Vivace Restaurant Quotes

Today I bought a small Frosty. This may not seem significant, but the fact is: I'm lactose intolerant. Purchasing a small Frosty, then, is no different than hiring someone to beat me. No different in essence. The only difference, which may or may not be essential, is that, during my torture, I am gazing upon your beautiful employees. ~ Joe Wenderoth

Got it. Look, the way I see it, two people walk in the restaurant, a Methodist and an atheist. The Methodist says, I'm not going to tip because I just came from church and I've already done my good deed for the day. The atheist says, I'm not tipping because life is meaningless and we're all just animals. To me, they're both members of the same religion, because they're doing the same thing. Whatever little story they tell themselves to justify it is irrelevant. It goes the other way, too - if a Muslim and a Scientologist come in and both leave a tip, they're on the same team. It doesn't matter to me if one did it because of Allah and the other was obeying the ghost of Tom Cruise, what matters is it resulted in doing the right thing. ~ David Wong

I used to do my Nelson Mandela voice to blag restaurant tables in Cape Town. It rarely worked. Now what a great city that is. ~ Rory Bremner

Chang-bo took to his bed, or rather to the quilts on the floor that was all they had left. His legs swelled up like balloons with what Mrs. Song had come to recognize as edema - fluid retention brought on by starvation. He talked incessantly about food. He spoke of the tofu soups his mother made him as a child and an unusually delicious meal of steamed crab with ginger that Mrs. Song had cooked for him when they were newlyweds. He had an uncanny ability to remember details of dishes she had cooked decades earlier. He was sweetly sentimental, even romantic, when he spoke about their meals together. He would take her hand in his own, his eyes wet and cloudy with the mist of his memories.
"Come, darling. Let's go to a good restaurant and order a nice bottle of wine," he told his wife one morning when they were stirring on the blankets. They hadn't eaten in three days. Mrs. Song looked at her husband with alarm, worried that he was hallucinating.
She ran out the door to the market, moving fast and forgetting all about the pain in her back. She was determined to steal, beg - whatever it took - to get some food for her husband. She spotted her older sister selling noodles. Her sister wasn't faring well - her skin was flaked just like Chang-bo's from malnutrition - so Mrs. Song had resisted asking her for help, but now she was desperate, and of course, her sister couldn't refuse.
"I'll pay you back," Mrs. Song promised as she ran back home, the adrenaline pu ~ Barbara Demick

She'd been in the hotel's lobby at least a dozen times a day while working in its restaurant as the head chef. She'd taken her simple life for granted. She'd taken Vern for granted. Now everything had changed. ~ Gerri Russell

The closest I ever got to Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms was when I bought the box game set for the latter (I think this was before the novels came out). I well recall this - we were living in James Bay, in Victoria. We opened the box up and took out the maps while sitting in a Mexican restaurant. Ten minutes later I was as close as I have ever been to publicly burning someone else's creation…What bothered us was the reworking of every fantasy cliché imaginable, all in one package now, and none of it made sense. ~ Steven Erikson

I do not understand why, when I ask for grilled lobster in a restaurant, I'm never served a cooked telephone. ~ Salvador Dali

Especially in the food business, critics take very seriously how much power they have. They can shut a restaurant down. ~ Jon Favreau

In the restaurant kitchen, August meant lobsters, blackberries, silver queen corn, and tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes. In honor of the last year of the restaurant, Fiona was creating a different tomato special for each day of the month. The first of August (two hundred and fifty covers on the book, eleven reservation wait list) was a roasted yellow tomato soup. The second of August (two hundred and fifty covers, seven reservation wait list) was tomato pie with a Gruyère crust. On the third of August, Ernie Otemeyer came in with his wife to celebrate his birthday and since Ernie liked food that went with his Bud Light, Fiona made a Sicilian pizza- a thick, doughy crust, a layer of fresh buffalo mozzarella, topped with a voluptuous tomato-basil sauce. One morning when she was working the phone, Adrienne stepped into the kitchen hoping to get a few minutes with Mario, and she found Fiona taking a bite out of red ripe tomato like it was an apple. Fiona held the tomato out.
"I'd put this on the menu," she said. "But few would understand. ~ Elin Hilderbrand

