Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Cooking done with care is an act of love.
When it's done properly, taco should be a verb.
Nearly everyone wants at least one outstanding meal a day.
There is nothing better on a cold wintry day than a properly made pot pie.
More people will die from hit-or-miss eating than from hit-and-run driving.
I've run less risk driving my way across country than eating my way across it.
I write mostly positive reviews. I don't write about places that don't interest me.
Cooking is at once child's play and adult joy. And cooking done with care is an act of love.
If a restaurant fumbles once I don't have to hold it against them, anyone can have a bad night.
I pre-screen restaurants because my objective is to never have a bad meal, and I get pretty close to that.
I think every culture is passionate about food; some are just passionate about food and the food is shitty.
He was an innovator, an experimenter, a missionary in bringing the gospel of good cooking to the home table.
In a lot of ways I think food is starting to take the place in culture that rock and roll took 30 years ago.
Everybody talks about the internet being the ultimate repository of cooking knowledge. But it's not. It sucks.
I am simply of the opinion that you cannot be taught to write. You have to spend a lifetime in love with words.
Even though my entire writing persona is prefaced on me not being an expert, I kind of am an expert. I know a lot.
Cooking is at once one of the simplest and most gratifying of the arts, but to cook well one must love and respect food.
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.
It's funny how everyone has a bizarre relationship with Google. The knowledge is there, but no one knows how to use it right.
You can't write about a horrible restaurant - if it's a Ma & Pa restaurant no one wants to see you kick Ma & Pa in the chops.
Almost every profession has an outstanding training ground. The military has West Point, music has Juilliard, and the culinary arts has The Institute.
I have like 10 different processes I go to. My favorite one is to just go to an obscure neighborhood I haven't been to in decades and just wander around.
If the soup had been as warm as the wine; if the wine had been as old as the turkey; and if the turkey had had a breast like the maid, it would have been a swell dinner.
When she goes about her kitchen duties, chopping, carving, mixing, whisking, she moves with the grace and precision of a ballet dancer, her fingers plying the food with the dexterity of a croupier.
Physically he was the connoisseur's connoisseur. He was a giant panda, Santa Claus and the Jolly Green Giant rolled into one. On him, a lean and slender physique would have looked like very bad casting.
Where food trucks are concerned, nothing's better than having a whole flock of them at one location. Competition not only improves the quality of the food, it prompts these rolling lunch wagons to lower prices and offer specials, too.
I love African food, I love Italian food, but I rarely eat Italian out because it's so easy to make at home. On the other hand, unless you have specialized equipment, Chinese food is really tough because you literally can't get the pan hot enough.
For some obscure reason, some authorities seem bent on making the drinking of wine a ritual more complicated than chess. They have succeeded in inhibiting a large section of the public and depriving them of one of the greatest pleasures known to man.
I don't go to McDonalds, but when I was working for Gourmet magazine in New York City, my daughter liked to go there. I was completely paranoid that someone would recognize me there and say, 'Gourmet critic spotted at McDonalds! Buying a Happy Meal!'
Give me a platter of choice finnan haddie, freshly cooked in its bath of water and milk, add melted butter, a slice or two of hot toast, a pot of steaming Darjeeling tea, and you may tell the butler to dispense with the caviar, truffles and nightingales' tongues.
I'm lucky to be in food at the moment, because we're living in a time where so many people are obsessed with it. People will go to food festivals now, and argue over the merits of a taco for hours. It's about the people who deeply care, and want that exchange of ideas.
In a lot of ways I think food is starting to take the place in culture that rock and roll took 30 years ago, in that eating has become incredibly political. And just as the street has always dictated fashions on music and other things, it’s starting to happen that way in food.
As a writer of criticism, the consumer thing is the least interesting thing, but as a critic, the single worst thing you can do is send a reader to waste time and money on something - even if it's something you personally love. You have to indicate the reasons why you love it and they'll hate it.
Nothing rekindles my spirits, gives comfort to my heart and mind, more than a visit to Mississippi... and to be regaled as I often have been, with a platter of fried chicken, field peas, collard greens, fresh corn on the cob, sliced tomatoes with French dressing... and to top it all off with a wedge of freshly baked pecan pie.
Cooking is what makes us human. For example, Chimpanzees spend eight to ten hours trying to feed themselves, they are occupied by it, eating basically indigestible things. Once our human ancestors learn to cook things, suddenly we didn't have to spend that much time on digestion, our brains expanded, and we think about other things.
There are a number of ways you can find out if a restaurant is good or not: just the way it looks can give you all these visual clues: is it well maintained? Is the décor slapdash or does it look like someone put some effort into it? The employees - do they look disgruntled or proud to be serving what they're serving. Even better, when you walk into a place you can look at the food.
If you go around a time when you're hungry, around mealtime, then you have a desperate search to find something to eat and you have this interplay between approach and avoidance. You go in a place, you smell, if it doesn't smell so good you go to the next place, you look at all the people, they're happily eating, and then you choose that place. So having to reconnoiter, having to go on a kind of treasure hunt for food is one of my favorite things.
I think the point of obsession with food means we're healthy as a species. When we're hungry, everything tastes good, hunger is the best spice. When you're in a area that has few resources, you work incredibly hard to have something. And then you make the something taste good. The greatest food in the world comes from the inventiveness of great privation. What emerges is all the miraculous fermentations and all the strong flavors. You put it together in the right way, it's delicious. That defines survival, and our human species.