(if I was a famous, awesome, cool, world-renowned, spectacular, lauded chef and could articulate my philosophy around food)

Taste is a subjective experience. What you believe is the best food may another man’s worst food. We must not forget that. When creating the best dish, I want to make it attractive and appealing. And yet, how can I scold the customer who tastes my dessert and find it too sweet? How can I turn away the woman who has a peanut allergy? What I do know about taste is that it comes from purity. Let people taste the real food, because there’s little argument with that. Mint tastes like mint. Beets like beets. Chocolate like chocolate. Oranges like oranges.

Supposedly Julia Child said to Alice Waters of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse, “That’s not good cooking. It’s good shopping.”

I believe in sustainable practices. I believe in locally grown food.  I believe in quality produce. If I could, I would just eat fruits all day, because they represent the true result of farming. One peach originates not just from the pollination of a flower, but its plant filled with leaves soaking sun and the roots pulling in water. Then it takes months to grow into what is a crisp sweet crunch of stone fruit. The peach is a culmination of what I may even call art. I mean, it captures the differing shades of the sun into a single spherical object.

A chef’s job is to play with these flavors and present them to food lover. It’s to remind them of memories—of the past in childhood, of the present moment, of the future hope. I want to change minds to experience what they never had previously, but also reflect what they have always had. That is my goal in creation.