Restaurants Food Quotes & Sayings

I am very honored for all the distinctions and accolades, but what I am most sensitive to is my clientele and the fact they are pleased with my food and my restaurants. — Joel Robuchon

As for restaurants, one of our favorites is the Silk Road next door to the Tibetan Choijin Lama Museum. It's a very exotic setting. The western food there is pretty good. We also liked the Hazara Restaurant for its Indian food, and the Mongolian Barbecue restaurant. All are downtown. — Ruth Lor Malloy

When I can afford it, I'm very into organic food and I love going to restaurants that use organic produce and such. I think that it's a shame for everyone that, unfortunately, organic can be pretty expensive, so you just do what you can. — Sprague Grayden

You look around New York, and we are surrounded by restaurants and food trucks, and we celebrate food in this city like no tomorrow. — Chris Noth

When he was in a bad mood, The Writer went to the park. The only place he considered friendly. Not the bookshops crammed with titles, with those harsh lights and those piles of books that seemed like barricades, not the street with its narrow, dirty pavements overhanging the traffic, not the noisy restaurants stinking of fried food, not the sweltering buses, not the deserted shops with their assistants waiting for customers like hungry cannibals, not the cinemas with numbered seats in which it only took one transgressor to screw up the whole auditorium, but the park. — Filippo Bologna

It is difficult to get organic food at most restaurants, so when possible, eat at home. When not, do your best. — Suzanne Somers

I definitely try to eat a healthy diet, but I am the first person to say I love unhealthy food. I would never tell you I don't. I love fried chicken or mac and cheese. Do I order them all the time when I'm out at restaurants? No, though I do have one splurge meal a week. — Rachel Nichols

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

Eric Schlosser's book on the economy and strategies of the fast-food business should be read by anyone who likes to take their children to fast-food restaurants. I shall certainly never do that again. He employs a long, cold burn, a quiet and impassioned accumulation of detail, with calm, wit and clarity. ( ... ) Fast Food Nation is witness to the rigour and seriousness of the best American journalism, readable, reliable and extremely carefully done. — Adam Nicolson

The minimum wage isn't earned only by people working at fast food restaurants and in service industry work - the average income for positions like nursing assistants, preschool teachers and paramedics are all under $15. — David Rolf

There are certain restaurants where you should photograph the food rather than eat it. These are great places to bring a narcissistic boyfriend before you break up. — Perry Brass

I could smell the food fill up my hunger before the order was even
placed. — Phindiwe Nkosi

How many would protest if restaurants began serving puppy and kitten flesh instead of calves? Robins instead of hens? Squirrels instead of pigs? — Mango Wodzak

Because a superior fried-chicken restaurant is often the institutional extension of a single chicken-obsessed woman, I realize that, like a good secondhand bookstore or a bad South American dictatorship, it is not easily passed down intact. — Calvin Trillin

When I'm home, I spend Sunday with my husband. If we're not cooking, we travel around in our camper, stop at fast-food restaurants, and picnic. We love that stuff that will harden your arteries in a hurry. — Dolly Parton

Myself, Eric Wareheim, and Jason Woliner decided to start a Food Club where the three of us go to restaurants with a couple of other people. The three of us are the captains of the Food Club, so we have to wear the captains' hats. — Aziz Ansari

There is a lot of food culture that goes on in the home and in the community in non-traditional ways. Food is a lot more than restaurants. — Eddie Huang

10. Calories count in New York City. The Big Apple recently adopted a law that requires fast-food restaurants with at least fifteen outlets in the city to post, in prominent places, the calories of each of their food items so that customers can make informed choices. — Richard H. Thaler

Think of how many fast food chains exist in the United States alone. Each one of those restaurants needs a large supply of beef, chicken, pork, corn, potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, milk, and other food products. To keep up with the demand, they need large corporations to supply them with enough food. When producers focus on benefiting business and industry, they lose their focus on benefiting our health. — Joseph P. Kauffman

She wondered how people would remember her. She had not made enough to spread her wealth around like Carnegie, to erase any sins that had attached to her name, she had failed, she had not reached the golden bough. The liberals would cheer her death. They would light marijuana cigarettes and drive to their sushi restaurants and eat fresh food that had traveled eight thousand miles. They would spend all of supper complaining about people like her, and when they got home their houses would be cold and they'd press a button on a wall to get warm. The whole time complaining about big oil. — Philipp Meyer

A man who goes into a restaurant and blatantly disrespects the servers shows a strong discontent with his own being. Deep down he knows that restaurant service is the closest thing he will ever experience to being served like a king. — Criss Jami

