“The quality of food is in inverse proportion to a dining room’s altitude, especially atop bank and hotel buildings (airplanes are an extreme example).”
Bryan Miller (NY Times Restaurant Critic)
~~~
“To me, an airplane is a great place to diet.”
Wolfgang Puck
~~~
“Cost cutting by the airlines leaves fewer pennies for cleaning crews, whose appearances are being coordinated with those of Halley’s comet. Is the day far off when flight attendants will ask you to do a quick turn with a handvac to earn your microchip pretzels?”
James Morris, Wilson Quarterly (Winter 2007)
~~~
“At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.”
Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
~~~
“America is now the fattest country in the world and getting fatter every day.”
Executive of H.J. Heinz Co.
(Heinz has the franchise for Weight Watchers foods, with over 1 1/2 billion dollars in sales each year).
~~~
“To a foreigner a Yankee is an American. To an American a Yankee is a Northerner. To a Northerner a Yankee is a New Englander. To a New Englander a Yankee is a Vermonter. To a Vermonter a Yankee is a person who eats apple pie for breakfast.”
(Traditional saying) Michael Owen Jones
Journal of American Folklore (Spring 2007)
~~~
“America is a land of healthy appetites. It is not in the American character to live in order to eat. Rather, the reverse is true. Many try, but just as Americans don’t make good gigolos, nether do they make good gourmets.”
Ludwig Bemelmans, ‘La Bonne Table’ (1964)
(‘Choice Cuts’ by Mark Kurlansky, 2002)
~~~
“Americans can eat garbage, provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup, mustard, chili sauce, tabasco sauce, cayenne pepper, or any other condiment which destroys the original flavor of the dish.”
Henry Miller, American writer (1891-1980)
~~~
“Men may come and men may go…..but Pie goes on for ever.”
George Augustus Sala, British journalist.
‘America Revisited’ (1882)
~~~
“Pardon this digression; but Pie really forms as important a factor in American civilisation as the ‘pot-au-feu’ does in France.”
George Augustus Sala, British journalist.
‘America Revisited’ (1882)
~~~
“He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.”
Raymond Chandler
~~~
“Digestion is one of the most delicately balanced of all human and perhaps angelic functions.”
M.F.K. Fisher (1949)
in her translation of ‘The Physiology of taste’
~~~
“Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs.”
P. J. O’Rourke (1947 – )
~~~
“I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.”
A. Whitney Brown
former Saturday Night Live news anchor
~~~
“Never eat more than you can lift.”
Miss Piggy (American Puppet)
~~~
“Coleridge holds that a man cannot have a pure mind who refuse apple-dumplings. I am not certain but that he is right.”
Charles Lamb (1775-1834)
~~~
“In my experience, clever food is not appreciated at Christmas. It makes the little ones cry and the old ones nervous.”
Jane Grigson
~~~
“The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.”
Mark Twain
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens) (1835-1910)
~~~
“It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears.”
Plutarch (AD 46-120?)
Greek biographer and philosopher
~~~
“Only a fool argues with a skunk, a mule or a cook.”
cowboy saying
~~~
“As someone has remarked, if you are what you eat, it seems the average consumer consists mostly of thickener, water, salt, and sugar.”
Harvey Blatt, ‘America’s Food’ (2008)
~~~
“I always wondered why babies spend so much time sucking their thumbs. Then I tasted baby food.”
Robert Orben (1927–) American humorist.
~~~
“Before I was born my mother was in great agony of spirit and in a tragic situation. She could take no food except iced oysters and champagne. If people ask me when I began to dance, I reply, ‘In my mother’s womb, probably as a result of the oysters and champagne – the food of Aphrodite.'”
Isadora Duncan, American dancer (1878-1927)
~~~
“When you get to fifty-two food becomes more important than sex.”
Tom Lehrer, song writer
~~~
“Food is about agriculture, about ecology, about man’s relationship with nature, about the climate, about nation-building, cultural struggles, friends and enemies, alliances, wars, religion. It is about memory and tradition and, at times, even about sex.”
Mark Kurlansky, ‘Choice Cuts’ (2002)
~~~
About Casanova, a famouse womanizer
“at 73, no longer a god in the garden or a satyr in the forest, he is a wolf at table.”
Prince of Ligne
~~~
“Don’t eat too many almonds; they add weight to the breasts.”
Colette (French novelist)
~~~
“Many so-called aphrodisiac recipes are basically wholesome ingredients prepared in a tasty way. The receptivity to romance probably comes from the general sense of relaxation and well-being good food induces.”
Harry E. Wedeck
~~~
“A number of rare or newly experienced foods have been claimed to be aphrodisiacs. At one time this quality was even ascribed to the tomato. Reflect on that when you are next preparing the family salad.”
Jane Grigson
~~~
“I’m at the age where food has taken the place of sex in my life. In fact, I’ve just had a mirror put over my kitchen table.”
Rodney Dangerfield
~~~
“I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets: It seems to me that they are wonderful things for other people to go on.”
Jean Kerr, author, playwright
~~~
“Oh, the pleasure of eating my dinner alone!”
Charles Lamb
~~~
“Animals are my friends…and I don’t eat my friends.”
George Bernard Shaw
Irish playwright and critic (1856-1950)
~~~
“Where do you go to get anorexia?”
