Quotes By Ted Allen

You know the great irony is that people think you have to have money to enjoy fine food, which is a shame.

The great mystery to me is how restaurant critics think they can get away with doing their job without anybody noticing who they are.

Cooking for people is an enormously significant expression of generosity and soulfulness, and entertaining is a way to be both generous and creative. You're sharing your life with people. Of course, it's also an expression of your own need for approval and applause. Nothing wrong with that.

I like to have friends in the kitchen and make a big mess and use every pot in the kitchen.

Cooking allows you to have travels, adventures and journeys without going anywhere. The running joke between my partner and me is that I'm not really concerned about how long it takes, or how much I destroy the kitchen, because I just have such a good time doing it.

I've leased the apartment; my partner is going to come out here. But we're keeping our house in Chicago because real estate is a really good investment and also because it is just crammed with full of stuff!

I'm a home cook and love to read about food, but I'm not trained as a chef. I'm just really into cooking and passionate about it.

One of the smartest things you can do on 'Chopped' is to take one of those ingredients and make a pickle out of it, because almost every dish benefits from that. I'm feeling like those intuitions are becoming more natural.

I think what I do differently from a lot of TV chefs is that I break down barriers and make fine food more accessible to the regular person, who might be intimidated. I try hard, particularly with wine, to make it not intimidating. It's sort of a teaching job.

I'm in a loft and the kitchen is in the very center of the apartment. The whole place revolves around it.

I cook everything. I love Mediterranean cooking, I love Asian cooking. I do lots of Japanese noodles.

When the idea of 'Chopped' surfaced, it was originally meant to be taped at some guy's mansion with him and his crazy Chihuahua. A stuffy fellow in a tuxedo was to host, and the losing chef's dish was then fed to the dog! I am not kidding, I saw it! I think it is genius! Twisted, but genius!

The best way to learn is live, in person, cooking, feeling, smelling and tasting, but TV is the second-best thing to that; it's a halfway facsimile.

My whole problem is that all of my favorite things at Thanksgiving are the starches, and everyone is trying to go low-carb this year, even a green vegetable has carbs in it.

Jay Leno is not a guy who likes change. He eats the same food every day.

It's a 12-hour cooking class for me on the set of 'Chopped.' You'd think I'd get sick of it, but it's a source of endless interest to me. The only thing I don't like about it is it's a long day and my feet hurt. Otherwise, I love it.

I am much more interested in the process than results.

My place in Chicago is a 105 year old house, but I really like contemporary spaces too, so it's refreshing and fun to be in a space where you can do contemporary things.

I had a really good time with Martha Stewart, who also is somebody I really admire a lot. I've learned a lot from her and I think all of America has, about attention to detail and using fresh ingredients and making things beautiful and special.

Well, we don't take money from people and then show the product. It has to be a product that we like anyway, and that's true for all five of us, which is one of the really nice things about the way we make the show.