An aphorism is defined as a concise statement of a principle, using a few sentences. These thoughts in the chefs own words should offer great insight into this realm for novices and chefs. All chefs at restaurants are rated 19 by Gault Millau/Gayot/Hayler/Ruul unless otherwise indicated.

Top Aphorisms by the Best Chefs

Be More Local
"I do not like the fact that cuisine is going global and consequently slowly losing its local identity….Marc Veyrat’s cuisine at La Ferme de Mon Père in Megève. It was a truly authentic and local cuisine yet absolutely modern."
Eric Frechon - Paris (18 rated)   

Beauty
"Learn to see beauty in order to be able to create true art; technique and practice are the foundations of artistic creation; seeing beauty is a skill that needs to be practiced daily."
Lionel Beccat - Tokyo (18 rated)

Components
"To do contemporary cooking, you have to know everything, and forget about everything. First of all, you have to know everything. If you don’t know things, you cannot talk. But I cannot evolve tradition if I don’t know the tradition. I cannot do contemporary food if I don’t travel … What kind of potato? What kind of parmigiano? What kind of fish? How has the tuna been caught? If you don’t understand those kinds of things, touch the ingredients, feel them, you cannot do what we do." "I’m an artisan. I can be Enzo Ferrari, an artisan, a very important artisan who makes custom-made food, but the difference between an artist and an artisan is that an artist is free to express himself however he wants. An artisan has to create good food, or cars that win a race, or the best belt made with the most rare skin…." "I think in the future the most important ingredient is culture. The chef will know more about soil, and the farmers of the future will know more about taste. Growing up together, studying together."
Massimo Bottura - Modena, Northern Italy  

"I Cook the Mountain….Cooking is a dialogue between raw materials, individual sensitivity, fine ingredients and the chef’s personality. A harmony of elements that, just as in a shared dialogue, help convey a message. Dawn to Earth continues its own dialogue, by sharing a message that combines environmental and sustainability issues with the exploration of a gastronomic philosophy that prioritizes products within their land of origin."
Norbert Niederkofler - San Cassiano, Northeastern Italy (18 rating)

Cuisine by Country

"We’re the land of watchmakers, and our cuisine reflects this culture of minutiae — this keen sense of detail. That won’t change; there’s a certain traditional, conservative side to Switzerland. We’ll maintain our values, which also bear the hallmarks of our neighbours: German rigour, the bon vivant spirit of the French, the Latin epicureanism of Italy."
Philippe Chevrier - Satigny, West of Geneva        

Creativity & Innovation
"The key to success is innovation and to continue to evolve and improve. We have to be in search of perfection without ever reaching it."
Alain Ducasse - Louis XV, Monte Carlo

"My creative process is inspired by music, color and the arts, even sound, reading, and things that surround me. What is important here is the gustatory reaction, the echo of flavors in the mouth as experienced when eating our food, giving sense to the story we tell. Each sequence has its own frequency. As we bridge each dish with another, combining flavors and textures, enabling the continuity of the story."
Alexandre Mazzia - Marseille

"It’s like any artwork, it has to reflect where the artist is at the moment. I had a writing professor who said, ‘If you’re not embarrassed by what you wrote last year, you’re not progressing.’ ….We are continually embarrassed by what we were doing last year, and we laugh about it. My sense is that creative people have to be at ease and comfortable to maximize their talents, otherwise they will shut down. If you want to make people comfortable you have to invite them to be themselves and open to expressing who they are."
Patrick O'Connell - Washington, Northern Virginia (18 rated)

"You can't teach creativity because it's an oxymoron ….being creative is an ongoing process which grows and matures when you work on it." "The word perfectionism has no place in creativity. It is the enemy of creativity. It breeds fear... Failure doesn't exist in creativity."
Heston Blumenthal - Bray, west of London (18 rating)

"Favourite motto is fueki ryuko: ‘Fluid and transitory, yet eternal and immutable.’ For Takahashi, the phrase means incorporating new elements to advance the art form while  respecting its traditions and essence. French food makes clever use of fats and oils, while Chinese food is all about the use of heat and fire. Water is the focal point in Japanese cuisine. Japan has an abundance of easily-accessible fresh water, so our dishes evolved to make full use of it."
Yoshihiro Takahashi - Kyoto (17 rated)

