Restaurant Quotes & Sayings

Once I was in a restaurant and I dropped my fork on the floor, and they gave me a new fork. So I pushed my girlfriend out of her chair. — Emo Philips

At thirteen, when I arrived in Hong Kong after leaving China, I made a living by working in a restaurant. — Martin Yan

When I set up my first restaurant, I was so inspired by Wolfgang Puck, who is also based in L.A. and is now a good friend of mine, and the way he would engage with his customers and greet them personally. — Nobu Matsuhisa

Starla, when you work in a restaurant, it's not called 'pie with ice cream on top.' It's called pie a la mode. Try saying it one time."
"A-la-mo," she pronounced.
"There's a good girl," Darius said, grinning. "The next time you ask a customer if he wants some dessert, you ask him if he wants pie Alamo. — Erin O'Riordan

Here she is, Tru who wants to pick a fight with Jake. I was wondering when she'd show up. Apparently, at 6 a.m. in a hotel restaurant. — Samantha Towle

If I go into a restaurant and the food sucks I feel so depressed I just want to carve it in my wrist with the butter knife. — Robert Sietsema

Super polished signage is not always a good sign. I'm always looking for places that you have to know about to find. Also, just food-wise, if I'm eating ethnic cuisine - I hate that phrase, but still - If I'm eating Mexican food, I'm looking to see that there are Mexicans in the restaurant. They know if the food is being made right. — Adam Richman

Fame is not the worst thing. I went to dinner the other night, and the girls in the restaurant ignored me. It was so annoying. — Leonardo DiCaprio

Claiming "the budget can't allow it" reminds me of when you walk into a restaurant at a civilized hour like ten o'clock and they say "the kitchen is closed." For years I would hear this, and think, "damn, just a little too late, oh well, thank you, I guess it's Denny's again."
And then one day it hit me: kitchens don't close. Just as at home, at a certain point in the night, I stop using the kitchen
but at three in the morning, if I want to, I still have the ability to go downstairs and "re-open" the kitchen by turning on the stove and opening the refrigerator! Restaurants are not banks; at the stroke of ten an enormous airlock doesn't seal off the kitchen and render the preparation of food an utter impossibility./ No, kitchens can open and budgets are what certain people say they are. — Bill Maher

It is the Bohemian fad to expatriate himself, to seek strange and bizarre environments. As soon as a place begins to attract civilization he flees it for some new hiding place. When he chooses a Chinese dinner he must have a restaurant where no white man has ever before trod, if he can find one. . . . As soon as others begin to frequent it also, again he flies.27 — Andrew Coe

Traditional British desserts with lots of custard are my biggest weakness - I particularly love the puds at St. John restaurant in East London. — Eva Green

I don't like it when I go to a restaurant and I'm lectured from the menu. — Eric Ripert

So he is putting down junk and coming on with tea. I take three drags, Jane looked at him and her flesh crystallized. I leaped up screaming "I got the fear!" and ran out of the house. Drank a beer in a little restaurant - mosaic bar and soccer scores and bullfight posters - and waited for the bus to town.

A year later in Tangier I heard she was dead. — William S. Burroughs

At present I do not feel that I have seen more than the fringe of poverty. Still, I can point to one or two things I have definitely learned by being hard up. I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning. — George Orwell

I had a job at this French restaurant, and I hated it. I don't like serving; I don't like getting people ketchup. — Chris Pine

When I was a kid, I have two dreams. I want to be a baseball player. Hometown, Hiroshima, has a Japanese baseball franchise team called Hiroshima Carps. You know, and then I want to be a sushi chef. I want to make own restaurant - sushi restaurant. — Masaharu Morimoto

My daughter was asked by a little old lady in a London hotel restaurant what her daddy did. She answered, "He's a pirate" - I was very proud of that answer. — Johnny Depp

I'm going to get something from the salad bar. Do you want a Frosty from Wendy's, Alex? — Bryan Norford

As long as you give my friend Jonah Lehrer a free pizza, I'll write a song about your restaurant. — Bob Dylan

It all comes back to the basics. Serve customers the best-tasting food at a good value in a clean, comfortable restaurant, and they'll keep coming back. — Dave Thomas

I was born and raised during Depression Years when we were on County relief and we all went out and we hustled. we worked. I worked in a restaurant, I washed dishes. — Liberace