Shelly Winters (an actress with a weight problem)
~~~
“The average American family hasn’t time for television.”
‘New York Times’, 1939
~~~
“My cooking was and still is about the worst in America. George is so kind about it.”
Barbara Bush
~~~
“Food is an important part of a balanced diet.”
Fran Lebowitz
~~~
“Old people shouldn’t eat health foods. They need all the preservatives they can get.”
Robert Orben (1927–) American humorist.
~~~
“Put all your eggs in one basket and then Watch That Basket!”
Andrew Carnegie, American industrialist. (1835-1919)
~~~
“My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.”
Erma Bombeck
~~~
“That fellow Béchameil has all the luck! I was serving breast of chicken á la crème more than 20 years before he was born, but I have never had the chance of giving my name to even the most modest sauce.”
Duke of Escars, 17th century
~~~
“Seeing is deceiving. It’s eating that’s believing.”
James Thurber (1894-1961)
American writer and cartoonist.
~~~
“Anybody who believes that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach flunked geography.”
Robert Byrne
~~~
“Belladonna: In Italian, a beautiful lady; in English, a deadly poison.”
Ambrose Bierce, ‘The Devil’s Dictionary’
~~~
“Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage.”
Woody Allen, ‘Without Feathers’
~~~
“It’s a good thing we have gravity, or else when birds died they’d just stay right up there. Hunters would be all confused.”
Steven Wright, Comedian, actor, writer. (1955- )
~~~
“TURKEY, n. A large bird whose flesh when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude. Incidentally, it is pretty good eating.”
Ambrose Bierce, ‘The Devil’s Dictionary’ (1911)
~~~
“The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.”
Steven Wright
~~~
“Bistromathics…..The first nonabsolute number is the number of people for whom the table is reserved. This will vary during the course of the first three telephone calls to the restaurant, and then bear no apparent relation to the number of people who actually turn up, or to the number of people who subsequently join them after the show/match/party/gig, or to the number of people who leave when they see who else has turned up.”
Douglas Adams
‘Life, The Universe and Everything’ (1982)
~~~
“Numbers written on restaurant checks within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe.”
Douglas Adams
‘Life, The Universe and Everything’ (1982)
~~~
“You become about as exciting as your food blender. The kids come in look you in the eye, and ask if anybody’s home.”
Erma Bombeck (1927-1996)
~~~
“There has always been a food processor in the kitchen. But once upon a time she was usually called the missus or Mom.”
Sue Berkman
‘Everything But the Kitchen Sink’, ‘Esquire’ 9/84
~~~
“Why do they always put mud into coffee on board steamers? Why does the tea generally taste of boiled boots?”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)
~~~
“This is every cook’s opinion No savory dish without an onion, But lest your kissing should be spoiled Your onions must be fully boiled.”
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
~~~
“As if a cookbook had anything to do with writing.”
Alice B. Toklas, American writer (1877-1967)
‘The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book’ (1954)
~~~
“I did toy with the idea of doing a cook-book. . . . I think a lot of people who hate literature but love fried eggs would buy it if the price was right.”
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
‘Groucho and Me’ (1959)
~~~
“Shake and shake The catsup bottle, None will come, And then a lot’ll.”
usually attributed to Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
~~~
“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”
P. J. O’Rourke (1947 – )
~~~
“Everybody knows brains can be fried–just as all know they can be addled. We of the old south pickled ours. Go and do likewise if you want an experience.”
‘Dishes & Beverages Of The Old South’
Martha McCulloch-Williams (1913)
~~~
“Durian and Brazil Nut. An odd pair? Yes, but they have this in common, that you have to be careful they don’t drop on your head.”
Alan Davidson
~~~
“Do not move back and forth on your chair. Doing so gives the impression of constantly breaking, or trying to break, wind.”
Desiderius Erasmus (1466? – 1536)
~~~
“Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness.”
Sir Robert Hutchinson
~~~
“Newman, you wouldn’t eat broccoli if it was deep-fried in chocolate sauce.”
Jerry Seinfeld to Newman in ‘The Chicken Roaster’ episode of ‘Seinfeld’ TV series.
~~~
“You could open a restaurant in an alley and call it anything….It could even be called something as ridiculous as the Brown Derby.”
Gloria Swanson, whose ex-husband, Herbert Somborn proceded to open a restaurant of that name in 1926
~~~
“I went to this restaurant last night that was set up like a big buffet in the shape of an Ouija board. You’d think about what kind of food you want, and the table would move across the floor to it.”
Steven Wright
~~~
“My grandfather had a wonderful funeral….It was held in a big hall with accordion playres. On the buffet table there was a replica of the deceased in potato salad.”
Woody Allen
~~~
“There are only two things our customers have, time and money – and they don’t like spending either one of them, so we better sell them their hamburgers quickly.”
James McLamore, founder of Burger King
~~~
“One of the glories of New York is its ethnic food, and only McDonald’s and Burger King equalize us all.”
John Corry, NY Times Reporter
~~~
“Retain the wind by compressing the belly.”
Desiderius Erasmus (1466? – 1536)
~~~
“We dare not trust our wit for making our house pleasant to our friend, so we buy ice cream.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
~~~
“How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?”
Erma Bombeck (1927-1996)