The murals in restaurants are on par with the food in museums. — Peter De Vries

What most people don't know is that many fast food restaurants actually spray their salads with a substance made of propylene glycol to make their lettuce and other vegetables appear fresh, when they could actually be up to 3 days old! — Arnel Ricafranca

During the worst stages of my eating disorder, I was all-or-none with food - either bingeing or not eating. Much of my experience was, in fact, that if I ate anything, I would eat everything. I began to understand that this happened because I was starving myself. In starvation mode, my body literally thought I was facing a famine. It didn't know that I was living near a grocery store and several fast-food restaurants. Thinking I was facing a real food shortage, its primal instinct was to binge on large amounts of food, conserving fat in preparation for the hard times ahead. — Jenni Schaefer

Old lady, if I die I'd like you to do one small thing for me. I want you to build a one-hundred-acre museum dedicated to my memory. Bronze my clothing and possessions. Have at least three hundred marble statues erected of me in my most dashing poses. One of these statues should stand one hundred feet tall and greet ships as they float down the Hudson River. One of the fourteen wings of the museum should have an amusement park with the world's fastest roller coaster inside. None of these rides should be equipped with safety devices. You can license some of the space to fast-food restaurants and ice-cream parlors but nothing should be healthy or nutritious. The gift shop should sell stuffed Puck dolls packed with broken glass and asbestos. There's a more detailed list in my room. Puck saidduble — Michael Buckley

Libraries are the ultimate restaurants for brain food. I sleep better knowing there are libraries. I would take a bullet for a librarian. — Simon Van Booy

I'd rather have Daniel Boulud have 20 restaurants than some restauranteur. It's going to make the food in our country better. — Michael Mina

I'm Japanese, but restaurants in my hometown served the most sanitized versions of California rolls. I grew up eating a lot of Japanese food at home that my parents or grandparents made. — Adrian Tomine

First and foremost I am a chef, whether behind the stove at one of my Northern California restaurants or for the past 15 years in front of the camera on my Food Network cooking shows. Creating new dishes and flavor combinations that bring cooks and our restaurant guests pleasure is my job and I love it. — Tyler Florence

There's so many vegetarian foods now that are available at the market . The same with drive-throughs. Now, a lot of them serve veggie burgers just like the restaurants are doing. So, it's really very easy. — Kevin Nealon

Historically in restaurants, the service staff is awarded significantly higher wages than cooks and other staff who prepare the food on which a restaurant's reputation is based. The gap in pay is so great that it is becoming increasingly difficult for young cooks to pursue their passion at the rate of pay restaurants are able to afford. — Thomas Keller

'The Food Network' was just starting in New York, and I was getting lots of attention from Mesa Grill. They had no money, so if you couldn't get there by subway, you couldn't be on. It wasn't like TV was something I really wanted to do - but I knew it would be great publicity for my restaurants. — Bobby Flay

We passed gas stations and chain food restaurants, with their billboards advertising happiness. I know the images in magazines and on TV aren't true representations of the world; I mean, that's obvious. But I still get this sinking feeling of disappointment, as if it is the world I should see. — Ethan Hawke

Restaurants get you in with food to sell you liquor; religions get you in with belief to sell you rules. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

American restaurants throw away an estimated six thousand tons of food every day. All that food rotting in landfills contributes to global warming - see, when it decomposes, it releases methane, a greenhouse gas twenty-one times more damaging than carbon dioxide. So no matter what you're eating or where you're eating it, be conscious about how hungry you really are. — Sara Gilbert

Murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums. — Peter De Vries

It was gross enough for fast food restaurants to ban, but apparently our government wants so-called pink slime to be a staple in your kids' lunches. — Jane Velez-Mitchell

I'm on the mirror diet. You eat all your food in front of a mirror in the nude. It works pretty good, though some of the fancier restaurants don't go for it. — Roseanne Barr

Like every other tiny-ass town in the South, there were plenty of crappy Mexican restaurants to choose from. Not fancy Mexican like I eat in L.A. When I eat Mexican food in L.A., it's like a kale salad with pepitas and soy beef tacos with fresh pico de gallo. In NC, it's a five-dollar plate of cheese enchiladas with refried beans and a bowl of melted white cheese dip. Essentially you just walk in and ask for a plate of brown with a little iceberg lettuce, and it's fucking delish. — Mamrie Hart

