Alain Ducasse quotes:

In France, Christmas is a family holiday. You stay home. New Year's Eve is when you go out.

Failure is enriching. It's also important to accept that you'll make mistakes - it's how you build your expertise. The trick is to learn a positive lesson from all of life's negative moments.

I only get fat when I eat food cooked by other chefs. At home, my wife does all the cooking. She makes simple things like soups and salads. We both like steamed tofu.

If I had the choice to travel to two places in Europe, it would be Paris and London.

I was brought up on a farm in Southwest France, eating farm-fresh produce three times a day. It was paradise on Earth, and it shaped my eating habits and my sense of taste.

The most classic French dessert around the holidays is the Christmas log, with butter cream. Two flavors. Chocolate and coconut. My first job in the kitchen when I was a boy was to make these Christmas logs.

In France, I am the fifth artisan to produce his own chocolate, and the others have been doing it for a long time.

If I am going somewhere exotic, I take an empty suitcase with me to bring back the objects I fall in love with.

My son, Arzhel, is two, and he eats vegetables twice a day. We have a vegetable garden on our farm in the Southwest, and he gets two baskets, one over each arm, and says, 'Garden, Papa!' and then he eats what he picks.

When you grow up close to poultry and fields and gardens and open-air markets, you can't help but develop an instinct for quality food.

The Mediterranean is in my DNA. I'm fine inland for about a week, but then I yearn for a limitless view of the sea, for the colours and smells of the Italian and French Riviera.

At my home in the southwest of France, I grow oak, hazel, and lemon trees in my backyard.

I don't like being disappointed by somebody I trust. Fortunately, it rarely happens.

I'm anti-globalisation. There is nothing more enriching than to go out into the world and meet people different to you. We must fight the spread of a singular way of thinking and preserve cultural differences.

What they've found so far in the Amazon is 5 percent of what there is yet to discover to eat in the Amazon because it's completely unknown. I've eaten things I've never eaten before over there.

The world forgets about people who are not useful.

Food is one part of the experience. And it has to be somewhere between 50 to 60 percent of the dining experience. But the rest counts as well: The mood, the atmosphere, the music, the feeling, the design, the harmony between what you have on the plate and what surrounds the plate.

It is impossible to remain indifferent to Japanese culture. It is a different civilisation where all you have learnt must be forgotten. It is a great intellectual challenge and a gorgeous sensual experience.

If my cuisine were to be defined by just one taste, it would be that of subtle, aromatic, extra-virgin olive oil.

My grandmother did all the cooking at Christmas. We ate fattened chicken. We would feed it even more so it would be big and fat.

I would never be able to lead the insane lifestyle I do, traveling all over the world, if I wasn't eating food that was simple and healthy.

I have an obsession for quality. I work for my guests, not to obtain Michelin stars.

To make my meal, I go to the market and to the garden, and then I decide what I'm going to do. That's a great pleasure.

Everywhere in the world there are tensions - economic, political, religious. So we need chocolate.

Everything that pushes up out of the earth I love. Everything under the earth, root vegetables, I love to cook.

The restaurants express the spirit of the chef, the spirit of the city, the country.

I didn't want to become a chocolatier among others, buying ready-to-use couverture. I wanted to take the same approach I follow in my cuisine: putting the product first, revealing the authentic taste of the products.

I'm in love with the markets of the world. It's a photograph of a city, a culture.

I prefer to be able to identify what I'm eating. I have to know.

Our milk chocolate is very chocolaty. In fact, we don't call it milk chocolate - we call it milky chocolate.

It's not easy to have success with restaurants in different cities, but I like the challenge.

For me, going to markets is the best way to understand the soul of a place.

I live in Paris, yet Monaco, where I spend a lot of time, holds a very special place in my heart.

A man obsessed: obsessed with perfection, sharing, aesthetics, taste, savoir-faire, and much more.

The Asian airlines have the best wine programs.

Desserts are like mistresses. They are bad for you. So if you are having one, you might as well have two.

The image foreigners have of French cuisine is fattening and very fancy food. But it's not true - French food isn't just rich. The word "healthy" doesn't exist in French. We have many, many words, but not that one. To me, healthy means paying close attention to feeding people.

Tasting a dish should be memorable If nothing remains in the memory of a single guest, then I have made a mistake.

The relentless pursuit of being different is very French.

I am a very eco-friendly chef but a guilty air traveller.

You take the best ingredients - the best cocoa beans - and you process them in the best traditional way, and you have the best chocolate.

I travel the world, and I can see in Toronto the cooking is very personal. These people cook with their hearts.

I don't think the rating system places too much pressure on chefs. I prefer to put the pressure on my chefs to perform to the top standards.

I'm surprised by the talent I find all over. There are always new chefs who propose many interesting new ideas, new ways of looking at ingredients.

Cuisine has become too complicated - this is about subject, verb, adjective: duck, turnips, sauce.

It's striking and unique in London how you know to create this alchemy between the concept, the food, the music, the staff. From the beginning to the end, with all these different elements, it tells a full story that you know very well how to develop and cultivate.

TV is a deformed vision, an excessive caricature. A chef has to stay an artisan, not become a star.

If I'm a great artisan of the kitchen, it's because I don't buy my sauces.

When I was younger, I behaved a bit strangely sometimes - lost my temper, did silly things - but little by little, I've gotten better. As a chef, I think you need to do a lot of work on yourself and your temperament.

My wife Gwenaelle prepares an 'energy shot' for me for breakfast. It's a mix of linseed, cereal, and raisins, with fresh fruit like kiwi. She also adds yogurt for added texture and some pollen and honey for an energy booster.

There are so many impassioned winemakers. I think there are more impassioned winemakers than chefs.

In each restaurant, I develop a different culinary sensibility. In Paris, I'm more classic, because that's what customers like. In Monaco, it's classic Mediterranean haute cuisine. In London, it's a contemporary French restaurant that I've developed with a U.K. influence and my French know-how.

When I started cooking the meal at home, after I had started cooking in restaurants, I usually would prepare bay scallops or lobster.

I have a passion for luggage - trunks and so on. I have a collection of them, but I can never resist buying another piece.

For me, the most luxurious place is somewhere that allows you to feel emotions and pleasures.

Classical cooking and molecular gastronomy should remain separate. You can mix two styles and get fusion; any more, and you just get confusion.

I love any excuse to work with a mortar and pestle.

The proportion of ingredients is important, but the final result is also a matter of how you put them together. Equilibrium is key.

The planet's resources are rare; we must consume more ethically and equitably.

You need a good gardener and a good fisherman. The cook is not required.

In Paris we have bistros, then we have fine dining. In London, you have a very contemporary scene with mixed influences.

London is the most important city in the world for restaurants.

I love to pick tomatoes at the end of the day, when they're still warm from the sun.

Techniques are not the most difficult to teach. The attitudes chefs take are much more important.

I have a very modern way of thinking; the chef is there to lead the team and not just to sit behind the piano.

Nowadays, food needs to be healthy, local, sustainable and not filled with too much fat, salt or sugar. It should be slow-cooked and seasonal. That's my vision.

The planets resources are rare; we must consume more ethically and equitably.

Classical cooking and molecular gastronomy should remain separate...you can mix two styles and get fusion; any more and you just get confusion.

Everyone talks about Spanish influences, but where is it?...Tell me 10 great Spanish restaurants in London....You canâ??t give me the addresses. Nor in Paris.