With The Fire On High Quotes
"You can’t make too much space for a father like mine in your life. Because he’ll elbow his way in and stretch the corners wide, and when he leaves all you have is the oversized empty—the gap in your heart where a parent should be."
"Cooking is about respect. Respect for the food, respect for your space, respect for your colleagues, and respect for your diners. The chef who ignores one of those is not a chef at all."
"I’ve made up a story about who my mother was, and I miss that person whether it’s how my actual mom would have been or not."
"Most of us in the room have probably been cooking and using knives our whole lives—not to mention we’ve seen them used on each other."
"I’ve learned to trust pretty words even less than a pretty face."
"It’s the one place I let go and only need to focus on the basics: taste, smell, texture, fusion, beauty."
"You can’t always get what you want, but sometimes focusing on what you can control is the only way to lessen the pang in your chest when you think about the things you can’t."
"I know how to run a kitchen. Before this is a school classroom it’s a kitchen, and you all will respect it as such."
"This part of North Philly has one of the highest crime rates in the city, or at least that’s what the newspaper reports. They call us part of the Badlands, but when you stay here, you know there’s a lot more goodness than is reported in the news."
"We dream of owning mansions and leaving the hood; where we couldn’t imagine having been raised anywhere else."
"What would I do without ’Buela? She’s the starch in my spine, the only hand here to unfurl the wrinkles from my brows, the arms that hold me when I feel like I’m collapsing."
"Sometimes following directions isn’t about stifling your creativity, it’s about showing respect."
"I think there are lots of ways to ‘make something’ of yourself and still support your family. College isn’t the only way."
"The fear you have for someone else’s life always eclipses the fear you have for your own."
"I love my father, but I also might be allergic to him."
"Don’t start with that tone, Emoni. He calls me because he’s my child. And he asked for you to call him. Now you call him because you’re his child."
"That wasn’t the point of today’s evaluation. So I won’t say it again: trash it."
"I’m not a quitter. I didn’t understand why you were asking me to throw away food or follow the recipe exactly even though my instincts told me it would taste better differently. I didn’t get it. But I think I do now."
"I think about creating food all the time and even though I know a lot... I can learn more."
"I’ve seen chefs on TV time and time again say they had to pay their dues. And I never knew exactly what that meant but now I think I get it."
"We’ll figure it out, right? And if one of us needs something different, we’ll say that. Right?"
"I get caught on my phone in between classes."
"You’ll need a signed release form from your parent or guardian."
"Growing up, she was allowed to drink from the time she was fourteen."
"I know she’ll raise an eyebrow when she sees I had some, but she won’t reprimand me."
"I’ve never been away from home this long. It all looks so different than Philly."
"I want to leave a skyscraper-sized mark on the world."
"Your food had the most amazing quality to it."
"I want to stay in Philly and work in Philly and learn from a restaurant in Philly."