Culinary Culture Quotes

We (the Chinese) eat food for its texture, the elastic or crisp effect it has on our teeth, as well as for fragrance, flavor and color.

The French cook; we open tins.

Dining partners, regardless of gender, social standing, or the years they've lived, should be chosen for their ability to eat - and drink! - with the right mixture of abandon and restraint. They should enjoy food, and look upon its preparation and its degustation as one of the human arts.

She smiled again. "Do you like cat?" she said. "Yes," said Richard. "I quite like cats." Anaesthesia looked relieved. "Thigh?" she asked, "or breast?

The world is split into two halves: the bacon, and the bacon eaters.

The sharing of food is the basis of social life.

I am a transporter of the Italian culture - culinary culture, family culture - because I love it, I thrive in it, and I think it's the right way.

Food is a great way of communicating.

Very good cooks who are employed as 'chefs' rarely refer to themselves as 'chefs.' They refer to themselves as 'cooks.'

People ask me in Europe, when they do interviews... they ask me, 'Well, how does it feel to be a cook in a country that doesn't know how to eat?' It always touches a nerve, because Europe and the world think that America is no more than bad hot dogs and bad burgers.

Every restaurant in the world is owned by a Greek.

Food is the best way to teach history and geography and most everything else.

The grotesque prudishness and archness with which garlic is treated in [England] has led to the superstition that rubbing the bowl with it before putting the salad in gives sufficient flavor. It rather depends whether you are going to eat the bowl or the salad.

Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me. The perfect meal, or the best meals, occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself.

Dutch food is terrible, I think. What sort of person starts the day with egg and cheese?

The definition of gumbo is almost as slippery as that of Creole. Just as gumbo can contain pretty much any kind of meat or seafood, Creole is a vague and inclusive term for native New Orleanians, who may be black or white, depending on whom you're asking.

Now the look of the book dictates the sale. In my day you could still buy a good cookbook in paperback with no pictures at all. I doubt if that would sell today. But those books were much used: they lived in the kitchen and got splattered with custard and gravy.

In America we eat, collectively, with a glum urge for food to fill us. We are ignorant of flavour. We are as a nation taste-blind.

The Southerners are the only cooks in the United States. The real difference between the South and the North is that one enjoys itself getting dyspepsia and the other does not.

Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate.

America's craft brewers know that beer, not wine, is the best beverage for accompanying a good meal.

My favorite kitchen was the Japanese and the Italian kitchen.

You should just feel comfortable with food and your own culinary culture, whatever your mother and grandmother know.

Food can bring people together in a way nothing else could.

I remember the excitement of finding a great pancake recipe in 'Gourmet.' It felt as if it were mine. And it was Berkeley, of course - everybody cooked together. Cooking is what one did.