Food is an excellent way to do very elegant worldbuilding - the kind that can make a fictional world seem real, like it extends way past the edges of the frame.
I've been on a team that won the world championship of barbecue. But barbecue's interesting, because it's one of these cult foods like chili, or bouillabaisse. Various parts of the world will have a cult food that people get enormously attached to - there's tremendous traditions; there's secrecy.
From food trucks to hot dog stands to county fair favorites, 'street food' has enjoyed a rich and storied history in American cuisine. However, street food has been around for thousands of years. In fact, street food is believed to have originated as far back as Ancient Rome.
Food is not just what we put in our mouths to fill up; it is culture and identity. Reason plays some role in our decisions about food, but it's rarely driving the car.
In Italy, food is an expression of love. It is how you show those around you that you care for them. Having a love for food means you also have a love for those you are preparing it for and for yourself.
For us in Asia, fermented, bubbly, creamy things are just the norm.
No better way to bond than food.
What I've learned, traveling the country and doing book signings, Mama's biscuits - you know, somebody in Montana's got their version of Mama's biscuits, somebody in California's got their version - so it made me realize that we're not as regionalized as we think we are.
Sitting down to a meal with an Indian family is different from sitting down to a meal with a British family.
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.
A summary of every Jewish holiday: They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat!
The French-Cajun culture is similar to mine - they're Catholic, they play accordions, and they eat hot chiles.
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.
'Blue Plate Special' is the autobiography of my first half-century of life, with food as the subject.
I love making dishes that my mother used to make.
In Germany, salads are assemblies of ham and mayonnaise, not trendy tossed leaves.
Great food, like all art, enhances and reflects a community’s vitality, growth and solidarity. Yet history bears witness that great cuisines spring only from healthy local agriculture.
Food is everything we are. It's an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It's inseparable from those from the get-go.
I love seeing what people are eating. It's a great way of looking at what is similar and what is different about people. It's sociology and anthropology and history rolled into one.
I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.
I grew up in a food-obsessed Italian family, so food was always front and center in my life. I was a food obsessed person who morphed into a comedian and tried to figure out a way to make fun of my cake and eat it too.
The podcast by 'The Kitchen Sisters' celebrates the staggering variety of a society of immigrants via its food, from the Sheepherders' Ball in Boise, Idaho, through the favoured cuisine of Emily Dickinson to the unbelievable rituals of the great rural barbecue.
Growing up, everybody would cross the border, even to just do grocery shopping. A lot of traditional American foods stuck with my parents and became part of my upbringing. This all had to do with the proximity to the border. We were an absolute mix of classic Americana, traditional Mexican, and Baja cuisine.
Like all food, whether you're talking about Persian food, or Chinese food, or Swedish food, it's always a reflection of wars, trading, a bunch of good and a bunch of bad. But what's left is always the food story.
I grew up in Lucknow, which is famous for its street food and kebabs. It was the street food and Lucknowi kebabs that inspired me. The culture of the varieties of food that I tasted as a child inspired me to be a cook.
