One pretends to do something, or copy someone or some teacher, until it can be done confidently and easily in what becomes one's own style
Long Island for me, it's producing more chefs coming out of there than Paris.
I train my chefs completely different to anyone else. My young girls and guys, when they come to the kitchen, the first thing they get is a blindfold. They get blindfolded and they get sat down at the chef's table. . . Unless they can identify what they're tasting, they don't get to cook it.
Focus on your customers and make that restaurant synonymous to where you are in terms of area.
I think when we opened in 2001, it was holy ground. There was nothing here. Back then, being on the Dubai Creek was an amazing position, and I would come one or two times a year, max. Now it's so different. The travel dilemma has disappeared and it is so easy to get to Dubai. What is it, seven hours from London? It's pretty easy.
As a soccer player, I wanted an FA Cup winner's medal. As an actor you want an Oscar. As a chef it's three-Michelin's stars, there's no greater than that. So pushing yourself to the extreme creates a lot of pressure and a lot of excitement, and more importantly, it shows on the plate.
I'm Gordon Ramsay, for goodness sake: people know I'm volatile.
The flight back and forth to LA has just started to feel like a commute, I think because all the jobs are jobs that I love doing so much, and it's such a great challenge to be holding on to all these different parts and to have to be in different mediums.
That means life itself is a fairy tale. Like the characters, we all live and love and search for a happily-ever-after.
I've been approached many times to write all sorts of books about my past and my personal life. I get interest from people who want to do reality shows, and somebody just offered me a huge amount of money to write my spiritual memoirs. I'm just not interested.
I deal with students every day - from China, Germany, the United States, Hong Kong and Taiwan. And I've noticed that the Chinese students are the least trained in having a sense of aesthetics. They lack any ability to sense what is beautiful or what is proper. They can be learned and skillful, but they lack the ability to make their own free judgment. It is really sad to see young adults of 20, 25 years who were never taught to make their own decisions. People who can't do that don't get a sense of responsibility. And if you lack a sense of responsibility, you push the blame onto the system.