A Quote by Steve Ells

When I created Chipotle in 1993, I had a very simple idea: Offer a simple menu of great food prepared fresh each day, using many of the same cooking techniques as gourmet restaurants. Then serve the food quickly, in a cool atmosphere. It was food that I wanted, and thought others would like too. We've never strayed from that original idea. The critics raved and customers began lining up at my tiny burrito joint. Since then, we've opened a few more.
For too long, great food has really only been available in high-end restaurants and specialty food markets, but Chipotle is making the same gourmet quality food available and affordable so everyone can eat better.
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.
Let’s get one thing straight: Mexican food takes a certain amount of time to cook. If you don’t have the time, don’t cook it. You can rush a Mexican meal, but you will pay in some way. You can buy so-called Mexican food at too many restaurants that say they cook Mexican food. But the real food, the most savory food, is prepared with time and love and at home. So, give up the illusion that you can throw Mexican food together. Just understand that you are going to have to make and take the time.
When I started Chipotle, I didn't know the fast-food rules. People told us the food was too expensive and the menu was too limited. Neither turned out to be true.
Imagine if we had a food system that actually produced wholesome food. Imagine if it produced that food in a way that restored the land. Imagine if we could eat every meal knowing these few simple things: What it is we're eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what it really cost. If that was the reality, then every meal would have the potential to be a perfect meal.
I love Chinese food, like steamed dim sum, and I can have noodles morning, noon and night, hot or cold. I like food that's very simple on the digestive system - I tend to keep it light. I love Japanese food too - sushi, sashimi and miso soup.
Our economic model allows us to invest a disproportionate amount in our food costs. We have a very efficient system: customers go through a single line, the people who serve you are the ones who make the food, and our menu board is not cluttered.
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.
I started out with a carpet-cleaning business. Then I had a lunch wagon business, where you pull up and serve food. Then I had bars and then restaurants.
The Feeding the 5000 campaign is inviting food businesses to sign up to the principles of the Food Waste Pyramid tool, which illustrates a simple set of steps that any food business can take to avoid and reduce food waste.
India has the largest number of hungry people. Yet it's an outcome of precisely the same mechanism. It's the control of agriculture that drives down the price it paid for food that it buys from farmers, who are the poorest people. Then you're paying very little for food. You're underpaying the poorest people in any society. Then they're marketing to us the things that are most profitable to them. And those are the things that are packaged and processed and what-have-you. That means you have the simple thing of the explosion of obesity and hunger as a result of capitalism in our food system.
Le Cirque at first was one of those general French restaurants in town, which were cooking more or less the same food. At Le Cirque, I wanted to do something different while respecting the foundation of the restaurant. I did that through the menu.
I have been to beaches in many parts of the world, but Maldives is amazing. The country is very small, people are simple, each island is so tiny and the food is good.
I ate fantastic Italian food in Croatia, which you wouldn't expect. The food in Istanbul was amazing. I never would've expected that and the food, I guess you're learning something about me, the food in Prague, they're very, very heavy meat eaters, like, a lot of meat, which is great.
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. [Other] Japanese restaurants … mix in some other style of food and call it influence, right? I don't like that. … In Japanese sushi restaurants, a lot of sushi chefs talk too much. 'This fish from there,' 'This very expensive.' Same thing, start singing. And a lot have that fish case in front of them, cannot see what chef do. I'm not going to hide anything, right?
I did everything to get food. I have stolen for food. I have jumped in huge garbage bins with maggots for food. I have befriended people in the neighborhood who I knew had mothers who cooked three meals a day for food, and I sacrificed a childhood for food and grew up in immense shame.
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