Ottavios Restaurant Quotes

In practice, ship and iterate means that marketing programs and PR pushes should be minimal at launch. If you are in the restaurant business, you call this a soft opening. When you push the babies out of the nest, don't give them a jetpack or even a parachute - let them fly on their own. (Note: This is a metaphor.) Invest only when they get some lift. Google's Chrome is a great example of this - it launched in 2008 with minimal fanfare and practically no marketing budget and gained terrific momentum on its own, based solely on its excellence. Later, around the time the browser pushed past seventy million users, the team decided to pour fuel on the fire and approved a marketing push (and even a TV advertising campaign). But not until the product had proven itself a winner did it get fed. ~ Eric Schmidt

A few years ago, Dan and a research assistant went to a Toyota dealership and asked people what they would give up if they purchased a new car. None of the shoppers had spent any significant time considering that the thousands of dollars they were about to spend on a car could be spent on other things. ... Most people answered that if they bought a Toyota, then they would not be able to buy a Honda, or some other simple substitution. Few people answered that they wouldn't be able to go to Spain that summer or Hawaii the year after, or that they wouldn't go out to a nice restaurant twice a month for the next few years, or that they would be paying their college loans for five more years. ~ Dan Ariely

When we were unloading or going into a restaurant, the raisin got stepped on and smeared like a flapjack. The Hawk was displeased when he saw that. "Goddamn," he growled, "I gave you guys a hundred to get off cigarettes. I'll give you two hundred to get rid of these damn raisins! ~ Levon Helm

We've been here three days already, and I've yet to cook a single meal. The night we arrived, my dad ordered Chinese takeout from the old Cantonese restaurant around the corner, where they still serve the best egg foo yung, light and fluffy and swimming in rich, brown gravy. Then there had been Mineo's pizza and corned beef sandwiches from the kosher deli on Murray, all my childhood favorites. But last night I'd fallen asleep reading Arthur Schwartz's Naples at Table and had dreamed of pizza rustica, so when I awoke early on Saturday morning with a powerful craving for Italian peasant food, I decided to go shopping. Besides, I don't ever really feel at home anywhere until I've cooked a meal.
The Strip is down by the Allegheny River, a five- or six-block stretch filled with produce markets, old-fashioned butcher shops, fishmongers, cheese shops, flower stalls, and a shop that sells coffee that's been roasted on the premises. It used to be, and perhaps still is, where chefs pick up their produce and order cheeses, meats, and fish. The side streets and alleys are littered with moldering vegetables, fruits, and discarded lettuce leaves, and the smell in places is vaguely unpleasant. There are lots of beautiful, old warehouse buildings, brick with lovely arched windows, some of which are now, to my surprise, being converted into trendy loft apartments.
If you're a restaurateur you get here early, four or five in the morning. Around seven or eight o'clock, home cooks, to ~ Meredith Mileti

In Hawaii, many were especially helpful and supportive of this project, but nobody more than Mary Kennedy and Frank "Bamboo" Opperman. My landlords became close friends, and their Mokuleia compound will always hold a special place in my heart. Mokuleia equestrian Michael Daly was also extremely helpful to both Mike Ritter and myself. Another special thanks goes to Duc Nguyen and Minh Nga Vu, the proprietors of Duc's Bistro. The restaurant provided a safe harbor at a very tumultuous time in the project. Their generosity, grace, and delicious ~ Peter Maguire

Everybody loves a deal on a restaurant or skydiving or laser-hair removal. ~ Andrew Mason

Sure, I like my short hair. It also quadrupled my rate. I did get sick of seeing it on everybody, though - every stewardess, every salesclerk, and in every restaurant. ~ Linda Evangelista

I try to eat in one of my restaurants every day, and I eat out in another restaurant every day. It's what I do. ~ Tom Douglas

A Cannibal is a person who walks into a restaurant and orders a waiter. ~ Morey Amsterdam

If you have sense enough to realize why flies gather around a restaurant, you should be able to appreciate why men run for office. ~ E.W. Howe

There has been no great surprise, no sudden revelation. I knew pretty much what I was getting into. What I've learned is that a restaurant can be as much of an art as you want it to be, but it has to be a successful business first. ~ Charlie Trotter

I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox. ~ Tom Waits

I think something must happen to you when you get into eight grade. Like the Doug Swieteck's Brother Gene switches on and you become a jerk.
Which may have been Hamlet, Prince of Denmark's problem, who, besides having a name that makes him sound like a breakfast special at Sunnyside Morning Restaurant
something between a ham slice and a three-egg omelet
didn't have the smarts to figure out that when someone takes the trouble to come back from beyond the grave to tell you that he's been murdered, it's probably behooveful to pay attention
which is the adjectival form. ~ Gary D. Schmidt

I'd gone into that restaurant and sat down and the waitress had taken my order and everybody else had seen me with this what must have looked like this creature, this animal, sitting on the top of my head! ~ Derek Jacobi

Once abroad, I eat one meal a day picnic-style: Ive learned that no mature stomach can tolerate an endless routine of rich restaurant meals. ~ Arthur Frommer

I would like to encourage you to stop thinking of what you're doing as ministry. Start realizing that your ministry is how much of a tip you leave when you eat in a restaurant; when you leave a hotel room whether you leave it all messed up or not; whether you flush your own toilet or not. Your ministry is the way that you love people. And you love people when you write something that is encouraging to them, something challenging. You love people when you call your wife and say, 'I'm going to be late for dinner,' instead of letting her burn the meal. You love people when maybe you cook a meal for your wife sometime, because you know she's really tired. Loving people - being respectful toward them - is much more important than writing or doing music. ~ Rich Mullins

