Marian Burros Quotes

Customers are more friendly when they've had a meal.

Food is one part of the experience. And it has to be somewhere between 50 to 60 percent of the dining experience. But the rest counts as well: The mood, the atmosphere, the music, the feeling, the design, the harmony between what you have on the plate and what surrounds the plate.

If people ask me, 'What do you think could improve in Toronto dining,' I'd say there's nothing to improve on.

After failing four times and after working for other people and realizing that nobody paid attention to the food like they should have, we wanted to just pay attention to the food and service.

The food here is terrible, and the portions are too small.

A lot of restaurants serve good food, but they don't have very good service.

I don't want to hear the specials. If they're so special, put 'em on the menu.

Although a great restaurant experience must include great food, a bad restaurant experience can be achieved through bad service alone. Ideally, service is invisible. You notice it only when something goes wrong.

If I ever own a restaurant, I will never allow the waiters to ask if the diners like their dishes. Particularly when they're talking.

Customers want high-quality food, good service, and good store experience, and most retailers fail to deliver on those.

The C student starts a restaurant. The A student writes restaurant reviews.

For me, a great meal is a collision of company, environment, ambient temperature, the waiters, where you are emotionally.

Chefs get sucked into the trap of 'fine dining' because some guides make it central to their ratings system and because some customers have been trained to focus their expectations on the trappings and not on the food. It's all a gigantic waste of energy.

I think my service is better than my food... I focus so much on the service.

In London, the food critics are harsher, the clients milder; in Hong Kong, the clients are harsher, the critics milder.

Food for me has to pop, and at Spice Market, the food really pops.

People hate to go out to eat with me because they know I'm going to send it back. Like, I'm trying to order simple. But don't blame me if you bring out the wrong stuff.

Good restaurant design is about achieving equilibrium between the food, service, and design - in effect, telling a complete story.

Good service can save a bad meal, but there is no level of food that can save bad service.

Quality is not an absolute measure. It doesn't mean 'deluxeness' or 'perfection'. It means keeping the promise the customer wants you to make.

From my table inside I watch the glamorous women outside who are lunching on Spa Cobb salads without blue cheese or dressing. The man with the bread basket wanders from table to table, lonesome as a cloud. When he comes to me his basket is full and perfectly arranged. He gives me a smile of sincere pleasure when I tell him I will take both the sourdough roll and the cheese stick.

Refills are free,” the waitress tells us with a frown, like she’s hoping we’re not the kind of people who ask for endless refills. I am already pretty sure we are exactly those people.

I went home and took my wife and went to my Cosen Tho. Pepys's and found them just sat down to dinner, which was very good; only the venison pasty was palpable beef, which was not handsome.

There was Virginia Boote, the food and restaurant critic, who had once been a great beauty but was now a grand and magnificent ruin, and who delighted in her ruination.

Great food needed more than chefs; it needed gourmet diners.