McDonald's, meanwhile, continues busily to harass small shopkeepers and restaurateurs of Scottish descent for that nationality's uncompetitive predisposition toward the Mc prefix on its surnames. The company sued the McAl an's sausage stand in Denmark; the Scottish-themed sandwich shop McMunchies in Buckinghamshire; went after Elizabeth McCaughey's McCoffee shop in the San Francisco Bay Area; and waged a twenty-six-year battle against a man named Ronald McDonald whose McDonald's Family Restaurant in a tiny town in Il inois had been around since 1956. — Naomi Klein

JACKSON'S DARK BROWN HAIR curled up on his shirt collar. Black lashes and heavy brows framed his blue eyes. A few crow's-feet around his eyes were the only sign that he'd just passed his fortieth birthday and they were minimized in the dim restaurant lights. His jeans were creased and stacked up over his highly polished black boots just the right way. Waitresses stopped what they were doing and gazed at him over their shoulders as he passed. Their — Carolyn Brown

If you have sense enough to realize why flies gather around a restaurant, you should be able to appreciate why men run for office. — E.W. Howe

Three months later - a Jewish girl having in the meantime explained the fundamentals of kosher dining - he returned to the B & H Dairy Bar, and when, finally, the old man asked him if he'd ever been in a restaurant, Jeff answered, "I don't know - you ever worked in one?" After that he was a New Yorker. Cruising — Jay McInerney

Wait," I cleared my throat. "He eats the cows?"
"What else would he do with them?" Morgan put his empty brownie plate with the rest of the trash.
"I thought he had the cows because of his wife."
"He does."
"Then how can he eat them?"
"What do you think they were going to do with the first cow?"
"I don't know, I just thought, well ... I don't know what I thought, but it sure wasn't grinding them up and making burgers. That just seems wrong."
"Why?"
"They remind him of his wife."
"And she ran a restaurant. C'mon, Grant, this is real life, not a Hallmark movie. Man's gotta eat. — Adrienne Wilder

Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus. — Peter Ustinov

I've made money in real estate, hotel, and restaurant investments. — Hill Harper

Thank you for inviting me to your house, but I prefer to dine in the Greek restaurant at Wabash Avenue and 12th Street where I will be limited to finding dead flies in my soup. — Maxwell Bodenheim

I went into a restaurant one night and ordered lobster, and the waiter brought me one with a claw missing. I called him over and told him about it. He told me that in the back there's a tank they keep the lobsters in and while they're in there, they fight and sometimes one loses a claw. I told him 'then bring me a winner.' — Al McGuire

In Chicago [during the Great Depression], a crowd of some fifty hungry men fought over barrel of garbage set outside the back door of restaurant — William E. Leuchtenburg

Most restaurants fail. The sad ones are stillborn. The mad ones flourish within the bustle and excitement of fame, notoriety, the thrill of the new. But they rarely sustain the glow. They are balloons kept aloft by a restless crowd. Only the strange, the freaks of restaurant perfection, can sustain life beyond a few years. — Sam Sifton

I think people are naturally good, I see it every day. Look at this restaurant. No one's causing anybody any trouble in here. We're all sitting, respecting each other's space, we're keeping our voices down, we're saying "please" and "thank you" - those are acts of generosity that we commit on a second by second basis that we don't give ourselves enough credit for. There's a lot of kindness in this world, we're just such vain creatures; our vanity can be used against us so easily. We're like dogs, hairless dogs. — Torquil Campbell

They record thoughts and overheard conversations, as well as maps of their personal paths, phone numbers for hotels, restaurant recommendations, airline flight numbers. Eventually, — Danny Gregory

You knew you had become comfortable when you told him that you watched Jeopardy on the restaurant TV and that you rooted for the following, in this order: women of color, black men, and white women, before, finally, white men - which meant you never rooted for white men. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I find what I call the [bleep] side of the industry very difficult. You won't see me at other peoples' premiers. I mean, I go to my own premiers because I have to help my film, but I don't enjoy that whole side of it. I don't enjoy celebrityhood. I love getting a seat in a restaurant. I love it when people say hi when I don't know them. I mean, that's fine, but apart from that, I like the elements of celebrityhood which make living in the world like living in your own village. — Jeremy Irons

Some of the things I think I learned from that were very educational as far as just paying bills - the basics in dealing with a restaurant like that. It was just life - the education involved in running the organization, even on a small level. — Todd English

I don't want to do anything and everything. I want to be a brand that, every time I leverage my name, I want people to feel sure that it's going to be something good - so whether it be my movies, my perfume, my restaurant, my musical, it'll be good work, good food and good everything. — Shilpa Shetty

Duran Duran blared from the car stereo. The woman, two silver bracelets on the hand she dangled out the window, cast a glance in my direction. I could have been a Denny's restaurant sign or a traffic signal, it would have been no different. She was your regular sort of beautiful young woman, I guess. In a TV drama, she'd be the female lead's best friend, the face that appears once in a cafe scene to say, What's the matter? You haven't been yourself lately. — Haruki Murakami