The heroin flowing through me, I thought about the last time I saw my father alive. He was drunk and overweight in a restaurant in Beverly Hills, and curling into myself on the bed I thought: What if I had done something that day? I had just sat passively in a restaurant booth as the midday light filled the half-empty dining room, pondering a decision. The decision was: should you disarm him? That was the word I remember: disarm. Should you tell him something that might not be the truth but would get the desired reaction? And what was I going to convince him of, even though it was a lie? Did it matter? Whatever it was, it would constitute a new beginning. The immediate line: You're my father and I love you. I remember staring at the white tablecloth as I contemplated saying this. Could I actually do it? I didn't believe it, and it wasn't true, but I wanted it to be. For one moment, as my father ordered another vodka (it was two in the afternoon; this was his fourth) and started ranting about my mother and the slump in California real estate and how "your sisters" never called him, I realized it could actually happen, and that by saying this I would save him. I suddenly saw a future with my father. But the check came along with the drink and I was knocked out of my reverie by an argument he wanted to start and I simply stood up and walked away from the booth without looking back at him or saying goodbye and then I was standing in sunlight. Loosening my tie as a parking valet p ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Fame is not the worst thing. I went to dinner the other night, and the girls in the restaurant ignored me. It was so annoying. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio

The Momofuku Culinary Lab started as a space where we could focus on creating and innovating. I didn't want us to worry about working on projects in a restaurant; there are just too many distractions in service and running a kitchen to be able to focus on creating your dishes. ~ David Chang

Look at your waiter's face. He knows. It's another reason to be polite to your waiter: he could save your life with a raised eyebrow or a sigh. ~ Anthony Bourdain

​Everything about the restaurant is anonymous and interchangeable. And almost every seat is filled. ~ Haruki Murakami

What I learned is that how we present ourselves to the world is really how we get treated. So if you want to be treated really well in a restaurant, you really have to dress up. You cannot just show up. ~ Ruth Reichl

When I first decided to open a restaurant, I was turned down by several banks. It was the late 80's and many restaurants were failing. I refused to give up because I knew I had a good concept. ~ Emeril Lagasse

In each restaurant, I develop a different culinary sensibility. In Paris, I'm more classic, because that's what customers like. In Monaco, it's classic Mediterranean haute cuisine. In London, it's a contemporary French restaurant that I've developed with a U.K. influence and my French know-how. ~ Alain Ducasse

The toughest decision is always whether to open a restaurant. Two or three bad months, and you could be out of business. ~ Jean-Georges Vongerichten

You thought you knew what food was, you thought it was elemental. You forgot how much restaurant there was in restaurant food and how much home was in homemade. ~ Jonathan Franzen

In my home I tend to eat a very simple version of what we cook at the restaurant, which is vegetable-oriented, with a little bit of fish and very little meat. For instance, a dish in my home could be steamed spinach with spruce, where I take a spruce branch and put it in the pot and that infuses into the spinach. ~ Rene Redzepi

( ... ) 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

Blithe; he seething - until they had left the restaurant and started ~ Hanya Yanagihara

If I could measure my life in moments of self-doubt, it would look like yardstick after yardstick of questioning my choices. From what I order for dinner in a restaurant to whether or not I should have a baby... Choose A. Obsess that I should have chosen B instead of A. Why do I always choose the wrong thing? ~ Jennifer Pastiloff

If you can play guitar and sing, you can probably get a gig down the road playing at a restaurant, but don't throw your life away chasing something that is so elusive it will only lead you to regret and may turn you bitter. ~ Cliff Richard

Corrupted by wealth and power, your government is like a restaurant with only one dish. They've got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side. But no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen. ~ Huey Long

