Quotes from Alain Ducasse

When I'm in Paris, my favorite market is the Marche Raspail on the Left Bank.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't like being a celebrity.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

With cooking, there's always the tangible and the intangible: that which is in the domain of sentiment, of the individual.

I don't do the same food in Tokyo that I do in Vegas and vice versa. If I did that, two weeks later I would have no customers.

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.

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

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

I concentrate in my work on preserving and displaying the original flavor from each ingredient in a dish.

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

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 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.