The person I always enjoy having a meal with is Cilla Black. I might not see her for months, but then I'll pick her up at her flat, and we'll go to a restaurant, and it's like I've seen her that morning. — Paul O'Grady

I think a lot of people overlook the importance of the menu as a marketing tool and a way of communicating to the customer what the ambition of their restaurant is. Not only the typeface and the design, but what is it printed on? Is it cheap-looking? Is it the right kind of paper for that restaurant? — Joe Bastianich

I can't go to a restaurant and order food because I keep looking at the fonts on the menu. — Donald Knuth

Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government own his restaurant? — Rand Paul

I'm meticulous about tasting everything at the restaurant, so I taste all the preparations before lunch and dinner. That means tasting around 50 dishes twice. There are times when I think I can't taste another thing. — Rick Bayless

When you're a restaurant critic, you're not home at night, so breakfast became really important for us. — Ruth Reichl

Thank you," Simon said. "It's a joke, Isabelle. He's the Count. He likes counting. You know. 'What did the Count eat today, children? One chocolate chip cookie, two chocolate chip cookies, three chocolate chip cookies . . .'"

There was a rush of cold air as the door of the restaurant opened, letting in another customer. Isabelle shivered and reached for her black silk scarf. "It's not realistic."

"What would you prefer? 'What did the Count eat today, children? One helpless villager, two helpless villagers, three helpless villagers . . . — Cassandra Clare

I had a meal last night. I ordered everything in French, surprised everybody. It was a Chinese restaurant. I said to this Chinese waiter, 'Look, this chicken I got here is cold.' He said, 'It should be, it's been dead two weeks.' — Tommy Cooper

This Italian restaurant I'm at is authentic! When they seat you, they give you a mustache. — J. B. Smoove

Conformity has been a devastating thing. Its ill effects continue right to this day. Customers still look at the woman in the next chair and say, 'I'll have what she has.' That's all right for ordering at a restaurant - but not in a beauty parlor. — Virginia Graham

We've become such a restaurant society. — Tom Douglas

It's not always true that all the world's a stage. Sometimes it's a boxing ring. Right now I had a ringside seat at the Windjammer restaurant in Etonville, New Jersey. — Suzanne M. Trauth

I decided I was going to make up a novel, and that the novel was going to get me out of the restaurant. The novel was going to be my getaway car. — Ann Patchett

I make a really delicious eggplant and squash curry that's inspired by Vij of Vij's Restaurant, a great chef and restaurateur in Vancouver. I like to cook that dish because it's really simple, but the flavor is so pungent and intense that I feel like I'm a real chef whenever I create it. — Carmen Ejogo

I think you'll see if you look at 'Up', we've focused a lot on labor (and the forces trying to keep labor down) and have featured everything from Wal Mart workers, to on-the-ground organizers, to union presidents to restaurant workers sitting at the table sharing their experience and expertise. — Chris Hayes

As they left the restaurant and mounted the stairs he looped an arm around her shoulders and hugged her to him, willing her to love him as much as he loved her. Even a fraction of the amount would be enough. — Emily Arden

I'm not crazy about oysters and offal and brains and stuff like that. It's vegetables that I really like. I worked in the River Cafe restaurant when it first opened, and I used to eat the leftover vegetables on the plates. They were so delicious. — Anna Chancellor

A great restaurant is one that just makes you feel like you're not sure whether you went out or you came home and confuses you. If it can do both of those things at the same time, you're hooked. — Danny Meyer

Well, I look at it like this: When you go to a restaurant, the less you know about what happens in the kitchen, the more you enjoy your meal. If the soup tastes good, everything's cool, and you don't necessarily want to know what's in it. The same thing holds true with movies. — Jeffrey Wright

Right after I graduated high school, I joined a sushi restaurant to learn how to make Japanese food. And then spent seven years. Then that time - that's enough. Then sushi restaurant - butchering fish and they make your body smell like fishy. — Masaharu Morimoto

In Europe they look upon jazz as art. In America it's a diversion. Somebody opens a restaurant and installs another band off to the side. People don't listen. — Chet Baker

What I relish most is when a member of my staff, who has worked with passion and patience towards achieving their dream of owning a restaurant, walks up to me and says, 'Nobu! I have done it!' — Nobu Matsuhisa

