Serious Eats
'Men's Vogue' Asks Jacques Pepin the Tough Question: Big Mac or Whopper
In the latest installment of its Visionaries series, Men's Vogue talks to Jacques Pepin. There's a short profile that contextualizes Pepin's influence on American cooking and cements his importance in the food world, but it's the Q&A portion of the feature where things really get interesting.
What's the worst idea you ever had? I've had a few bad ideas! Now I can formulate an idea and salivate in my head and visualize the recipe before I do it. The hammer doesn't always hit on the head, but I get closer and closer as I get older. But the art of cooking is really the art of adjusting, or recovery — that's what you see a real professional do. If you leave a chocolate roulade too long in the oven, you don't fight with it, you turn it into something else.
As for Big Mac vs. Whopper, it looks like Pepin is a McD's man—and that he has a healthy attitude about eating what many folks would call a guilty pleasure.