Long Island for me, it’s producing more chefs coming out of there than Paris.

What’s frustrating more than anything is when chefs start to cut corners and believe that they are incognito in the way they send out appetizers, entrees, and they know it’s not 100 percent, but they think the customers can’t spot it .

I love eating out. I don’t deny that. But I don’t want 12 or 15 courses because the chef wants me to taste this or taste that. I just want to be able to decide.

It’s quite weird knocking that out of them and telling them to forget cooking for chefs; forget what chefs say about your food.

I am a chef who happens to appear on the telly, that’s it.

When you’re a chef, you graze. You never get a chance to sit down and eat. They don’t actually sit down and eat before you cook. So when I finish work, the first thing I’ll do, and especially when I’m in New York, I’ll go for a run. And I’ll run 10 or 15k on my – and I run to gain my appetite.

I am the most unselfish chef in Britain today.

The pressure on young chefs today is far greater than ever before in terms of social skills, marketing skills, cooking skills, personality and, more importantly, delivering on the plate. So you need to be strong. Physically fit. So my chefs get weighed every time they come into the kitchen.

There’s a bond among a kitchen staff, I think. You spend more time with your chef in the kitchen than you do with your own family.

I train my chefs with a blindfold. I’ll get my sous chef and myself to cook a dish. The young chef would have to sit down and eat it with a blindfold. If they can’t identify the flavor, they shouldn’t be cooking the dish.

I am well aware that a chef is only as good as his last meal.

Chefs are like magicians – they transform raw ingredients into something magical.

Chefs are nutters. They’re all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them.