54 Quotes by Michael Symon

You’ve always got to work to your highest ability level. When times are great and restaurants are jamming, that’s when some restaurants get sloppy and take things for granted. Never take things for granted.

I always tell my employees, the busier it gets, the slower you should cook. When you run around like a crazy person, that’s when things go wrong.

I don’t think any other holiday embraces the food of the Midwest quite like Thanksgiving. There’s roasted meat and mashed potatoes. But being here is also about heritage. Cleveland is really a giant melting pot – not only is my family a melting pot, but so is the city.

My goal in ‘Live to Cook’ is to make great food more approachable for home cooks.

When it comes to cooking and eating, I always try to preach that life is about moderation. Even if I’m having beef for dinner, it’s probably going to be a 3-4 ounce portion with heaps and heaps of vegetables.

For the longest time, chefs and restaurateurs were able to get products home cooks couldn’t get, but that’s not the case anymore.

In Cleveland, I’m so fortunate that we’re surrounded by farms with an endless variety of beautiful vegetables. For me, I always eat very tightly with the season, even if the season is only six weeks.

People come up to me all the time and say, ‘Oh, I love to watch Food Network,’ and I ask them what they cook, and they say, ‘I don’t really cook.’ They’re afraid, they’re intimidated, they know all about food from eating out and watching TV, but they don’t know where to start in their own kitchen.

I’m a firm believer that all this packaged stuff that Americans are buying up in gobs is making them fatter.