Planning a dinner party in a way that you're actually capable of getting it done without panicking is important. It's bad hospitality for the host to be freaked out.
Don't build a bar for yourself. Build it for your customers. It's all about them: the walls, the finishes, the textures, the food, the beverages, literally everything has to be for them.
I love eating out. I don't deny that. But I don't want 12 or 15 courses because the chef wants me to taste this or taste that. I just want to be able to decide.
I am not a fine chef, but I can certainly get dinner on the table for 14 people. With that many, I try to keep it simple: salmon, mashed potatoes, sauteed spinach, and salad.
Oh, the illusion of choice in the modern world - don't get me started. But don't you agree that the Internet has softened our brains and made us forget that 'choice' used to mean something different from selecting options from menus?
The chef can be very innovative, but the decision is made by the customer.
Acceptance is going to a restaurant where the salad's not great, but the steak is fine.
I'd never scan the starters and main courses on a menu in a restaurant as a child. I'd want a dessert for starter, for main course and for dessert.
Arranging an official dinner in an embassy is a little like writing a script for a play. The prolog is the guest list, often the most difficult part of the whole creative operation.
Sometimes in a restaurant you'll see a lady dressed very nice, she picks up a menu or something... a little fan is always a little bit nice.
In airplanes you have a choice between chocolate and vanilla. One year could be vanilla or it could be chocolate. I don't attach any relevance to which one.
When it comes to Chinese food I have always operated under the policy that the less known about the preparation the better. A wise diner who is invited to visit the kitchen replies by saying, as politely as possible, that he has a pressing engagement elsewhere.
9:00: I don't know what I want. I just point at the Dollar Menu and say, 'Give me all of that.
The golden rule when reading the menu is, if you cannot pronounce it, you cannot afford it.
Of all the items on the menu, soup is that which exacts the most delicate perfection and the strictest attention.
A restaurant is a compendium of choices that the owner has made. If you look around a restaurant, everything represents a choice: the kind of salt shaker that's on the table, the art on the walls, the uniforms on the waiters.
I can tell everything about a restaurant through their mussels. You have to work so hard to keep them perfect.
My best hostess tip is to have good food and really good music!
If it doesn't taste good it doesn't go on the menu.
Get to know the Chef and you will start to enjoy dining out even more.
I'm the person who wouldn't send back my food even if I got steak when I'd ordered fish.
I love to eat and go out to dinner with friends and family and order all kinds of things. I love dessert.
I'll order anything that has the word 'fig' or 'crusted' in the menu description.