Then he explains Chinese food in Manhattan to me: 'See the way it works is, there's one central location out on Long Island where all this stuff is made. Then it's piped into the city through a series of underground pipes that run parallel to the train and subway tracks. The restaurants then just pull a lever. One lever for General Tso's chicken, another for beef with broccoli sauce. It's like beer; it's on tap.' It's amazing how convincing he is when he says this. There's no pause in his description, nowhere for him to stop and think, to make this up as he goes along. It's as though he's simply repeating something he read in the Times yesterday. This makes me love him more than I did just five minutes ago. — Augusten Burroughs

Let's get one thing straight: Mexican food takes a certain amount of time to cook. If you don't have the time, don't cook it. You can rush a Mexican meal, but you will pay in some way. You can buy so-called Mexican food at too many restaurants that say they cook Mexican food. But the real food, the most savory food, is prepared with time and love and at home. So, give up the illusion that you can throw Mexican food together. Just understand that you are going to have to make and take the time. — Denise Chavez

Indians abroad tend to stick together. They join Indian clubs, regularly visit mosques, temples and gurdwaras and eat Indian food at home or in Indian restaurants. Very rarely do they mix with the English on the same terms as they do with their own countrymen. This kind of island-ghetto existence feeds on stereotypes - the English are very reserved; they do not invite outsiders to their homes because they regard their homes as their castles; English women are frigid, etc. I discovered that none of this was true. In the years that followed, I made closer friends with English men and women than I did with Indians. I lived in dozens of English homes and shared their family problems. And I discovered to my delight that nothing was further from the truth that the canard that English women are frigid. — Khushwant Singh

A country like America has twice as much food on its shop shelves and in its restaurants than is actually required to feed the American people. — Tristram Stuart

Each year-in the fields, commercial kitchens, markets, stores, and restaurants-millions of pounds of food go to waste ... We need to find ways to get this food into the mouths of the hungry and not into the mouth of the dumpster. — Dan Glickman

I love food and I love everything involved with food. I love the fun of it. I love restaurants. I love cooking, although I don't cook very much. I love kitchens. — Alma Guillermoprieto

You just feel a little odd when you don't get your kind of food. Fortunately, there are Indian restaurants all over the world. — Virat Kohli

Our latest research shows that in every city across the United States in which we conducted surveys with restaurant workers, the restaurants that mistreated their workers were more likely to engage in unsafe food-handling practices that sicken customers. It made sense- if a restaurant was not a responsible employer, how could we expect that restaurant to be responsible with our health and safety? — Sarumathi Jayaraman

The management no longer depends upon the talents or skills of its workers---those things are built into the operating systems and machines. Jobs that have been "deskilled" can be filled cheaply. The need to retain any individual worker is greatly reduced by the ease with which he or she can be replaced. — Eric Schlosser

The one thing I always talk about in terms of restaurants is consistency. I think that's what we love about the vodka, is that it's consistent. It's consistent in its pureness and that's how I tie it to restaurants. When I think of a good restaurant, it's where the food has been consistent; there's always a consistency. — Robert De Niro

Dimly lit restaurants always make me think they're trying to hide the food. — Michael Kurland

The perfect weather that had allowed us to get the oats and corn in ahead of time probably also contributed to the dearth of migrating warblers. With no storms to force the birds down, they overflew this area on their northward journey. At least I hope that is the reason. I fear, though, that the cutting down of the tropical rain forests (the winter home for many warblers) to create ranches that will provide cheap beef for fast-food restaurants in the United States may also be partly responsible for the dearth. — David Kline

I had a lot of fun creating some restaurants with a casual note to it, such as DBGB, for example, where it was about bangers and beers, being a very casual brasserie with very affordable food but very interesting homemade program. — Daniel Boulud

The masses are brainwashed to the point that they believe if an American grocery store or restaurant offers a particular food, it must be good and safe. — Andreas Moritz

Bottled water is not better than tap water. As you can tell, I'm quite passionate about water being your beverage of choice. So let's not make it more complicated than we need to. Save your money and the environment. Even in fast-food restaurants I ask for a cup of tap water - they are happy enough to oblige. — Richard Besser

Mostly I enjoy the restaurants (my husband is a chef), though I wish we had a wider diversity of ethnic food. — Poppy Z. Brite

I understood the power of Heinz since I was a kid, and I started to work for my father selling food to restaurants. — Nelson Peltz

The best part was the food. There are some great Italian restaurants we go to whenever we are in Toronto, so the eating was a definite highlight. — Mary-Kate Olsen

Olympia was a town crawling with music. I was new to the whole punk scene. The culture shock continued; Olympia had bagels! We didn't have bagels in Arkansas. You could order vegetarian food all over town! It was so crazy to me - a place with so many vegetarians, the restaurants made special dishes for them? — Beth Ditto

