Yotam Ottolenghi Quotes

People come to my places to eat dinner with their friends, not with me.

The sharing of food is the basis of social life.

In one respect, it's easier to open a restaurant in New York because you get more media attention than anywhere else. Almost everyone will try a new place once, irrespective of the reviews, because it's a spectator sport.

Food in Dublin has gotten immeasurably better than it was. When I was a kid, there weren't a lot of options. Now you're overwhelmed with options.

If the first requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite, the second is to put in your apprenticeship as a feeder when you have enough money to pay the check but not enough to produce indifference of the total.

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.

I never eat at home. Dinner is my time to be social and catch up with people.

People always ask what kind of restaurant we have, and it's like a five-minute conversation. The short answer is, 'We're creating community through food.' That's the big idea we had, the product we're exporting. And it has paid off.

Food is kind of the conduit that brings people together.

When you sit down to eat at a table, you are ready to take in nourishment - we all need to eat to live. Even in primal tribes, people ate together. It's the opening for friendship.

Food not only connects us at the idyllic dinner table setting with family and friends: it is also part of our mundane, daily transit to and from work.

I like to eat other people's food in restaurants.

One thing I love most about New York is the variety of amazing foods you can eat. My all-time favorite is the Chicken Parmigianino at Jean Georges.

We live life in restaurants, its the center of social life, where we celebrate with family and friends, make new friends, travel without traveling, and of course, eat.

Almost every time we get together with family or friends, the conversation ends up being about food.

I don't like the term 'dinner as theater,' because that implies something thespian that I don't want to tie into this, but there are plenty of times that people go out to dinner because they want to have an experience. There are, however, probably many more times that people go out to eat because it's 7 o'clock and it's time to eat.

In a city like New York, especially for young professionals who aren't in a family situation, most people don't cook for themselves. This is the only city I've ever lived in where I eat out every night.

When I visit a country, I like to experience local food.

Mostly I enjoy the restaurants (my husband is a chef), though I wish we had a wider diversity of ethnic food.

There's something really wonderful about a party where you help yourself. Of course, first you get what you really want. But 'family style' service also really encourages people to connect with one another.

Feeding is a very important ritual for me. I don't trust people who don't like to eat.

When I first went to Las Vegas, I thought I would never go to Las Vegas; you can't get anything. But then I realized that they were trucking in almost everything; you could get a lot of your product, and I think that's why a lot of chefs actually went there.

I don't go out that much - usually it's just dinner.

You can't beat New York for food.

There was a Greek restaurant, the only place we could get Italian food. All of us Italians and many others from other parts of Europe used to go there, and Rajiv and his friends also. Some of his group knew some of my group, and we met just like that.