I was always a person on my mother's hip in the kitchen. My mom really wanted her kids at her side as much as possible, and she worked in restaurants for over fifty years. And my grandfather had ten children, and he grew and prepared most of the food. My grandmother, on my mother's side, was the family seamstress and the baker. So my mom, the eldest child, was always in the kitchen with my grandpa and I was always in the production and restaurant kitchens and our own kitchen with my mom. And it's just something that has always spoken to me. — Rachael Ray

WHO'S GOT A TAMPON? I JUST GOT MY PERIOD, I will announce loudly to nobody in particular in a women's bathroom in a San Francisco restaurant, or to a co-ed dressing room of a music festival in Prague, or to the unsuspecting gatherers in a kitchen at a party in Sydney, Munich, or Cincinnati. Invariably, across the world, I have seen and heard the rustling of female hands through backpacks and purses, until the triumphant moment when a stranger fishes one out with a kind smile. No money is ever exchanged. The unspoken universal understanding is: Today, it is my turn to take the tampon. Tomorrow, it shall be yours. There is a constant, karmic tampon circle. It also exists, I've found, with Kleenex, cigarettes, and ballpoint pens. — Amanda Palmer

If memory serves me correctly, and it doesn't always, Kate [DiCamillo] and I met in the fall of 2001 at the former Figlio's restaurant in Minneapolis. We were laughing within a minute of meeting - always a good sign. — Kate DiCamillo

I've never been a fan of personality-conflict burgers and identity-crisis omelets with patchouli oil. I function very well on a diet that consists of Chicken Catastrophe and Eggs Overwhelming and a tall, cool Janitor-in-a-Drum. I like to walk out of a restaurant with enough gas to open a Mobil station. — Tom Waits

I love people and want to be good to people. If I'm in restaurant and somebody doesn't treat a waitress right, I literally will leave. I will unfriend you. You are not my friend anymore. — Kristen Stewart

I don't think we should really be judging on Chris Brown like that until we know what Rihanna did. We all got reasons for what we do. Look at me. I'm one of the top 10 performers of all-time. I had to beat this one mermaid ass in a seafood restaurant over some shrimps. No lie. You just never know. — Coolio

And an unstable childhood makes you appreciate calmness and not crave excitement. To spend a Saturday afternoon mopping your kitchen floor while listening to opera on the radio, and to go that night to an Indian restaurant with a friend and be home by nine o'clock - these are enough. They are gifts. — Curtis Sittenfeld

We talked. We talked, and we laughed, and we had an amazing time. Conversation flowed like a beautiful waterfall, and my senses were saturated. Food came and went. Wine was poured and appeared out of nowhere. Time passed and I had no recollection or consciousness of anyone but Quinn being in that restaurant. — Penny Reid

Whether you were talking about Pillsbury, Burger King, Godfather's, the National Restaurant Association, in each one of those situations, I had a daunting problem that I had to solve. And I used the same business principles to approach the problem and, more importantly, solve the problem in every one of the situations. — Herman Cain

Le Tub is a Miami oceanside restaurant that uses old bath tubs and toilets as decoration. If you're really lucky, you get a table by the water where you can see the manatees as they swim by. Someone once told me that it was one of Oprah's favorite restaurants, but seriously, Oprah has a lot of favorite things--it all sounds like lies at this point. — Tarryn Fisher

It's a funny thing. I'll be in my home town of Columbus at a restaurant or something, and the waiter maybe asks, 'What do you do?' and I say, 'Oh, I'm in a band ... Twenty One Pilots,' and he'll say, 'Cool, I'll check it out. I never heard of them.' And then I say, 'In September we're playing the Schottenstein Center,' and it's like, 'What?!' — Tyler Joseph

I turned, gaze sweeping the restaurant until I'd zeroed in on my sweet yellow Lab all crouched under a table, chewing on a shiny gold stiletto a diner had slipped off her foot. — Alyson Noel

I'm kind of fascinated by Paula Deen. I've been to her restaurant, The Lady and Sons, in Savannah. My friend was studying in the area, and we ate at her restaurant, and it was right at the cusp where Paula Deen became Paula Deen. — Parvesh Cheena

The disparity between a restaurant's price and food quality rises in direct proportion to the size of the pepper mill. — Bryan Q. Miller

And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard's kitchen mat ... I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn't want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state. — Sylvia Plath

We wear our lives
Like costumes
Use bills and coins like props
In an over budget production
That we cannot seem to stop
So it just goes on like this
As if we accept this
As if we've all become
Buddhas of mass production
Our brains rotting
Like teeth
Under the sweet
Unending bliss of false enlightenment. — Shane Koyczan