I'm convinced that the main reason we've become so obsessed with restaurants is due to our basic need to get out of virtual space and into a real one. We're not going out to eat merely to share food; we're there to sit at the same table together, slow down, breathe the same air. — Ruth Reichl

Students can do experiments and investigate for themselves what's going on in restaurants, in our food system, and begin a process of learning. — Eric Schlosser

Aside from hospitality and delicious food, our [restaurateurs'] job is to entertain people. Restaurants should make people feel special, excited and fulfilled. — Joe Bastianich

I know for an absolute fact that if I ate a meal at one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants, I would be able to taste his anger. — John Cheese

When I was first approached for 'Pass the Plate,' I was thrilled because I love to cook. And I love to cook healthy. The reason I started cooking was because I would go to restaurants and have just amazing food but feel so heavy and gross. I would go home and try to cook the same thing, but a healthy version. — Brenda Song

I was vegetarian, trying to eat from fast-food restaurants without meat. I didn't know how to eat properly and I was starving. I was adrenalized to the eyeballs from performing. I was afraid that I was sick with AIDS. We were playing five shows a week. I even went through a period of abstinence where I didn't drink and stopped having sex. Which is crazy. Maybe I'm answering too many questions at once here, but this is where my mind was at the age of 25. — Michael Stipe

The consumer, that is to say, must be kept from discovering that, in the food industry - as in any other industry - the overriding concerns are not quality and health, but volume and price. For decades now the entire industrial food economy, from the large farms and feedlots to the chains of supermarkets and fast-food restaurants, has been obsessed with volume. It has relentlessly increased scale in order to increase volume in order (presumably) to reduce costs. But as scale increases, diversity declines; as diversity declines, so does health; as health declines, the dependence on drugs and chemicals necessarily increases. — Wendell Berry

In London there was no home cooking worthy of the name. When you were in funds you ate out. But only the people whose faces appeared in such publications as Town and Queen could afford to eat in restaurants serving food which would leave them looking and feeling better instead of worse. — Clive James

Maybe I wouldn't hit three fast food restaurants in a day, but I could hit one in a day. I try not to do that. — Jami Attenberg

You know, for 300 years it's been kind of the same. There are restaurants in New Orleans that the menu hasn't changed in 125 years, so how is one going to change or evolve the food? — Emeril Lagasse

A lot of restaurants serve good food, but they don't have very good service. — Wolfgang Puck

Every sixty seconds, thirty acres of rain forest are destroyed in order to raise beef for fast-food restaurants that sell it to people, giving them strokes and heart attacks, which raise medical costs and insurance rates, providing insurance companies with more money to invest in large corporations that branch out further into the Third World so they can destroy more rain forests. — George Carlin

He hates chain stores and fast-food restaurants, mass-produced items and fashionable clothes - any instance of something that is repeated across the world regardless of local context. These things deny the uniqueness of each moment and each person. They function as if we were all printed out of plastic like egg boxes, and they try to make us function the same way. They are the intrusion of perfection into our grubby, smelly, sweaty living place. — Nick Harkaway

As for restaurants and fast-food places who tip tons of oil down their drains, they are routinely encouraged to use fat traps, but enforcement is minimal. It costs money to cart away fat (although now that fat is being turned into energy, it can make money). — Rose George

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

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

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

The food being presented at the most expensive restaurants, by the most sophisticated chefs, was not always recognizable as food to the diner - it required a leap of faith, and I felt curious about that phenomenon. — Dana Goodyear

Jackie Chan is a very good comedy/martial arts star. He does one kind of martial arts that Jet Li doesn't know how to do and Jet Li does a martial art that Jackie Chan doesn't know how to do. You can both go to two Chinese restaurants, but both can have different kinds of food. — Jet Li

If someone said, 'You've got to eat your next two meals at American fast-food restaurants,' I would do one meal at Chipotle and one meal at Popeyes fried chicken. — Danny Meyer

In more day-to-day restaurants, things have undergone a seismic change towards informality and sharing, which has been years in the making. Nowadays, people don't want just one dish; they want to order lots of things and they want to do it in fun places, places that give them an experience. The experience that a restaurant needs to offer is no longer just based around the food. — Ferran Adria

[The 'corporate takeover of people's lives'] also accounts for a lot of homogenization of culture. There are fast food restaurants everywhere. Every place tastes the same. — Ani DiFranco

Respecting the dignity of a spectacular food means enjoying it at its best. Europeans celebrate the short season of abundant asparagus as a form of holiday. In the Netherlands the first cutting coincides with Father's Day, on which restaurants may feature all-asparagus menus and hand out neckties decorated with asparagus spears. — Barbara Kingsolver

