The thing about all my food is that everything is a remembered flavor. Maybe it’s something I had as a child or maybe it’s something I had in Milan, but I want it to taste better than you ever thought.

Ina Garten frames her cooking as an act of memory and aspiration: dishes begin with a vivid sensory recollection—childhood comfort foods or meals encountered while traveling—and are then refined until they surpass the original impression. The quote highlights how taste is tied to personal history, and how a cook can translate nostalgia into craft rather than mere replication. It also captures Garten’s signature ethos of accessible elegance: familiar flavors, made with enough care and quality that they feel revelatory. In this view, “better than you ever thought” is less about novelty than about intensifying what people already love.