Ilustrado Restaurant Quotes

He flapped his mouth some more, and then shook himself awake, came to a decision, and starting sneaking huge, theatrical looks around the restaurant, as a way of telling all the other lunchers that I Am Now Going To Give This Man An Important Piece of Paper. ~ Hugh Laurie

As for restaurants, one of our favorites is the Silk Road next door to the Tibetan Choijin Lama Museum. It's a very exotic setting. The western food there is pretty good. We also liked the Hazara Restaurant for its Indian food, and the Mongolian Barbecue restaurant. All are downtown. ~ Ruth Lor Malloy

There is only one right way to eat a steak - with greed in your heart and a smile on your face. ~ Soumeet Lanka

Peppier n. The waiter at a fancy restaurant whose sole purpose seems to be walking around asking diners if they want ground pepper. ~ Steven Pinker

We are so used to eating unhealthy food that we deem obsessed with health people who watch what they eat. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

You have to think of a restaurant as a series of impressions. But what makes my job so great is there's no one answer that's right for every restaurant. ~ David Rockwell

Life in the restaurant business can provide a start in the working world for young people or a stable living for many Americans and their families. ~ Kevin McCarthy

[On entering the restaurant business:] Food has the dubious advantage of being legitimate, and one's customers somehow manage to live longer without sex than food, if you call that living. ~ Sally Stanford

I won't hire someone or date a girl who has not worked in a restaurant, and that's the honest truth. I don't think you know how it is until you've worked in a restaurant. ~ Casey Neistat

In my early days, I copied the great French chefs, like most chefs do. Copying is not bad. Copying and not recognizing that you are copying is bad. For me, when I go to a restaurant and am served a dish influenced by something we created at elBulli, if it's well done, it makes me extremely happy. ~ Ferran Adria

On New York's Palm restaurant: Their steaks are often good, but the
lobsters-with claws the size of Arnold Schwarzenegger's forearms-are as glazed and tough as most of the customers. ~ Malcolm Forbes

I sat down in a booth, and the waitress shoved a menu in front of me. There wasn't anything on it that sounded good, and anyway, one look at her and my stomach turned flipflops ... Every goddamned restaurant I go to, it's always the same way ... They'll have some old bag on the payroll - I figure they keep her locked up in the mop closet until they see me coming. And they'll doll her up in the dirtiest goddamned apron they can find and smear that crappy red polish all over her fingernails, and everything about her is smeary and sloppy and smelly. And she's the dame that always waits on me. ~ Jim Thompson

Excerpt from page 3 of "Wicked Washington"
Shelly Williams, the main character, speaking about her life:
And close and dangerous calls were almost my last name. Yet I felt as comfortable among the street hustlers, junkies, thieves, and criminals of D.C. as I did dining with my
white-collar, college-pedigreed friends over filet mignon, Maine lobster, and strawberry cheesecake at LaMermaid
Seafood Restaurant. ~ Sonja D. Jones

I'm so thankful when I have a job. I would say the worst job I ever had was the one I quit after the first night. I was an overnight restaurant janitor. And it wasn't because of the job. We had to do four restaurants in the night, overnight. But I was working with a den of thieves. I just quit the next day. ~ Wendell Pierce

In an age when so many groups are rolling out restaurants faster than your local baker makes donuts, my goal is that each restaurant feels hand-crafted. That they have their own soul. ~ Danny Meyer

Lobsters one of the only animals that have to put up with being alive in the restaurant. If you go to a steakhouse, folks - no cow tank. ~ Richard Jeni

It was a revolution, but now it is an evolution. People know more ingredients, people know more techniques, and people look for more ingredients they've never looked for before. In the '80s, you couldn't find raw tuna in any restaurant that wasn't Japanese. Now, you can't find any restaurant without it or sashimi. ~ Wolfgang Puck

Sharp knives, of course, are the secret of a successful restaurant. ~ George Orwell

I just want to serve food that people want to eat, and show a way forward for the restaurant industry, for all industries. One day, everything I've done will be worthwhile. ~ Arthur Potts Dawson

That kind of betrayal could not, and would not be forgiven, he reminded himself. It wasn't much of a mantra, but it had kept him going all day while he knew that the woman that just very well might be the one was sitting in a restaurant that discriminated against him simply because he'd had the misfortune of being born into a family with a food disability. ~ R.L. Mathewson

Together, we can help make sure that every family that walks into a restaurant can make an easy, healthy choice. ~ Michelle Obama

Still, I never really mind bad service in a restaurant. It makes me feel better about not leaving a tip. ~ Bill Bryson

It's always good to leave a little space between eating and lying down in bed at the end of the day. The best thing to eat at night in general is protein, fat, and vegetables. For instance, if you're in an Italian restaurant, have chicken piccata with lemon-butter sauce, lots of vegetables, and a big salad. You'll sleep like a baby. ~ Suzanne Somers

Even if we give parents all the information they need and we improve school meals and build brand new supermarkets on every corner, none of that matters if when families step into a restaurant, they can't make a healthy choice. ~ Michelle Obama

I don't know when pepper mills in a restaurant got to be right behind frankincense and myrrh in prominence. It used to be in a little jar that sat next to the salt on the table and everyone passed it around, sneezed, and it was no big deal. ~ Erma Bombeck

I hope that the restaurant I go to will have buffalo chicken fingers. I hope that one day I can work with Matt Damon. I have big and little dreams, and they're all equally important to me. A life without buffalo chicken fingers, I don't know if I would want that life. Even if it meant I got to work with Matt Damon. Everything has its worth. ~ Jenny Slate

I don't think you should be allowed to eat in a restaurant if you haven't waited tables at least once. It's so irritating when I see people being rude to waiters, like, it makes me want to slit their throats! Like, really? You're really this inconsiderate? ~ Lizzy Caplan

It's very hard when you eat out every day for a living, and a new restaurant comes along and you haven't got that same vigour that you had 10 years ago. ~ Gordon Ramsay

Well, you did walk away from that beautiful creature in the kitchen without so much as a glance, so I don't know about the genius part," the other woman said, and DJ felt his face warm. "You want to go back in there? I'll introduce you. You can celebrate for real."
Both women broke into giggles. DJ almost smiled; maybe he'd overreacted in there a bit.
"No thank you," the good doctor said in that voice of hers. "But thanks for thinking I'm desperate enough to be set up with the hired help."
DJ stepped away from the door, the warmth on his face turning into an angry burn.
The hired help? He had worked at a Michelin-starred restaurant, for crying out loud. For years. People across Paris knew his name.
Who the bloody hell did this woman think she was? Sometimes he really, truly hated rich people. ~ Sonali Dev

Ode to Douglas Adams

In the solar system we inhabit, we live on a small planet we all call Earth. Okay, when I say small, I mean it's small compared to say, oh, Jupiter. Earth is something like a dime compared to Jupiter's beach ball. On this Earth is a fairly large country we all call The United States of America. Of course, when I say fairly large, it's like the U.S. is a piece of broccoli next to China's really large cauliflower. Now that I think of it, that may not be a good comparison as it depends on the restaurant you go to. At the place I was at last night it would be a good comparison as the cauliflower was larger than the broccoli. Not that I'd touch either. I had a hamburger with fries and somebody at the next table had those ghastly vegetables.

From the Preface to "Sex and the American Male." I was saddened by the passing of Douglas Adams and wrote the preface to sound a little like his "Hitchhiker's..." books and to honor him. I hope he's smiling. ~ Jay Williams