Daniel Boulud — French Chef born on March 25, 1955,

Daniel Boulud is a French chef and restaurateur with restaurants in New York City, Las Vegas, Palm Beach, Miami, Montreal, Toronto, London, Singapore, and Boston. He is best known for Daniel, his eponymous, Michelin 2-star restaurant in New York City... (wikipedia)

I love to create, and to me, the ultimate freedom of expression is a blank canvas or a block of clay to capture whatever emotions your imagination gives it.
The hardest thing for a chef is to become comfortable with what you do. Not to be too neurotic and worried with what you are doing and how wrong or right you are.
In the springtime, we have softshell crab from Maryland, which I'd never had until I came to America. In the summer and early fall, we have striped bass, 'stripeys,' which come all the way up the Hudson River but mostly gather in the sound at the tip of Long Island, off Montauk.
Something I learned when I was very young: with cooking, it doesn't matter where you are; you can always cook. You can end up in small village in Peru where somebody's cooking, take a spoon and taste it, and you might not be too sure what you're eating, but you can taste the soul in the food. That's what is beautiful with food.
Every time - well, not every time, but in celebration of a great review or a great accolade, I take the team of Daniel to Katz's Deli for lunch. We take the trip on the subway, we were like 40 or 50 people, and we go in the back room and have a pastrami sandwich.