A Quote by Steve Ells

We want to make the old fast food model irrelevant. We want to make great ingredients and classic cooking techniques accessible to everybody. — © Steve Ells
We want to make the old fast food model irrelevant. We want to make great ingredients and classic cooking techniques accessible to everybody.
The traditional fast food model is built on buying the cheapest ingredients - and that usually means poor-quality, heavily processed foods. But you can use quality ingredients, cook food using classic cooking techniques, and still serve something that's fast and inexpensive.
We're not best in the world at burritos and tacos. What we're best in the world at is building a people culture, sourcing really great ingredients, cooking according to classic cooking techniques, understanding the corresponding economic model and how to tweak that and drive that and provide this really great, new fast food experience.
Chipotle is based on a very simple idea: We start with great ingredients, prepare them using classic cooking techniques, and serve them in a way that allows people to get exactly what they want.
It's just starting. I think it's going to take another year and a half to get up to critical mass, but everybody loves Chinese food, Thai food, Japanese food, and it's all been exploited. The Filipinos combined the best of all of that with Spanish technique. The Spanish were a colonial power there for 500 years, and they left behind adobo and cooking in vinegar - techniques that, applied to those tropical Asian ingredients, are miraculous.
It's not a very sane thing to try to be great all the time. You want to make something magical; you want to make something wonderful; you want to give to everybody; you want to heal people; you want to still be inspired. That's not easy.
I myself am not particularly interested in restaurant cooking. I don't really want to learn how to make a napoleon. I'd much rather learn how to make a very good lemon cake, which you can make in your own home. I like plain, old-fashioned home food.
There's so many movies, they're just like fast food you consume them and you can't even remember what you just ate. I don't want to make those kinds of movies. I want to make the slow food of movies.
My goal is to make Italian food clean and accessible and beautiful and tasty, with simple ingredients that people can find at a local grocery store, because people don't want to go to a gourmet shop in search of items that will sit in their pantry for years after they use just a teaspoon or pinch of them.
There's no way I'm going to stand up for bad ingredients. We love seasonal ingredients. It's a false dichotomy to say that modern cooking is at odds with that, but some people want to have a great ingredient and no technique.
If we really want to change the way Americans eat, we need to make delicious, sustainably-raised food accessible to everyone. Most people are not willing to sacrifice taste or pay a lot more when it comes to eating better. That's why the Chipotle model is so important.
There is something restless and curious about the Irish. Like everybody else, we want to make money and make our way in the world but it's not the be all and end all. We also want to have fun, we want to make friends, make connections, share stories.
I hope my music inspires people and I want to be a good role model for everybody, not just the girls but for the guys too. I want to show everybody that I didn't grow up in the spotlight like the Mickey Mouse Club to make it. That is important for kids to know.
Cook ingredients that you are used to cooking by other techniques, such as fish, chicken, or hamburgers. In other words be comfortable with the ingredients you are using.
Really the only motivation is through deliciousness; cooking great food that people want to eat again. I want them all to achieve what they all want to do, and I ask then all what they want to do in 5 years. I don't care what the answer is, I can help them all get there as long as they tell me what they want.
My job the same as carpenter. What kind of house you want to build? What kind of food you want to make? You think your ingredients, your structure. Simple.
The better the ingredients, the more farmers I can buy from, the closer I feel to the food I want to make that represents what I care about as a chef.
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