There certainly is a good 'Tex Mex' restaurant very close to our office. My office is around 100 yards from it. I call it Tex Mex because every couple of years it's changed hands and changed name, I'm not exactly sure why! ~ Andrew Oliver

As a child, I didn't see my dad that much because he was always working at the restaurant. He became pretty jaded after working at the restaurant for so long. ~ David Chang

First thing you do, room, bar, restaurant, town or crib, is check and memorize the ways out. ~ James Sallis

The difference between 'Molto Italiano' and 'The Babbo Cookbook' is that the ingredient lists in 'Molto' are about half or even a third the size. In 'Babbo,' they are very long, they are very real. That's exactly how we make them in the restaurant. ~ Mario Batali

Usually, whatever's in front of me is what I'm focused on and it's 100% on that and then I kind of move from one thing to the next. Like, if I go to a restaurant and I order food, I always just eat one thing at a time. ~ Adam Young

I'm a bit old-fashioned. I like the idea of going to the cinema and then an Italian restaurant. ~ Louis Tomlinson

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

When you look at a kitchen, you tend to see that the people who are doing really well are those who have worked with the same chef or stayed in one restaurant for a significant amount of time. ~ Daniel Humm

Let me guess," said Clary. "On the inside it's an abandoned police station; from the outside, mundanes only see a condemned apartment building, or a vacant lot, or ... "
"Actually it looks like a Chinese restaurant from the outside," Luke said. "Takeout only, no table service."
"A Chinese restaurant?" Clary echoed in disbelief.
He shrugged. "Well, we are in Chinatown. This was the Second Precinct building once."
"People must think it's weird that there's no phone number to call for orders."
Luke grinned. "There is. We just don't answer it much. Sometimes, if they're bored, some of the cubs will deliver someone some mu shu pork."
"You're kidding."
"Not at all. The tips come in handy. ~ Cassandra Clare

I'm lucky that my restaurant partners are my wife Liz and Doug Petkovic. We opened our first restaurant over 15 years ago. And we didn't open up our second restaurant for almost ten years. So that gave us a good foundation of employees. ~ Michael Symon

If you have read this far in the chronicle of the Baudelaire orphans - and I certainly hope you have not - then you know we have reached the thirteenth chapter of the thirteenth volume in this sad history, and so you know the end is near, even though this chapter is so lengthy that you might never reach the end of it. But perhaps you do not yet know what the end really means. "The end" is a phrase which refers to the completion of a story, or the final moment of some accomplishment, such as a secret errand, or a great deal of research, and indeed this thirteenth volume marks the completion of my investigation into the Baudelaire case, which required much research, a great many secret errands, and the accomplishments of a number of my comrades, from a trolley driver to a botanical hybridization expert, with many, many typewriter repairpeople in between. But it cannot be said that The End contains the end of the Baudelaires' story, any more than The Bad Beginning contained its beginning. The children's story began long before that terrible day on Briny Beach, but there would have to be another volume to chronicle when the Baudelaires were born, and when their parents married, and who was playing the violin in the candlelit restaurant when the Baudelaire parents first laid eyes on one another, and what was hidden inside that violin, and the childhood of the man who orphaned the girl who put it there, and even then it could not be said that the Baudelaires' story had not begun, b ~ Lemony Snicket

"I don't know if I could deal with a two-armed kid, and now I have to have a kid with only one arm because he wanted to try and feed the gorilla cotton candy? I didn't even want this, but then we're sitting at a restaurant minding our own business when this little boy walks by wearing little checkered Vans, and he was walking and singing a song and dancing. He was dancing and all of a sudden I turned to Otter and DEMANDED he put a baby in me. But I'm a guy, and he's a guy and that's biologically impossible ... " ~ T.J. Klune

Eating at a new, highly recommended restaurant is like a Very Important Blind Date, a contract with uncertainty you enter into with great expectation battling the cynicism of experience. You sit waiting, wondering about the upcoming moments of revelation. Somewhere in the back of your head is the dour warning that disappointment is inevitable but you don't really believe it or you wouldn't be there. The best eaters are always optimists. ~ Stuart Stevens

A while back, my friend Graydon Carter mentioned that he was opening a restaurant in New York. I cautioned him against this, because it's my theory that owning a restaurant is the kind of universal fantasy everyone ought to grow out of, sooner rather than later, or else you will be stuck with the restaurant. There are many problems that come with owning a restaurant, not the least of which is that you have to eat there all the time. Giving up the fantasy that you want to own a restaurant is probably the last Piaget stage. ~ Nora Ephron

( ... ) after an early dinner at The Egg and We, a recently inaugurated and not very successful little restaurant which Pnin frequented from sheer sympathy with failure ( ... ) ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Will you say something?" he asked.
"Like what? Congratulations on almost getting yourself killed? I mean, you just told me that you flew here on some kind of winged motorcycle while masked men in jet packs tried to shoot you with ray guns. Forgive me if I don't do cartwheels through the restaurant while I try to decide if you've lost your mind. ~ Jon S. Lewis

It's nice when you happen into a vegetarian restaurant, but really, you can find veggie food everywhere. Pastas, salads, a vegetable plate - I actually like ordering vegetarian in a meaty place because it gives them a jolt to come up with something and recognize the demand. ~ Joanna Lumley