Alexandra Guarnaschelli
Alexandra Guarnaschelli
Alexandra "Alex" Guarnaschelli is a celebrity chef and executive chef at New York City's Butter restaurant and was executive chef at the award-winning The Darby restaurant before its closing. She appears as a television personality on the Food Network shows Chopped, Iron Chef America, All Star Family Cook-off, and The Best Thing I Ever Ate. She hosts Alex's Day Off and The Cooking Loft on Food Network and Cooking Channel. In 2012, she was crowned America's Next Iron Chef on...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChef
CountryUnited States of America
It's amazing the relationships you forge in a kitchen. When you cooperate in an environment that's hot. Where there's a lot of knives. You're trusting your well-being with someone you've never before met or known.
Food is so heavily connected to memory.
If you want to have a relationship, at some point you have to let yourself get caught. That's what I did. I got caught.
The better the ingredients, the more farmers I can buy from, the closer I feel to the food I want to make that represents what I care about as a chef.
The best way to learn to cook is to do some serious eating.
My reasons for becoming a chef are somewhat of a cliche. I always loved to eat but it was watching my parents cook that really served as the impetus for my career choice.
The hardest thing for me is restraint.
The hardest thing about being a full time chef is leaving my work behind when I go home at night. I'll toss and turn about a menu item or forget to order produce and wake up at 4 A.M. in a cold sweat over some artichokes.
Food is ever-changing and ever moving forward and getting more and more complex.
For me no good food is illuminated without acidity.
If I want my daughter to try something, I eat it in front of her repeatedly without forcing the issue and, with some trial and error, the world is our oyster!
I bent my head over a stove in my early 20s and picked it up in my 30s.
I don't show just anyone how to crust a sea bass. That's sacred information.
I used to sleep with the phone right by my pillow but I'm getting better. Now it sits on the table a few feet away.