Emotion
"It’s precisely that emotion that flavors create that I love. To share that emotion with people is incredible…You know, it’s important to remember that eating doesn’t belong just to the luxury world. Wherever you cook, the most important thing is always to bring flavour – and therefore emotion."
Christian Le Squer - Paris

Happiness
"Cooking is first and foremost about pleasure….cooking 'has to, of course, make you very happy'
Daniel Boulud - New York City

"A quote that hangs in all of our kitchens: 'When you acknowledge, as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving towards perfection becomes clear: to make people happy. That’s what cooking is all about."
Thomas Keller - Yountville

Haute Couture
"Comparing haute cuisine with haute couture…Chanel, Dior, etc., they all have a signature style and in the same time they define what is considered as high fashion. Evolution is just as much possible within our style. It’s all about finesse: using better fabrics (or produce), using more sophisticated sewing (or cooking) techniques and working on the perfect cut (or plating)."
Peter Goossens - Kruishoutem, Western Belgium                 

Healthiness
"All of the principles of health cuisine are built on the basis of nutrition: the needs of the human body, the constitution of food and the nutritional recommendations that flow from it. Meat, foods containing gluten, sugar, or lactose that meet our nutritional needs and should not be restricted. Of course, you should be careful not to over-consume certain foods, like red meat. But we must also be careful not to fall into the opposite excess."
Michel Guérard - Les Prés d'Eugénie, Eugénie les Bains

History
"The heart, the thread of history, is the sincerity of the  product, the gesture and the individual who makes this gesture."
Pierre Gagnaire - Paris

'Constantly-evolving heritage cuisine, which respects its ingredients. It is sensitive, gourmet cuisine, adding a touch of fantasy to whatever tradition is in vogue.' 'My training taught me: from Troisgros: the spirit of a three stars assembled in minute detail, from Loiseau: cuisine in its purest form, from Gagnaire: a sense of creativity, from Westermann: Alsace, naturally, its generosity and the beauty of its produce, from Jacques Lameloise: his simplicity."
Eric Pras - Chagny (18 rated)

Love
"You have to love people to feed them well and a love for the ingredients"

Christophe Bacquié - Le Castelle

The Media
"You're a painter using oil paint and that painter is using oil paint, and therefore, they're both the same. Come on. You don't see [the media] do this for anyone else, but they do it to chefs, and I don't know why. It's just incorrect. It's really unfortunate that people who are actually conveying the information to the public don't have a base knowledge or the dedication or integrity to really look at what is going on experientially at these restaurants and separate them and talk about them in intelligent ways. It's just easier to say here's a bunch of mad scientists, radical chefs out there and they're all cooking the same way. That's just silly."

Grant Achatz - Chicago (18 rated)

Michelin
In 1999, he retired and returned his Michelin stars. "I was being judged by people who had less knowledge than me, so what was it truly worth? I gave Michelin inspectors too much respect, and I belittled myself. I had three options: I could be a prisoner of my world and continue to work six days a week, I could live a lie and charge high prices and not be behind the stove or I could give my stars back, spend time with my children and re-invent myself."
Marco Pierre White, London (19-rated, 1999)

Nature & A Restaurant's Own Garden

"My team and I have a lot of fun with our gardens. We have a much smaller range of flavors than some restaurants because, in a garden, each season generates between 20 and 25 flavors. By respecting this [natural cycle], we keep the most accurate expression of what nature can write in a vegetable garden. The menu changes according to the seasons, so you could say that we have four restaurants in one, because every three months it is like a new place."

Alain Passard - Paris

"Respect, discovery, elaborate, share and love. Respecting nature is my culinary philosophy."
Regis Marcon - Saint-Bonnet-le-Froi

"Produce foraging is a way of life for me, it’s normal…even    before I was a chef I was already picking my own mushrooms."
Emmanuel Renaut - Mégève

Painting
"Food and restaurant operations are very similar to paintings - it’s about the combination of layers working together to create something beautiful. With paintings, there are various layers of colors and textures. In food, there are various layers of flavors incorporated into a dish, and in restaurants, there are various levels of training and experiences offered. What music is to the ear, painting to the eye, food is to the mouth."
Jean-Georges Vongerichten - New York City (Rated 18)