I got dumped at Taco Bill's today; fell down, split my pants, and generally humiliated myself in front of a complete stranger; went to dinner at a snooty restaurant, found out said stranger is my future step brother; got called a stripper, hooker, and virgin by my mother ... did I leave anything out? ~ Nicole Christie

It all comes back to the basics. Serve customers the best-tasting food at a good value in a clean, comfortable restaurant, and they'll keep coming back. ~ Dave Thomas

It's just lunch Sophie. I'm not going to force you to elope with me in a restaurant. ~ Somi Ekhasomhi

You know, eating's much more important than most people think. There comes a time in your life when you've just got to have something super-delicious. And when you're standing at that crossroads your whole life can change, depending on which one you go into - the good restaurant or the awful one. ~ Haruki Murakami

I lived in Cuba - I was there for one year in the 1950s. We built the famous nightclub, which is still there, Tropicana, and a restaurant, Montecatini, that I opened is still there. I was there when the U.S. ambassador said everyone must leave because Castro was arriving the next morning. ~ Sirio Maccioni

BROOKE PARKER STEPPED up to the bar at The Shore restaurant, ready to place her lunch order. The bartender, however, beat her to the punch.

"Hey, it's my favorite customer - Chicken Tacos, Extra Pico." He flashed her a grin. "That's my nickname for you."

Yes, she got that. "I suppose I've been called worse," Brooke said as the bartender moved to the cash register to ring her up. ~ Julie James

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

Sushi rocks my world as no other food can! ~ Anthony T. Hincks

The owner of the Agut d'Avignon had the air of a 1920s dandy who had ruined himself with one mad night of gambling at baccarat and had only been saved by this restaurant, which he seemed to cherish as if it were his wife or a good fountain pen. ~ Manuel Vazquez Montalban

I can go into a restaurant; I might have to go a few times, taste something, love it and figure out exactly what is in there, and go home and duplicate it. ~ Tamala Jones

Mr. Kadam bowed and said, "Miss Kelsey, I will leave you to your dining companion. Enjoy your dinner." Then he walked out of the restaurant.
"Mr. Kadam, wait. I don't understand."
Dining companion? What is he talking about? Maybe he's confused.
Just then, a deep, all-too-familiar voice behind me said, "Hello, Kells."
I froze, and my heart dropped into my stomach, stirring up about a billion butterflies. A few seconds passed. Or was it a few minutes? I couldn't tell.
I heard a sigh of frustration. "Are you still not talking to me? Turn around, please."
A warm hand slid under my elbow and gently turned me around. I raised my eyes and gasped softly. He was breathtaking! So handsome, I wanted to cry.
"Ren."
He smiled. "Who else?"
He was dressed in an elegant black suit and he'd had his hair cut. Glossy black hair was swept back away from his face in tousled layers that tapered to a slight curl at the nape of his neck. The white shirt he wore was unbuttoned at the collar. It set off his golden-bronze skin and his brilliant white smile, making him positively lethal to any woman who might cross his path. I groaned inwardly.
He's like…like James Bond, Antonio Banderas, and Brad Pitt all rolled into one.
I decided the safest thing to do would be to look at his shoes. Shoes were boring, right? Not attractive at all. Ah. Much better. His shoes were nice, of course-polished and black, just like I would expect. I smiled wryly when I ~ Colleen Houck

Leander was supposed to go to London with both of the Shockings. In the end, Mrs. Schocking declined but insisted that the men go as planned. Basil chose the restaurant for the evening, but kept its name and location shrouded in secrecy. All Leander knew was to dress for dinner and that Basil promised a good time. ~ Dean Frech

We never do Valentine's dinner, because everybody, they look. On Valentine's, imagine me and David going to a restaurant! Like, everybody's going to say, 'Did they talk? Did they hold hands?' Twenty years. We've been married twenty years! ~ Iman

I've lived all over the world, but Harlem is very special to me, and when I decided to open a restaurant near my home, I didn't want it to be business as usual. ~ Marcus Samuelsson