I know the community mostly for its art and culture ... and of course its food, I eat at their restaurants." "They make you feel like taking off your shoes ... it feels like home. — Erykah Badu

My love for peanut butter is so deep that I can't look at a jar without devouring it! — Monica DiNatale

When eating out while on tour, a great place to get vegetarian food is Thai restaurants, as they have lots of options. I absolutely adore salad and vegetables - I will eat salad until it's coming out of my ears. Although I think it's great in any form, my particular favourite has to be beetroot salad. — Kate O'Mara

In the United States all business not transacted over the telephone is accomplished in conjunction with alcohol or food, often under conditions of advanced intoxication. This is a fact of the utmost importance for the visitor of limited funds ... for it means that the most expensive restaurants are, with rare exceptions, the worst. — John Kenneth Galbraith

McDonald's revolutionized fast food. They introduced a way to eat food without knives, forks or plates. Most fast foods can be eaten while steering the wheel of a car and the restaurants are usually drive through. — Eric Schlosser

Like most actors, I've always been grateful for Chinese restaurants; they were often the only places that stayed open late enough for performers to get hot food after the show. — Ginger Rogers

Whenever I'd go to restaurants, the main chef came out and was cooking for me, and he's asking me how the food is. I get, like, VIP service, so it's weird. — Inbee Park

I was afraid of Korean food when I moved to L.A., let alone sushi. I remember thinking either sink or swim. Living here in Studio City, Ventura Blvd. is the Mecca of sushi restaurants. What you thought was so exotic is just run of the mill. — Parvesh Cheena

[I hate] the ways that people want their special needs to be met, whether it's their food allergies or their special lotions or shoes. Or the ways that people want their neighborhoods and restaurants curated in a way that's really tailored to them. Growing up with someone who was living by these very strict, repressive rules for themselves - it made me very allergic to the idea of denial. — Carrie Brownstein

I look at each one of my restaurants, and I want my personality to come out. Some are serious, some are intense when it comes to food and wines, some are meat masters supreme. I enjoy all my guests. — Michael Mina

Cal: "I'm not presuming. I know exactly what you think about me. You think I'm an anal-retentive Armrest Nazi ... an arrogant Modelizer. You can't stand the way I talk, any of the subjects I choose to talk about, the imperious manner I order food in restaurants or tell cab drivers how much we owe them. You find my taste in women odious, the fact that I don't own a television an unforgivable sin, and the fact that I would choose to write a book about Saudi Arabia completely unfathomable. And you're also totally in love with me. If you weren't you wouldn't have pushed me into the pool earlier today when you saw Grazi walk in."
Every Boy's Got One — Meg Cabot

Integrating the beauty of seasonal change into the residence was a concept that remains true even today even in the more cramped, inner city machiya. — Judith Clancy

Every restaurant is a theater, and the truly great ones allow us to indulge in the fantasy that we are rich and powerful. When restaurants hold up their end of the bargain, they give us the illusion of being surrounded by servants intent on ensuring our happiness and offering extraordinary food.
But even modest restaurants offer the opportunity to become someone else, at least for a little while. Restaurants free us from mundane reality; that is part of their charm. When you walk through the door, you are entering neutral territory where you are free to be whoever you choose for the duration of the meal. — Ruth Reichl

Cookbooks have all become baroque and very predictable. I'm looking for something different. A lot of chefs' cookbooks are food as it's done in the restaurants, but they are dumbed down, and I hate it when they dumb them down. — Mario Batali

In the wake of the tax bonanzas for new commercial projects, roadside strips boomed. Private developers responded to the lack of planned centers, public space, and public facilities in suburbs by building malls, office parks, and industrial parks as well as fast-food restaurants and motels. — Dolores Hayden

I like being famous. It can be a bit of a pain but you get free food in restaurants and people send you clothes. — Noel Gallagher

The first thing that struck you about Claire's plate was its vast emptiness. Of course I'm well aware that, in the better restaurants, quality takes precedence over quantity, but there are voids and then there are voids. The void here, that part of the plate on which no food at all was present, had clearly been raised to a matter of principle.
It was as though the empty plate was challenging you to say something about it, to go to the open kitchen and demand an explanation. 'You wouldn't even dare!' the plate said, and laughed in your face. — Herman Koch

When I first went to Paris in 1965, I fell in love with the small, family-owned restaurants that existed everywhere then, as well as the markets and the French obsession with buying fresh food, often twice a day. — Alice Waters

There are wonderful restaurants in London. I love Indian food and I like Arab food, and I go very often to the Arab restaurant Noura. — Daniel Barenboim