Passion

"Passion is not something pleasant. Are you willing to suffer for this? That's when you have passion. Otherwise, it's a hobby. Passion is not a hobby." It's all about pain. It's about endurance. Whoever can push themselves harder is going to go farther."
Daniel Humm - New York City (18 rated)         

Sauces
"I gave the food business a way to understand that to change the cuisine, you have to change the verb- and the verb is the sauces. Sauces are 80 percent of the dish. They bring the other parts of the dish together.' 'The revolution wasn't sous vide—cooking food in a stomach is basically that concept and something that has been done for a long time—the revolution is understanding the right temperature at which to cook food."
Yannick Alléno - Paris

"When a lot of people wanted to eat light,…..chefs started to eliminate sauce. A lot of fine dining restaurants said 'We cannot put sauce any more.' And after that we started to put some emulsion. It's beautiful, but guess what happens when you put it on the table. It's air. It looks nice but it doesn't taste good. Cuisine with no sauce is boring. I'm sorry, but it's no good."
Claude Le Tohic - San Francisco     

Smell
"While the restaurant is closed for 3 months a year, we spent one month traveling around the world and going to other restaurants, the other two months were dedicated to brainstorming, which we started to call 'brain sailing.

"What makes a dish extraordinary and exciting, in the end, is the sense of smell, because it places it in space and time. If you make a beautiful dish that has the right textures and temperatures, that tastes good because you have balanced the flavors, and then you also give it an olfactory element that can be traced back to an emotion that people have experienced in the past, then that dish is no longer only good, but it becomes moving."
Mauro Uliassi - Senigallia, Central Eastern Italy

Steadfastness
"If you want to make it in the kitchen, you have to be tough - emotionally and physically. When I was training I was lucky enough to go and work with Joël Robuchon and Guy Savoy in France, and I had it kicked out of me there. It was incredibly tough, but it took me to another level. It taught me true passion for my craft and made me learn each area of the kitchen until I could do it with my eyes closed."
Gordon Ramsay - London (Rated 18)          

Temperature
"Temperature and scent … are the life of the dish…..I treasure the temperature more than the details of the preparation."
Seiji Yamamoto - Tokyo

Timelessness
"When I create dishes, I am not looking to follow culinary trends. I want to be sure that our food will outlast any fad. And, if I am attempting to create contemporary dishes, I want them to be perennial over all else.' 'Fine dining is not simply what you see and taste on your plate, but it is the experience that accompanies it."
Arnaud Donckele - Saint-Tropez & Paris

Tradition
"I adore Mahler, his story, his music, his personality. His music was difficult for the time, he loved dissonance. And dissonance is not about wrong tunes, it’s the freedom of finding new sounds and new roads. With cooking it’s the same thing: for me it’s about freeing yourself from tradition, but without forgetting it. It means knowing tradition, in order to overcome it: it’s in my cultural heritage, I bring it with me, but at the same time I’m walking down my road."
Alexandre Gauthier - Montreuil

"Protecting tradition actually requires evolving…..You have to move forward or it will die, but the part you preserve and the part you innovate move in parallel….tradition is protected by continuously applying new practices every day. By repeating a new practice and connecting it [to tradition], it will become the tradition."
Yoshihiro Murata - Kyoto (18 Rated)

"Classical cuisine” is all about knowing the basics, satisfying the palate and not being afraid to come to terms with those ingredients that have determined the success of haute cuisine…..be consistent with one's own personal style down through the years…. resisting the temptation to follow ephemeral trends or an excess of technology. It means not betraying the customer who expects to find that precise atmosphere and consistency, albeit in constant evolution. What we have learned today, as opposed to the past, is that extra touch of lightness. Another important difference is the fact that sugar and fats have been reduced in desserts and certain dishes. Our aim is to find a perfect balance with half as many calories."
Franck Giovannini - Crissier, North of Geneva    

Transformation
"Cooking is the art of instantly transforming historical products into pleasure.”
Guy Savoy - Paris

"I am very attached to the products, to the transformation of materials, all while respecting flavors. A technicality that will offer consistency, which can define my cuisine."
Frédéric Anton - Paris

"The challenge of mixing and at the same time preserving the ultimate taste of each individual ingredient turns cooking into the art of combining the simple to create the exquisite."
Peter Knogl - Basel, Eastern Switzerland