people think I can cook, and they don't think I know what the hell I'm doing.
I wrote a mad, passionate letter to the best restaurant in the UK, Le Gavroche in London, and asked if I could work for them. They gave me a job as a dishwasher (Colin laughs). For me that was a joy because I had a foot in the door of this world class restaurant. Just being around the buzz and the pots and pans and the wonderful food and all this produce that was coming in, that was the start of Paul Rankin the chef.
I don't think it's a good advert for any restaurant, a fat chef, and secondly, who wants to eat a dessert when the chef's a fat pig.
I'm a warrior if you try to hurt my family. And anybody I see getting it in the neck out there, I'm right there to protect them. I'm a big, strong guy who knows what he's doing. I've stopped a lot of things in the street, stopped a lot of people from getting hurt.
At a very young age, I fell in love with the idea of being in a restaurant and being surrounded with people around me. I don't think at the time I thought about becoming a chef. I have a bachelor's degree in economics. I never went to a cooking school.
It's very important in a restaurant to really do the right hiring because there's no restaurant that you have one cook and one chef and nobody else in the kitchen. Generally you have five, ten, 15 people with you. So that's really important is to train them right, but first you have to hire the right people.
A pastry chef's lifespan in a restaurant is limited. You have to open a bakery or pastry shop. There's only so far you can go in a restaurant.
As much wrong as I did in life and as many people as I hurt, I can say that God never stopped talking to me. I just stopped listening.
There is often with restaurant reviews in particular, I think, this kind of impulse to be deferential and bow down to the greatness of the restaurant and the greatness of the chef, and then with great regret to say, "And yet, all is not as it should be in the kingdom," and I didn't want to do any of that.
A sellout is putting your name on any piece of crap and then expecting people to buy it because it's got your name on it. That's what a sellout is to me.
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