Chef

The way we subsidize food makes it cheaper to go to McDonald's and get a hamburger than a salad, and that's insane. It's pure government policy.

Usually, cheap food is not nutritious. You're feeding people, but you're not really feeding people something that is good for them.

I just hope Americans come to understand that food isn't something to be manipulated by our teeth and shoved down our gullet, that it's our spiritual and physical nourishment and important to our well-being as a nation.

Everything tastes better with butter. Meat that has fat in it is tender in a certain way, flavorful in a certain way. It's hard to deny the flavor quotient there.

A lot of equipment can get in the way of the connection with food, with touching and feeling.

I want every child in America to eat a nutritious, delicious, sustainably sourced school lunch for free.

I wanted people to come to the restaurant and feel at home, so I put it in a house.

Grass-fed cattle are leaner. But it's not true that they are less flavorful.

I feel like old age in America is a very sad thing. I have been many different places around the world where getting older is something you look forward to.

I used to do calligraphy, and I'm afraid that has lapsed, but I've always been interested in book printing.

We have to understand that we want to pay the farmers the real price for the food that they produce. It won't ever be cheap to buy real food. But it can be affordable. It's really something that we need to understand. It's the kind of work that it takes to grow food. We don't understand that piece of it.

English food writer Elizabeth David, cook and author Richard Olney and the owner of Domaine Tempier Lulu Peyraud have all really inspired the way I think about food.

I am disappointed because nobody is talking about food and agriculture. They're talking about the diets of children, but they're talking about Band-Aids. We're not seeing a vision.

A whole set of values comes with fast food: Everything should be fast, cheap and easy; there's always more where that came from; there are no seasons; you shouldn't be paid very much for preparing food. It's uniformity and a lack of connection.

If we want children to learn to tend the land and nourish themselves and have conversations at the table, we need to communicate with them in ways that are positive.

I think health is the outcome of finding a balance and some satisfaction at the table.

I can't imagine leaving the restaurant. It's hard for me to separate my life from my work; I'm really thinking about what we're doing every day.

I do feel like food should cost more, because we aren't paying farmers a living wage. It has to cost more.

I really am at a place where I think we need to feed every child at school for free and feed them a real school lunch that's sustainable and nutritious and delicious. It needs to be part of the curriculum of the school in the same way that physical education was part of the curriculum, and all children participated.

I think health is the outcome of eating well.