There’s nobody you can call and say, ‘So, can you maybe send me your formula for frying Hollandaise?’ because to the best of my knowledge, it didn’t exist before we did it. – Wylie Dufresne
Typically, you learn how to cook, but you don’t know why. We were looking for a deeper understanding of what was happening to our food as we roasted it, boiled it, grilled it, chopped it, etc. And it turned out, as we began to really say what is cooking, what does it mean to cook, there’s a lot of science involved. – Wylie Dufresne
Neighborhoods change. In some ways, it’s part of the beauty of New York City. It’s in a constant state of flux. – Wylie Dufresne
It’s been a struggle to get people to come eat for fun. You know, the way they listen to music. You can do all kinds of things with music. But food – it’s something people need, and that changes everything. You start playing with it, people have all sorts of reactions. – Wylie Dufresne
It wasn’t the traditional cooking most people do. For me, as a young chef, Thanksgiving meant going to work in the kitchen at places like Gotham, JoJo and Jean-Georges. – Wylie Dufresne
‘Top Chef’ is always entertaining – it’s hard to stop watching, like a good hockey fight, but no one gets hurt. It’s great that the format is so inherently dramatic and can make cooking so entertaining to people who might not ordinarily be interested in a cooking show. Good for the industry all round. – Wylie Dufresne
It turns out that life in the kitchen is very similar to life on a team. Sports and kitchens are about teams. I found my alternate team sport in the kitchen. – Wylie Dufresne
I don’t think of eggs as being fundamental to the flavor of mayonnaise, but they are to Hollandaise. – Wylie Dufresne
Hollandaise, I would like to pour over my head and just rub all over myself. Eggs Benedict is genius. It’s eggs covered in eggs. – Wylie Dufresne
Whether it be cereal technology or candy technology or snack technology, puff snacks, I’m always curious to know how those things are made and how we can take that technology, those ingredients, and apply it to a stand-alone restaurant. – Wylie Dufresne
I would say that molecular gastronomy is a field of science. I would – I would say that it’s probably lumped under chemistry, maybe. Because cooking, while it has certainly biology and some physics, it’s mostly chemistry. – Wylie Dufresne
Whites cook at a lower temperature, set at a lower temperature than yolks. That, to me, is very interesting. That has opened up – as an egg lover, that has opened up sort of a world of possibilities, of applications. – Wylie Dufresne
Green vegetables are something that fascinate chefs; the ability to keep vegetables green. How do we keep them green? What makes them green? Why are they green? And then that sort of army green. Why do they go from bright vibrant electric green to army green, and how can we avoid that? – Wylie Dufresne
The East Village is where I cut my teeth as a kid. I ran around here on a skateboard. – Wylie Dufresne
I think things like ‘farm to table’ are misleading. I think sometimes that becomes a pedestal or a soap box to get people into your restaurant but is not… it’s almost empty in a way. I mean, my food comes from a farm, and I serve it on a table. – Wylie Dufresne
Extremely ripe things are not ideal for pickling. If you pour a hot liquid over super ripe strawberries, you’re going to have strawberry soup. – Wylie Dufresne
When ramps are in season, we pickle a bunch of ramps and fold that into soup. Pickled pearl onions are great chopped up or pureed. – Wylie Dufresne
I really don’t do much on the night of Thanksgiving other than bring the wine and carve the turkey. My contribution comes the day after, in the form of breakfast. I usually just forage through the leftovers for things that will go well with eggs. – Wylie Dufresne
We have fried things in cubes, historically. We tried bars of Hollandaise, we tried different shapes, but it ultimately seemed like the cube was the right shape. – Wylie Dufresne
Every dish doesn’t have to be showy, and every dish doesn’t have to slap you in the face with technique. – Wylie Dufresne
