The thin girl was gulping down one of Richard's bananas in what was, Richard reflected, the least erotic display of banana-eating he had ever seen.
When a customer receives a dish, they get food and design at the same time.
Monkeys don't enjoy or appreciate flavours. Experts have told us that human beings are the only beings that can appreciate food at this higher level and the only living beings that cook.
Growing up, my mom had a catering business. I used to help her pretty early on and loved doing it. My mom is an amazing cook, and she helped me cultivate a love for food. She taught me that food can be beautiful. We eat not just for survival, but we survive to eat. It's part of who I am.
There's a battle between what the cook thinks is high art and what the customer just wants to eat.
Even when I go to a salad bar, I need to feel like I'm one of the first people there.
I've always joked that my food memoirs will be titled 'Brutta ma Buona,' the phrase Italians use to describe food that's delicious but rustic-looking at best: ugly but good.
[Bachelors'] approach to gastronomy is basically sexual, since few of them under seventy-nine will bother to produce a good meal unless it is for a pretty woman.
'Big Night' is the best food movie ever made. It's such a celebration of food, and the Italian tradition of celebrating people. Plus, everything looked delicious!
I have an impressionable palate. A well-worded menu or beautifully presented dish excites me. I get a great deal of pleasure just thinking about food.
I'm not a good butcher but I've had to learn to carve the joint. People expect a new look.
A pastry usually tastes better if it looks nice. A cream pastry, now that looks nice - in fact, there is nothing I mind as long as it looks nice.
Food became, for dinner parties in the sixties, what abstract expressionism had been in the fifties.
I didn't want food that looked unapproachable or ridiculously beautiful.
I'm into very colorful food. Obviously lots of flavor, but I think we eat with our eyes first, so it has to look great. The presentation has to be great.
No nation has ever produced great art that has not made a high art of cookery, because art appeals primarily to the senses.
I like the prop food so much that I eat it between takes as well as on camera.
The food could taste amazing; however, if you present a plate of misfortunate looking food...you would really question yourself about whether or not you should eat it.
What I want to do is produce really delicious food. I want it to look nice, because when you see food you should want to eat it. You shouldn't be saying, 'Oh my goodness, isn't the chef clever, he can weave the Eiffel Tower out of carrot sticks.'
The essence of a thoughtful spring menu is bringing the table to life with flavorful color!
Ultimately, taste is so niche and so personal.
It's so beautifully arranged on the plate - you know someone's fingers have been all over it.
The visual aspect of a dish is so important; the shapes and colors and overall design have to strike the right mood and convey the right idea.
Obviously, I like very beautiful food, because I think as delicious as food has to taste, it also has to look very beautiful - the process of presentation is very important.
It requires a certain kind of mind to see beauty in a hamburger bun. Yet is it any more unusual to find grace in the texture and softly carved silhouette of a bun than to reflect lovingly on the hackles of a fishing fly? Or the arrangements and textures on a butterfly's wing? Not if you are a McDonalds's man.
