KINGS OF THE KITCHEN DVD:1

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Recipes guide us how to do it and then that little touch, just the right amount of salt even for example makes the dish. The degree of cooking each fish - cooked through, cooked just a little bit under or that sort of thing, it makes a huge difference… that is a chef.

I love food, but at that point in time I never thought that this becomes my profession. And almost about year later I met the chef Tony Bilson and he basically taught me cooking but I mean French cooking. At that time I think he thought that I'm Japanese so maybe we can do some Japanese bit and pieces.

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NEW YORK

Working in a 3 star restaurant it is like entering the Mafia. I never had to find another job'.

If I wanted to go to the south of France, to Louis Outhier, it was a phone call away and two weeks later I was there.

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LONDON

To achieve that final 10% of perfection you need to cut out all the emotional content of cooking and get a strategy. Stop playing around everyday with different ingredients, and stop acting on sponteneity. Training your staff to understand exactly what you are doing. Being able to reproduce the same dish perfectly as quickly as possible.

Marco Pierre White had the ability of identifying fantastic combination of flavours from wherever it may be in the world. Taking the essence of a dish and without exception improving it both in content and presentation so what you are getting on the plate was the most beautiful food that had ever been produced in the country. You will never be able to repeat the Beatles or the Stones.He represents to cooking what they represent to music.

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LONDON

Japan was a tremendous experience for me. The Japanese style of cooking was all about freshness, the way it is cooked, or not cooked at all. Even the presentation was an eye opener for all of us, but especially for me. I absorbed a lot of the techniques and ideas from the Japanese culture and start thinking 'This is the way of eating and I like it, no cream no butter'.

In St. Moritz I worked at the famous Palace Hotel with the head chef Monsieur de France. De France trained in London at the Savoy hotel with Escoffier. Escoffier was the head chef and de France was the commis. He was 85 years of age and it was an incredible experience for me.

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NEW YORK

It about staying power it is not about being a flash in the pan. You constantly have to reinvent what you are doing. You can't rest on your laurels. It is also a matter of staying fresh because there are obviously younger chefs who may also want to take more risks. And so you have to keep up with them and take as many risks.

Food has become more grounded and it is not this soaring sculpture that we are looking for anymore. It is not about 8 ingredients on a plate anymore. I think that is the worst thing that America sort of dumped on cuisine is that adding all these thing when you see mango, salsa, chutney, relish yada yada yada..

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GENEVA

When you are young, you have so much ambition, you have so much curiosity, and a lot of creativity and then when you get to working 30 years in the same profession you have very solid values.

For example, your taste, the way in which you smell things. Your sight, the way in which you see food cooking. You know exactly whether it is cooked. You can hear the cooking. You assemble ingredients in your head. You only have to see a naked flame and place a pan with a piece of fish and you know. You don't have that in your youth.

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PARIS

Three Michelin Stars is like Formula One racing , it is intense competition. I know that and I like that.

I am somebody who tries to give sense to my job. The way I cook is an expression of all my life. Why cooking? Because I have no choice. My family was in this business and I too felt with my head that it was also possible to give emotion to the people. Yes I worked in many places for over 10 years, but I did not understand the meaning of it, because it was always the same thing, always the same produce, no emotion…I learnt all the little techniques - the bad style of escoffier , it was a kind of repetition, no sense, average produce...

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PARIS

I tasted 'heaven' when I tried one of Michel's new dishes. I love sweet potato pie and what Michel did was out of this world. A good chef has talent when he can make something out of potato out of a simple fish, not with lobster, not with truffles, not with foie gras.

One of my best memories in fact was a private concert by Yehudi Menuhin for his friend Isaac Perlman playing violin at the end of the meal for 10 minutes. Yehudi Menuhin played Happy Birthday and went on and on. Isaac Perlman stood up and said 'Yehudi give me your violin and then he played for 15 minutes and Daniel Barenboin asked 'Mr. Vrinat have you got a piano?', and I replied 'Unfortunately no'. He said 'Oh I can't play'. At that point, I wished I had a piano!

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MUNICH

Today, the repertoire of a young chefs is limited because they only work in 2 or 3 restaurants and not in 15 or more. Anton Mosimann and myself were always looking for new places to learn, looking all over Europe for the best Chefs to train with, from Italy, from France and we took ideas from everywhere. You store all this information and every time we create a new plate, you draw from all these experiences.

In Germany, haute cuisine never existed - all that existed was sauerkraut and basic ingredients. Nowadays, the food people demand is lighter. We recreated the original plates and made them much lighter and healthier but its origins are heavy stodgy food.

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LONDON

You have to have a passion and sometimes I guess it gets in the way of your personal life. You have to be driven and there are not a lot of people that work for you that might like it. You have to be positive, you have to be very sure of yourself, you have to have arrogance and you have to have strength, an inner strength, and then a desire to push out the boundaries and take yourself over that. The guys that really succeed are the ones that go over the pain barrier.

Asian and French cuisine are completely different and it is not just about the flavours, it is about the actual cooking. In Asia, the fat you cook in was very, very expensive, sometimes much more than the protein itself. Hence something went in, and something came out very quickly and you ended up with a crisp crunchy texture, whether it was vegetables, or protein. When it comes to spicing things, Asian cuisine 'coats' and doesn't marinade the fish or the meat - so you don't destroy it's underlying flavour.

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MILAN

My dishes are simple dishes. I don't like sauces. I like a piece of meat, a piece of fish, I like the vegetables, I like olive oil, I like the spices and I put these things together, Sea Bass - for me it is enough to serve with some mushrooms on the top, the herbs and olive oil and cooking very quickly.

We have beautiful pieces of beef - I decide whether we cook them for a long time or a short time so, but I prepare a sauce because it is important but I don't make it a big elaboration.

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MILAN

At a certain point in time I discovered that my work, without realising it, was pleasing people. I wasn't aware that there could be a financial reward from being noticed by the food writers in the press. I received the first and second Michelin stars without really knowing, without a conscious thought of it. I was simply progressing my cuisine in my own culinary world.

The personality and flavour of a product inspires you in the first place. Beethoven must have been inspired by a small bird that was chirping. Van Gough was inspired by colour. When I visit the market and see a zucchini, taste an oil, or see a cut of meat , I am able to assemble these ingredients in my mind.

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