I'm always criticizing and only see the mistakes.

I don't like eating in restaurants.

I constantly think I'm a fraud - that this success is not warranted or justified.

People are trying to figure out what American food is; it's certainly an amalgamation.

There's the common misconception that restaurants make a lot of money. It's not true. If you look at maybe the top chef in the world, or at least monetarily, it's like Wolfgang Puck, but he makes as much money as an average crappy investment banker.

Contemporary ramen is totally different than what most Americans think ramen should be. Ramen is not one thing; there are many, many different types.

To me, there are two types of celebrity: there's good celebrity - people that are attracted to the food and working and trying to create something great - and then there's bad celebrity - those who are working on being a celebrity.

The one reason why I got into cooking was because I wasn't good at anything else - not that I was good at it, but it was considered honest work.

I'm not cooking every day anymore, and that's the biggest withdrawal. Cooking is honest work. Now I don't know how to measure myself.

I feel like I'm losing my ability to understand reality; like when someone loses their hearing, they can still speak English, but their speech eventually becomes distorted because they can't hear themselves.

Don't even get me started. I'm not against all vegetarians. But if you're a vegetarian for ethical reasons, you may be causing more harm.

If you're going to be a vegetarian, limit yourself to food from a place you can go to in two hours and just eat that.

When you meet the farmers and go to the farms, you see that they treat their animals like they're family. It makes a big difference.

If people think you are this amazing, own it.

I hate to say 'chain restaurant,' but we're sort of a corporation now. How do we defy that concept, where people assume each restaurant can't be good?

I like eggs. My favorite way of cooking eggs is old school French.

The process and organization leading up to cooking the egg can tell you a lot about the cook.

The livelihood of the restaurant is dependent upon getting the word out.

I lived across the street from Noodle Bar. I could barely stand it, because you're there all the time; you can't get away.

When I first started to cook, I would cook these elaborate meals, but I rarely cook at home now.

Momofuku is not me. It's everyone. I'm just the facade. We have to exceed expectations and be our harshest critics.

I've never bribed my way into a restaurant. I've never slipped a C-note or greased a palm. In truth, I've never even considered it. I've assumed, of course, that people do such things.

For everyday diners in Manhattan, cracking the waiting list at Nobu is said to be harder than getting courtside tickets for the Knicks.

Waiting tables has never paid my bills, a fact which I prefer to hide from my colleagues with deep sighs about the price of just about everything.

Be careful what you wish for - getting to be a successful business and maintaining it is so hard. Anyone can be good one night; being good over several years is incredibly difficult.

My dad was in the restaurant business, but I didn't really think about following him. Had I done better at school, I don't know if I would have been a chef.

Say a child raises this beautiful beet. It's going to give her a sense of ownership, and that changes everything. You stop taking things for granted; you become less wasteful.

Running a business anywhere isn't easy.

In New York, we're always confined with spaces. Our restaurants are difficult to navigate as cooks and to operate. We fight against the buildings we run in New York.