Sidonie Gabrielle Colette Quotes

A tablecloth restaurant is still one of the great rewards of civilization.

I won't eat offal. Once, I was in London at the Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, which is this really fancy eating establishment and hotel, and I almost got conned into eating testicles. It was one of the most delicious meals I've ever eaten, about twelve courses. That was one of the courses.

I have experienced some amazing food! Yet when I think about the most luxurious and exquisite meals I have had, visions of simple food made from a few natural ingredients are what most excite me.

Alinea is not the type of restaurant where you go if you're in a hurry. Really, it's about enjoying that three-hour block of time and reflecting on the food, having great conversation with your dining companion.

My dream as a passionate cook has been to go to Le Cordon Bleu. Never could my most incredible dream have lived up to the experience. The food, the lesson, the chef, the ingredients - all the best of the best. I see why Le Cordon Bleu is world-renowned.

A gourmet meal without a glass of wine just seems tragic to me somehow.

I wanted to write about what we were doing at the French Laundry, the recipes and the stories.

Way back in the day, I used to cook for Thomas Keller at Rakel in New York City. Keller is a down to earth, kind, supportive person. I wish people could see that.

I see City Perch as a destination restaurant.

I don't go to fancy Michelin-starred restaurants often.

For my 16th birthday, my family took me to L'Auberge de L'Ill, which was family-run but had three Michelin stars. It was a revelation. After that meal, I realised this is what I want to do.

Anybody can cook for chefs. I cooked for a three Michelin star chef when I was cooking at home.

It has long been acknowledged that the single best restaurant in the world is Arthur Bryant's Barbecue at Eighteenth and Booklyn in Kansas city.

At the end of the day it's just food, isn't it? Just food.

The truffle is not a positive aphrodisiac, but it can upon occasion make women tenderer and men more apt to love.

Mushrooms can be very fancy. It's the closest you can get to eating dirt.

When I make a feast, I would my guests should praise it, not the cooks.

Reservations and cloth napkins are really minor pinnacles in the high sierra of the New York lunch. The zenith, the Mount Whitney of lunches, the noon meal at which all local lines of force converge [is] the Bar Room of the Four Seasons.

We parked in back and walked down the stairs with their polished brass railings, past the old-fashioned kitchen. We could see the chefs cooking. It smelled like stew, or meat loaf, the way time should smell, solid and nourishing.

Hunger is the best sauce in the world.

But for me, dinner at a fine restaurant was the ultimate luxury. It was the very height of civilization. For what was civilization but the intellect's ascendancy out of the doldrums of necessity (shelter, sustenance and survival) into the ether of the finely superfluous (poetry, handbags and haute cuisine)? So removed from daily life was the whole experience that when all was rotten to the core, a fine dinner could revive the spirits. If and when I had twenty dollars left to my name, I was going to invest it right here in an elegant hour that couldn't be hocked.

If your idea of a 7 course meal is a bucket of KFC and a sixpack, you might be a redneck.

At the time I write, the glory of the truffle has now reached its culmination. Who would dare to say that he has been at a dinner where there was not a pièce truffée? Who has not felt his mouth water in hearing truffles a la provencale spoken of? In fine, the truffle is the very diamond of gastronomy.

Cooking done with care is an act of love.

Anything that improves people's expectations of a meal is good for the world. Anything that weans even one kid or one adult away from Chili's or T.G.I. Friday's is definitely a win for the good guys.