Edward Lee – The Marco Polo of American Cuisine

You have to really focus on the ingredients. So you can take a chicken sandwich and use crappy mayonnaise, and you know white bread from the store and put them and is just going to be a bad sandwich and that’s fine. But it is not going to taste great. And then you can take that same chicken sandwich with the exact same thing right mayonnaise, but you can make your own mayonnaise or you can buy a high quality mayonnaise. Instead of using like iceberg lettuce you can use some kind of arugula or  watercress. And then you can bake your own bread or you can buy an artisanal bread. To me that's the most important thing you can do, just to look at every component of that sandwich and see how each of those components you can do a better version of it, or find a better quality version of it. That right there will make the sandwich ten a thousand times better. I think all too often we just kind of settle because it's convenient or this is what's available online. And so obviously down to the chicken, you can really good quality organic chicken versus just something that you find at the supermarket so that right there is I think the most important, and is the easiest thing you can do. You don't have to change a recipe. Just find better quality and if you do that you'll see how much better the chicken sandwich is and this really will give you an appreciation of why chefs do what they do. We obsess about finding the best chicken, the best white asparagus, the best bread because it does make a different especially when you put all that stuff together. So to me that that is the most important thing you know. And after that do some pickles, put some put some spice into it.Everyone has a different flavor profile that they want. You want to make it Indian you can add some curry to the meal. Those things are fun to do. But before you even get there you have to work on the quality.