I'm in the process of brainstorming with my marketing team and all that stuff, trying to come up with a concept for a late-night restaurant for people in Birmingham. — Ruben Studdard

Even if you don't eat at a fast food restaurant, you're now eating food that's produced by this system. — Joel Salatin

I don't know when pepper mills in a restaurant got to be right behind frankincense and myrrh in prominence. It used to be in a little jar that sat next to the salt on the table and everyone passed it around, sneezed, and it was no big deal. — Erma Bombeck

Every time I see this one particular movie star on a magazine, I can't help but feel terribly sorry for her because nobody respects her at all, and yet they keep interviewing her. And the interviews are all the same thing.
They start with what food they are eating in some restaurant. "As _ gingerly munched her Chinese Chicken Salad, she spoke of love." And all the covers say the same thing: "_ gets to the bottom of stardom, love, and his/her hit new movie/television show/album."
I think it's nice for stars to do interviews to make us think they are just like us, but to tell you the truth, I get the feeling that it's all a big lie. The problem is I don't know who's lying. — Stephen Chbosky

The toughest decision is always whether to open a restaurant. Two or three bad months, and you could be out of business. — Jean-Georges Vongerichten

I like to be unhinged; I like to be unpredictable. I like to make people worry that worse things can happen whenever I go out to a restaurant or act in a movie. — Marilyn Manson

Yeah, but Dean and I were both hungry again by the time the restaurant closed. Don't you have guy friends? You should know that we require constant feeding. — R.S. Grey

I try to eat in one of my restaurants every day, and I eat out in another restaurant every day. It's what I do. — Tom Douglas

If I ever own a restaurant, I will never allow the waiters to ask if the diners like their dishes. Particularly when they're talking. — Orson Welles

It's 11 am and I'm sitting in a restaurant
3 beers in. Believe me, even I'm surprised
I'm still alive sometimes.
I have been drinking about you for 2 days.
Lately you remind me of a wild thing
chewing through its foot. But you
are already free and I don't know what to do
except trace the rough line of your jaw
and try not to place blame.
Here is the truth: It is hard to be in love
with someone who is in love someone else.
I don't know how to turn that into poetry. — Clementine Von Radics

There's this fancy restaurant nearby with a nice view of the water. The Alchemist and Barrister, they call it. I've always thought the place looked nice. Since I don't eat regular food or go on dates, I'v never been there. I'd like to make an exception and take you there on Saturday night. That is, if you'd like. — Christopher Rankin

A restaurant with candles and flowers evokes more reveries than the Isle of Bali does. — Mason Cooley

I'm plagued with indecision in my life. I can't figure out what to order in a restaurant. — Chuck Close

Duck-bill, n. Your account at your restaurant during the canvas-back season. — Ambrose Bierce

Le Cirque at first was one of those general French restaurants in town, which were cooking more or less the same food. At Le Cirque, I wanted to do something different while respecting the foundation of the restaurant. I did that through the menu. — Daniel Boulud

The fact that nobody played tennis in my family and you'd say by chance they make three tennis courts in front of the restaurant that my family owned when I was 4, I think that's a destiny. That's kind of life circumstances that kind of come together for you to become who you want to become. — Novak Djokovic

First time since I come to Am'rica, I not with husband or Rekha or in restaurant or store or car or apartment. I's all alone and I loves it. First time I feel everything not borrow. What I mean by that? When I with the husband, I seeing everything through his eyes - moon, sun, sky, tree, parking lot, store, everything. If he feeling sun too hot, I feeling upset. If he cursing the cold, I angry with snow. My brains not thinking my own thoughts. — Thrity Umrigar

You know, my brother won't walk out of a restaurant with me anymore because he doesn't want to be linked to me as my new 'mystery man.' Same with my close guy friends. — Ashley Greene

I make shoes for white suburban kids, not the poor black kids. That would be like opening a restaurant for people without stomachs. — Michael Jordan

Everything I do, I go to black people. If I have a problem at the airport, I'll go to the black ticket agent. I hope they notice me because I'll get better service. If I'm at a restaurant, I look for the black waiter. Rent-a-Car, give you the upgrade. — Gary Owen

I love if someone invites me to a restaurant, so I don't know if that's a feminist. — Carine Roitfeld

The only good thing about fame that I've gotten is I've gotten out of a couple of speeding tickets. I've gotten into a restaurant when I didn't have a suit and tie on. That's really about it. — Bill Murray

And you punched him in the restaurant?" I grinned. "No, I punched him when he told me my only purpose was to bear his children and then stuck a hand up my shirt." Patrick grinned. "You land the punch?" "Broke his nose." "Good — Chloe Neill