Quotes from Tom Douglas

When I wrote my cookbook, 'I Love Crab Cakes,' I asked some of my best chef buddies to contribute recipes.

If you want something beautiful to put on the dinner table, pick up a sockeye, the salmon species with the most vivid red flesh.

After being cooked, ling cod tends to bleed out some moisture, so, before serving, let it rest a few moments on a plate. Once the moisture has been released, you can carefully pick up the fillet with a slotted spatula and transfer it to another plate for saucing. This way, you won't sog out your beautiful sauce.

Cooks are an undervalued, awesome profession.

I would love to see McDonald's pay more money.

Sustainability includes how you run your business, and my bottom line includes how you treat your people. Sustainability starts with your staff.

There's a restaurant in Manhattan called Balthazar, and next to it is Balthazar Bakery. It's tiny, and it's very charming to have that little retail outlet to sell the house desserts and breads.

I think that people need to stand up with their backbone and not go to places where they feel like the workers aren't taken care of.

Every chef has his treats. By that, I mean bits and pieces from things you're working on - crusty little cake trimmings, ends from a brisket, collars from a salmon, scraps. But they're snacks to me, and I eat them right off the cutting board - maybe too much.

Often we eat squid fried, so it's fun to grill it for a change. To grill squid, slice the cleaned bodies open into two flat pieces and thread them, along with the tentacles, onto skewers, then grill quickly over a direct fire with the coals as close as possible to the grate, turning the squid several times.

It's important that your shucked oyster is clean and pristine.

Money is like manure: if you don't spread it around, nothing grows.